Artificial intelligence is entering the employee benefits world.

HealthJoy.com’s chief marketing officer Rick Ramoswrites in Venture Beat about how the tech company’s AI-powered chatbots can service employee benefits at a lower cost than traditional call centers.

“An average call center costs at minimum $1 a minute for service -- specialty call centers that are specific to health care cost at least double that,” Ramos writes. “My team has been able to handle over 80 percent of our interactions with our AI chatbot. This frees up our concierge staff and allows them to perform higher level tasks.”

The chatbots can also conduct outbound engagement campaigns, such as reaching out to members with a reminder to get a flu shot, automatically pulling each member’s insurance information, and then locating a local provider who will take each individual’s insurance.

“This costs us pennies in server time to perform for thousands of members across the U.S.,” he writes. “Without artificial intelligence, an outreach of this scope would be next to impossible and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Employers will one day be able to use AI to “guide the way” in helping workers more clearly understand how to use their benefits correctly.

“Artificial intelligence drastically changes the economics of service -- it allows for better, more frequent interactions,” Ramos writes. “It also allows companies to be more proactive in helping customers and can drastically change business models. Due to the complexity of employee benefits and health care, AI is the perfect tool to tackle these problems and transform an industry.”

Willis Towers Watson’s Sambhav Rakyan writes on the company’s blog that HR organizations can use AI in other ways to enhance compensation and benefits programs. As professionals in these functions are upskilled to become strategy consultants, they can apply AI’s accelerated analysis and learning capacity to the organization’s data storehouses to gain insight, which will better equip them “to provide clear direction and a tailwind” for the organization’s growth strategy.

“Upskilling employees to co-exist with AI applications should be your top priority,” Rakyan writes. “This will help your workforce navigate the digital landscape and ensure your employees’ roles remain relevant.”

Instant Insights /

How artificial intelligence can enhance benefits programs

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