I don’t think it’s necessarily about replacing employees, at least initially. You’ll still have a cashier who would likely serve the role you described. But instead of getting to the speaker and having somebody say “please hold” while they’re taking cash, the AI will start the order and get it right most of the time.
For the insurance example, not every insurance company has a portal. Many types of insurance are too unique to warrant building a portal. But parsing an email rather than building a front facing user interface is so much cheaper and easier. I just used this example cause I’m familiar with a similar project…