In 2024, EZLynx partnered with customers in the Applied AI Lab. This was an opportunity for agencies to participate in research, guide use cases and experiment hands-on with innovative AI-assisted capabilities within the agency management system. The fruits of these labors culminated in the release of three new features earlier this year.

EZLynx Virtual Assistant (EVA™) represents a whole family of AI-fueled innovations:

• EVA Email Content Assist streamlines the email creation process, ensuring clear, concise and engaging communication. Prompts make it easy to decide the email's length, tone and subject matter. Then review the content, make any necessary edits and send it off.
• EVA Account Summarization collates information from the account activity log, including emails, texts and agent notes, to provide an immediate summary of your agency’s communication history with the client. Summaries can comprise various timeframes, from one week to three months, and EVA can even recommend next steps.
• EVA Product Assistance replies with detailed responses, including step-by-step instructions where appropriate, when you ask it how to do something.

I sat down with Anoop Bargur, Applied Systems product manager, to learn how EZLynx worked hand-in-hand with agencies in the Applied AI Lab to create tangible time savings and improve existing workflows.

Jim England (JE): Working with agents to shape the future of intelligent software is incredibly rewarding. Is there something that stands out to you?

Anoop Bargur (AB): Even we were surprised by how quickly the level of awareness around AI grew. Part of that awareness stemmed from the Applied AI Lab, but it was obvious that agents were embracing the concepts of AI elsewhere in their lives as well. For example, when we first started working with agents, even something as basic as how to interact with an AI prompt was foreign to them.

‘What do I do with that? What do you mean, ask it a question?’

As the year went on, the types of conversations we had while working with agents in the lab were much more advanced. Even when speaking with first-time EVA users, we were no longer getting foundational questions about how to interact with AI. Instead, agents were picking our brains about the nuances of prompting the AI engine so that they could receive the most productive results. They brought their previous AI experiences with them to the Applied AI Lab and applied that knowledge to the tools in EZLynx.

JE: It sounds like agents became comfortable with AI technology very quickly. Is that right?

AB: There was naturally some hesitancy for agents who had never worked with AI before. But once they got in there, started using it and learned how useful it could be for their day-to-day work — all that reluctance fell away.

It’s also helpful that we’ve built these AI-fueled tools into EZLynx in a very safe way. Yes, EVA is incredibly helpful, but it doesn’t take over your workflows.

I suspect agents feared AI would be doing something in the background without their knowledge, but that’s not true. In the case of EVA Account Summarization, for example, AI is simply helping the agent interpret and use the data already in their system. The data itself isn’t being altered, and the agent remains very much in control.

JE: Did anything surprise you about the way agents used these new tools?

AB: When we initially launched EVA Email Content Assist, we did it with email campaigns in mind. The idea was that not all agencies had a dedicated marketing department, and those that didn’t would need help writing engaging copy.

To our surprise, this tool was just as popular for agents writing one-off emails. Once they became familiar with prompting AI to generate content, they found it simpler to count on EVA to tailor a message for them. This was a great example of agents learning how to get the most benefit out of the tool and in a way that fits their workflows and needs.

JE: EVA represents a whole new class of tools. What does your team look for to know that tools of this sort are catching on?

AB: What is most gratifying for me is seeing the sophistication of the interactions with EVA increasing. Take EVA Product Assistance, for example. It’s like having your own personal EZLynx tutor. Ask EVA how to do something in EZLynx, and it will reply with step-by-step instructions.

We’ve seen this natural progression where agents ask increasingly complex how-to questions. Initially, someone might ask for instructions on how to install the EZLynx Outlook plugin. Next, they might ask how to use the plugin to add emails to the client account and create a follow-up task. Or maybe they start out asking how to use Automation Center™. Before long, they’re asking how to set up an automation for emailing and texting prospects and clients turning 65.

In other words, because agents are getting value from the answers EVA provides, it encourages them to ask more questions and experiment with how they ask them.

JE: Can you think of a feature or use case that came directly from a customer?

AB: We were working with an agency one day, and they happened to mention they were using EVA Email Content Assist to translate all their emails for Spanish-speaking clients. I’ll be honest, we hadn’t thought of that!

We held off promoting the use case to other customers until we could perform some in-house validation ourselves. Once we felt confident that the translations were coming back accurately, we included this use case in all our demos. We haven’t tried them all, but those languages that we’ve tested have yielded solid results.

JE: What EVA tool is currently saving agents the most time?

AB: EVA Account Summarization is a game-changer, for sure. When you think of all the activity that can happen on an account over time — all the different touchpoints — it can take a few minutes to get up to speed. And that’s several minutes the policyholder shouldn’t have to wait on the phone for help. That’s why we labeled the button ‘Catch me up.’ It catches you up on what has happened on the account for the past three months.

Rather than having to scan through the client's previous emails, texts and agent notes one by one, EVA can provide an immediate summary of all this information. That’s a big time-saver! More importantly, insureds experience better, faster service.

JE: What’s on the horizon for EVA?

AB: Our goal has always been to insert AI into the most opportune points in an agent’s workflow. When you think about where agents do the most work interacting with clients, email comes to mind. So we started asking ourselves, if we could insert AI directly into the agent’s inbox, what would that look like?

Email summarization was an obvious choice, but we wanted to go further. By leveraging the popular EZLynx Office 365 plugin already used by thousands of agents, users can quickly summarize the content of an incoming email thread, save the email to the client’s account, and receive a summary of the client communication history for the past three months. Essentially, we’re placing the ‘Catch me up’ button on their phone, or whatever device they check their emails on.

We’re also working to expand the ‘Catch me up’ button to include a full year’s worth of account history. These enhancements will become available this summer.

JE: What would you say to folks who still haven’t tried EVA in their agency?

AB: It’s important to understand that AI is just a tool. The end goals are saving time and providing a better experience for your clients. We’re excited about EVA because of what these tools can do for your agency, not because they happen to be fueled by AI. Yes, AI is cool, but cool doesn’t sell and service insurance. Being more productive, having more informed interactions with insureds and saving tons of time — those are the returns you should be looking for from your software investment, and that’s what EVA delivers.