Bupa’s Dan Edwards on AI, Growth and Service Channels

Dan Edwards is Bupa’s Director, Health Insurance Channels and Growth, and in this interview, he reveals why he’s so excited about the opportunity with AI, and how the channel mix is changing in sales and service.

How do you embed empathy in your frontline, as they speak with members experiencing major health issues?

Bupa is one of Australia’s leading healthcare providers, and our ambition is to be the most customer-centric healthcare company (distinct from merely being a health insurance provider). As a customer channels group, the first thing we acknowledge is the privilege and responsibility we have to help bring and demonstrate this ambition to our customers. Healthcare is personal, and being customer-centric means ensuring that our service is human where it needs to be. Empathy becomes so important when it comes to healthcare. Being simple and easy to deal with can make such a difference especially when a customer has health issues they are working through. And this is what drives us… we acknowledge and accept the obligation we have to get the best possible outcome for a customer in that moment.

What are some of the AI initiatives you are implementing in the sales and service space?

To me, the rapidly advancing capabilities of AI represent one of the most exciting times in my career. At Bupa we are moving quickly away from ‘AI use-cases or initiatives’ to simply always thinking about how and if AI can help us in everything we do. Of course we have lots of great examples where it’s already making a difference: from using AI to summarise call notes, to summarising and following up call centre coaching notes, to driving automation outcomes, to helping us uncover improvement opportunities from the millions of transactions we handle, to identifying/ informing decisions on service recovery interventions. We are incredibly optimistic about the role AI has to play in our service and sales organisation, and in particular about how this will shape, evolve, and improve the impact that human work can have.

How do you ensure compliance and governance in AI rollouts?

We take very seriously the responsibility we have to treat customer and health data securely, safely, and appropriately. We have a strong risk culture across the organisation, and along with AI governance mechanisms, each AI initiative is managed within this framework and with appropriate controls. This culture and governance helps ensure we can innovate, think big about what might be possible and and do this safely. We have ongoing monitoring to ensure our systems remain robust, because as we know technology can change quickly, and we need to be able to adapt quickly too.

Almost half of Australians don’t have private health insurance. How are you tackling this segment in your growth strategy?

Bupa is much more than just a private health insurance company today. Whilst we are certainly well-known for that, the fact is we have a significant capability and footprint across clinical and non-clinical services including: Dental, Optical, Medical Centres, Aged Care Homes, and Mental Health clinics (Mindplace), along with online services like Online Doctors and Chemist delivery through our digital health platform Blua. Most of these services are available to both Bupa Health insurance members and non-members. We are serious about being the most customer-centric healthcare company, but we know there is more work to do. It’s a big part of what makes Bupa a wonderful and inspiring place to work.

BUPA delivers customer services through a variety of channels, from online to contact centre and in person. How is the channel mix changing in an increasingly automated environment?

Unsurprisingly, the better the self-service experience gets, the more it is being used. The more complex the situation/enquiry gets, the more important a voice or face-to-face discussion is. And there is a big range in between.

Since opening Messaging (Async) as a channel, it has really grown fast (3x in the last few years). The convenience of not having to wait on a call and interact without the real-time component is really appreciated by customers – our messaging channel share and NPS results show this clearly! What I find really interesting is that the demographics using Messaging is fast starting to look like our overall customer demographic mix rather than skewed in any direction.