Artificial intelligence is being integrated into our lives in more ways than we realise. Turn on your TV, launch an app on your smartphone or visit an online store and increasingly you’ll find conversational platforms that are predicting our preferences, anticipating our needs, or providing suggestions for the decisions we make.
For these platforms, machine learning algorithms draw on patterns of data to recognise our behaviours and predict future ones. As a consumer, this predictive personalisation transforms the way we access information and gratifies our desire for immediate solutions.
Now it’s personal
In an industry built around the processing of information, financial service providers are ideal candidates to benefit from conversational AI platforms. However, a way is needed to link private information with customers at scale, while still maintaining a personalised engagement that doesn’t rely on a resource- and cost-heavy human workforce.
This is why chatbot conversational platforms have emerged as an accessible and cost-effective way for financial services businesses such as banks and insurance companies to carry out tasks or fulfill requests for their customers.
Intelligent chatbots, or what we call digital employees, are conversational interfaces that can conduct natural and realistic two-way chat experiences across any channel using text or speech. These conversations take place on platforms that customers already use intuitively, including apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Skype.
For customers, it’s as simple as opening a chat window and posing a question or request to what is effectively their own virtual assistant, available to them 24/7 and at their own convenience. There’s no need to log in to a portal or app or wait for a support team member to become available.
In the competitive financial services industry, innovative digital first providers are emerging constantly, and consumers seek out providers with these user-friendly solutions as a basic offering. For traditional institutions that want to attract and retain digitally-savvy customers, digital employees are a relatively small investment that can have a big impact on their customer engagement.
The opportunity for financial services
In the financial services sector, conversational chatbot platforms are already providing personalised wealth management advice, underwriting loans and insurance, on-boarding new clients, providing real-time financial updates, detecting fraudulent behaviour, taking care of administrative tasks and upselling products.
AI’s strength lies in its ability to make these engagements personal, instantly calling on and analysing large amounts of data specific to each customer. It would be impossible for customer service staff to do the same, while also remembering a whole database of customer preferences.
The next time that customer calls up, a new rep must acquaint themselves with the account from scratch. Dedicated conversational artificial intelligence platforms eliminate the need for these phone or online engagements, while still delivering everything a human can in terms of value – and much faster.
It also puts the customer in control of satisfying their needs. Intelligent chatbots are a constantly available and accessible channel that they can engage with at a time and place of their choosing – without time constraints, lengthy wait times or the frustrations that can come with multiple human interactions.
Time and space for human problem solving
With straightforward administrative tasks taken care of, your human workforce has more time and headspace for tasks that require more complex solutions, problem solving or creative thinking.
We’re also seeing that while machine learning algorithms add value to customer engagements, they also improve internal business processes and staff training. For example, instead of manually searching records to find specific information about a customer, a chatbot can act as an interface between different systems and databases within an organisation.
Intelligent chat
But the benefits don’t end there. Conversational chatbot technology evolves continuously, giving the platforms increasing flexibility and functionality.
A chatbot is a customer engagement channel that doesn’t require costly updates, dedicated maintenance teams or redesigned infrastructure – and it can be available to your business in literally a matter of weeks.
As FinTechs continue to disrupt the industry, leveraging AI and digital employees in your financial services business could help ensure you not just retain, but gain, customers in the competitive financial services space.
Learn more about the benefits chatbot conversational platforms could bring to your business
Download our eBook, 'Digital employees, a whole new conversation'; where we go into more detail on how next-gen chatbots can make the most of your data, deliver a greater customer experience and enhance your digital transformation.
