As a Google Cloud customer engineer based in Amsterdam, I work with a lot of banks and insurance companies in the Netherlands. All of them have this common requirement: to help customer service agents (many of whom are poorly trained interns due to the expense of hiring) handle large numbers of customer calls, especially at the end of the year when many consumers want to change or update their insurance plan. Most of these requests are predictable and easily resolved with the exchange of a small amount of information, which is a perfect use case for an AI-powered customer service agent. Virtual agents can provide non-queued service around the clock, and can easily be programmed to handle simple requests as well as do a hand-off to well-trained live agents for more complicated issues. Furthermore, a well-designed solution can help ensure that consumer requests, regardless of the channel in which they are received (phone, chat, IoT), are routed to the correct resource.