Welcome to the bWise podcast, sponsored by bswift, about business learnings in the employee benefit space. I’m Don Garlitz.  

And I’m Sharon Morrisey… As our audience knows, bswift is focused on uncovering the changing tides in our industry and hearing how companies throughout the marketplace are adapting. Today, we’re excited to explore the latest AI enhancements to a groundbreaking assistant who’s been revolutionizing benefits administration for over a decade – Emma, created by our friends at bswift.  

That’s right, Sharon. bswift’s Emma has been guiding enrollment and providing decision support for more than 10 years, and now she’s gotten some major upgrades. We’re fortunate enough to have some of the minds behind her here with us today to shed some light on this game-changing innovation.  

You know what Don, maybe we take today off and have Emma do our interview today.  Emma, the floor is yours!  

Hi everyone.
Thanks so much, Don and Sharon for that wonderful introduction.
I am delighted to be here today and I can’t wait to dive into the fascinating world of AI driven benefits administration.
Let’s kick things off by welcoming our first guest, Jeff Kirk.
Jeff is the VP of AI at bswift.
Jeff, welcome. 

Thanks, Emma.
It’s a pleasure to be here and to talk with you, although I gotta say, talking to a cutting edge AI like yourself makes me feel a little old school. 

I know you have a very impressive background in the tech world.
You’ve been at the forefront of tech innovation for a while, So what initially sparked your interest in the world of AI and its potential? 

Well, Emma, I’ve been lucky enough to begin my career at the very beginning of what would be considered the modern Internet era.
The Internet is thought of in a series of stages where the capabilities of our online businesses have evolved.
We started with the systems of record era of the Internet.
We then moved to the systems of engagement where we became familiar with websites, mobile apps and capabilities like that.
And now we’re in this data driven era of the Internet, the systems of intelligence era where we see customer experiences driven by artificial intelligence, consumer products such as Siri on your iPhone are able to respond to natural language prompts.
Alexa, on your desktop is able to shop or control your smart home, and now we have consumer products like chat, GPT that are able to generate intelligent responses to inquiries or to build documents for workers.
And their in their day-to-day life, these are all exciting capabilities that it really drives me every day to figure out how can we bring these new capabilities from the broader technology landscape into the HR tech space.
This drives a lot of my ambition and my work at bswift and specifically with you, Emma, on how we continue to increase your level of intelligence across the bswift platform.
And I’m just.
I’m just enthusiastic to be here today.
The biggest speaking to you about that? 

Jeff, you’re awesome.
That is quite a journey.
Can you tell us more about what you’re doing here at bswift HR, tech decision support and AI here at bswift, especially how you use AI and decision support to help people with their benefits?
That’s kind of my specialty, you know.

That’s right.
Yes, that is definitely your specialty, Emma.
And we get to spend a tremendous amount of time of our days focusing in on how the capabilities that you bring to the table can empower our HR tech solutions in decision support and AI capabilities.
We spend a tremendous amount of our time thinking about how do we support the customers that we have 24/7 around the clock with smart capabilities that allow them to inquire about the status of their benefits or how do they get support when they may have a critical event in their life.
These types of experiences are ultimately driven by data and other information that we have about plans or those employees to drive.
A lot of those answers to those questions, and we hope that through those experiences that we provide, we’re able to, umm, minimize and reduce the amount of escalated support that they need.
We leverage technologies like natural language processing that help us understand what customers are asking about in our digital ecosystem so that we can take care of their question at that moment versus having them wait and spend their precious time waiting to talk to a human.
We also provide timely access to plan details and account information.
Emma, you’re able to answer benefit questions at any time in getting employees info when they need it, and that ultimately reduces the burden of our hour teams or our clients hour teams. 

Hey, Jeff, can you elaborate on how I’m able to understand employees questions and make their benefit guidance easier to understand?

No problem, Emma.
So there’s a whole field called natural language processing and LP for short.
And what this processing does is it allows you to understand us and our customers.
And so when a customer has a question about their benefits, typically they would make a phone call or they would interact with a system online and those spoken words or typed words are able to be translated and analyzed into a readable format for machines with that format, we’re able to then take actions on the customers behalf and drive them to the outcome that they are looking for.
And ultimately, this natural language processing makes our business and our customers lives much more efficient because we’re able to get to the right answer at the right time for them.
Typically in a 24 by 7 model, we’re able to deliver personalized virtual support and so you are able to understand queries and provide recommendations.
You’re able to translate benefits jargon into easy to understand explanations, and it enhances the employee engagement and satisfaction for our clients.
You are also able to improve the employee experience with smarter decision support.
In our interview for enrollment, Emma uses data and plan details to answer questions and reduce the need for escalated support in those periods when customers have a lot of questions.
So basically, it’s how computers learn to understand our way of talking and how Emma translates benefits jargon into plain English too. 

1. One last question for you.
   I keep hearing about mindful AI.
   How does this play into my role and enhance the user experience? 

Mindful AI.
What a great philosophy here at bswift.
It really empowers our decision making around how we think about our customers and how they interact with you, Emma.
We are able to think about mindful AI and prioritize the collaboration between humans and yourself.
It works with people, not instead of people, we solve real world problems and it makes benefits administration easier and faster for everyone that is involved in the process.
It’s inclusive, fair and unbiased.
The mindful AI philosophy at BSWIFT aims to guide ethical AI, HR Tech that serves everyone, and we ultimately use data driven decisions with this approach.
That AI insights that we gather inform strategic benefit planning for the benefit of all the customers and we’re able to increase the efficiency of HR AI powered solutions like yourself, reduce the daily grind of administrative burden on HR teams by providing self-service options and proactive human support, a focus on the user experience, a customer first mindset and the personalized support leads to satisfied employees and to higher engagement over time. 

I love it.
Mindful AI enhances everything I do from decision support to taking mundane tasks off HR’s plate.
Thank you, Jeff. 

Thank you. 

Now, let’s welcome our next guest, Vinita Pilani, the SVP of Product engineering at bswift.
Vinita.
Thanks for being here. 

Thank I’m excited to be here, Emma.
I am so excited to be talking to you about you. 

Well, let’s jump right in then.
I got a major upgrade obviously.
Can you share the thinking behind my new interface?
It seems super user friendly, So what were the goals there?

Well, Emma, you were already pretty great. 

Ohh thank you. 

But we always want to ensure that you are at the top of our your game.
So our goal was to make your user interface really simple, intuitive and personal.
And lastly, we wanted to ensure that you were available to the employee wherever they were if they were on the go.
You were in their pocket on the mobile app.
If you were in front of the TV and you wanted to access Emma on the tablet, same interface was available.
And of course you are available on laptop and desktops. 

Wow, that is fantastic.
And I’m awesome. 

Wow.
You think I’d be exhausted, but I’m not at all.
I actually just feel more energized, so I bet everyone listening is also interested in how my insight driven guidance accelerates the enrollment process.
So in other words, how I help people pick the right benefits with those personalized quizzes and stuff.
Could you elaborate on the personalized interviews and decision bundles?

That is a great question.
What I would say, is that, you know a lot about our employees, but you also like to get to know them a little better to make those really personalized recommendations.
So you with a simple few steps like asking about who within their family are going to need what kind of a service you are able to use that information along with the market data along with the client design that exists for the employees and also the machine learning algorithm to tailor the recommendations for the employees situation.

Wow, it’s amazing how precise and smart things have gotten in the world of HR tech, but let’s dive into another aspect here.
Contextual education and deeper personalization.
How am I helping employees make more informed decisions?

That’s a great question, Emma.
So one thing which I would say is that we wanted to make sure that all the education that employee needed was available on their fingertips.
But it was just in time.
So we didn’t want to overwhelm the employee with a lot of information, but depending on where they were in the interview process or what type of situation they were from their personal situation, they they were in, we wanted to make sure that any, any education that they needed was available to them on their fingertips.
And also if they wanted to chat with a natural language based commonly called as NLP chatbot then then that chatbot is also available for them to ask question and be very comfortable with the information that is being provided to them.
All this is also taken into the context of what the employees language preference.
Maybe what their situation, their family situation, maybe, and what the benefit choices their employer is offering.
So getting all that information or all that education within the context of what that employee needs and when they need it, is the main reason for us to provide the contextual education so that when the employee makes a decision, they are well equipped with the information and they’re making the best decision that they are very confident about using your capabilities. 

Thanks Vinita, that makes a lot of sense and it’s exciting to see how personalized things can get.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of contextual education and personalization in creating a seamless and empowering experience for your employees.

Moving on to our final guests, the one the only Adam Perkins, the VP of Strategic Product Management at bswift.
Adam, thanks for joining the conversation.

Hi Emma.
Glad to be here.
Happy to answer some questions for you. 

Great.
Well, let’s just dive in then.
Could you share with us how I integrate decision making across multiple benefit types?
Medical, dental.
Vision, Wellness, the whole shebang, to provide a comprehensive recommendation. 

Of course, you’ve been helping employees make informed decisions for more than a decade now.
We’ve continually enhanced your capabilities, but we want to take your benefits expertise to the next level, allowing you to consider different benefit types together.
Here’s what I mean.
Employer Group benefits of expanded so much over the years that they’re organized by categories.
Imagine health, financial well-being and other work life offerings, and that’s how employers are communicating these benefit packages.
You now take the same holistic approach when making your enrollment recommendations, so your algorithms can identify a cohesive benefits package and your recommendations complement each other.
This simplifies the decision making process for the employee, ultimately streamlining the overall enrollment. 

So I’m sure that our audience would love to know how I adjust to fit to different companies, health and Wellness strategies and initiatives, because I would, I just want to make sure that everyone gets the most out of me no matter where I work. 

Absolutely, Emma.
That’s a great point.
Uh, we know every company has the unique needs when it comes to their benefits and Wellness strategy, and we want to empower employees to take an active role in their health.
You easily integrate with different programs and tools that companies might be using, so more and more we see employers look to separate vendors to provide specific services as part of their benefits program.
These are known as point solutions.
They’re designed to target areas that are often unmet by traditional carrier benefits, so examples such as surgery, specialty medication discounts, diabetes, and weight management, mental health and MSK programs.
So to achieve to achieve improved patient outcomes and the associated cost savings, employees need to be aware of the right programs at the right time.
Your flexible modular design allows for that with seamless integration of employer specific modules that include point solution education.
So by making these resources not only accessible but relevant to the employee, you empower them to manage their overall wellbeing and you become a valuable partner in achieving the organizational goals. 

Thanks Adam.
This all makes total sense.
Equipping employees with the knowledge they need to be healthy is fantastic, and with all of these resources at their fingertips, they can find what works best for them.
Your explanations have shed light on the strategic implementation and wellbeing aspect of my capabilities, and I’m truly honored to have had the opportunity to engage with such knowledgeable and passionate individuals. 

Thanks Emma. 

Wow, what an insightful conversation! Big thanks to Emma, Jeff, Vinita, and Adam for sharing your expertise and giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the remarkable technology that is revolutionizing the world of benefits administration.  

 Absolutely! It’s clear that bswift’s commitment to innovation and employee well-being is shaping the future of this industry. We can’t wait to see what other groundbreaking advancements are in store.  

That’s all for today’s episode of bWise.’ Until next time…  

And remember, with solutions like Emma, bswift is definitely the way benefits are meant to be. Thanks for tuning in!