Merrilee Matchett

Merrilee Matchett leads customer service and operations for MetLife across more than 40 markets and an organization of more than 10,000 people. Her approach starts with a premise that insurance needs to feel human, especially when customers are dealing with illness, disability, loss, or other difficult moments.

That belief shapes how she thinks about AI. Matchett has described the future of service as both high-tech and high-touch, with AI acting as a “co-pilot” that removes repetitive work, surfaces useful information, and gives employees more room for conversations that require judgment and empathy. For her, greater automation should make human service more valuable, not less.

That also means resisting the urge to digitize every part of the journey. Matchett focuses on where self-service genuinely improves the experience and where customers still need a person. MetLife has applied that thinking through tools that simplify claims, automate routine processing, and make information easier for employees to access while preserving human support for more complex situations.

Her view of CX extends beyond the contact center. Since joining MetLife in 2021, Matchett has worked to bring customer service and back-office operations closer together, reducing internal divisions. She has also pushed teams to look beneath metrics such as average handle time and self-service adoption to understand the friction driving them.

As technology takes on more transactional work, Matchett sees human skills becoming more important. She has invested in empathy, communication, and technical training while tying employee development and wellbeing to the quality of service customers receive.