Analytics Insight has predicted that the Global Artificial Intelligence market revenue in the banking sector will touch a whopping USD 48.3 billion by 2025. Let me explain how!
Conversational AI in banking can transform an operationally intensive service delivery model to one that is smart and built around self-service solutions, translating to customer satisfaction.
The underlying theme here is the need to transition to a customer-centric business model. The financial institutions (FIs) now find themselves in a fight with the likes of Amazon, Apple and Walmart to remain relevant to their customers.
And Conversational AI is the way banks can truly change their engagement models and move back to the place where they belong – the center of their customers’ financial wellbeing.
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7 Conversational AI benefits in banking that put you “Front and Center” with your customers
Let’s take a deeper look at how chatbots are positively impacting the banking industry.
1. More reach than an app
Unlike an application, a chatbot can operate on channels your customers already use, making it easier to deliver support, nurture leads and create omnichannel customer experiences. From social media platforms like Facebook messenger, WhatsApp to voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, chatbots allow you to meet your customers where they are and on their terms.
2. A speedy, intuitive interface
By mimicking human patterns of interaction and learning from each engagement, chatbots enable customers to seamlessly communicate with enterprises and quickly execute financial tasks in a manner that is personalized and intuitive. Speed is another priority. Compare the boredom of being on hold with a customer service executive to the near-instantaneous answers you’d receive from a chatbot.
3. Lead nurturing and sales
Chatbots are the surest way to acquire warm leads. This is because unlike a human salesperson, a chatbot has access to multiple customer touchpoints on the omnichannel buyer journey. Moreover, chatbots are armed with a repository of customer insights that can be processed at lightning speeds. This makes them uniquely suited to the task of filtering large numbers of potential customers through the sales funnel.
4. 24/7 Customer support
Chatbots engage with your customers, solving their problems and escalating their more complex demands. They offer a real-time filtering system that can massively reduce the workload on your customer service teams. In fact, AI-powered chatbots can resolve up to 80% of customer queries, saving you time as well as resources.
5. Analytics and advice
AI platforms in banking can analyze all your customer data and deliver insights to them that can improve their financial management. From purchase patterns, spending behavior and credit information to budget planning and cost savings, an AI chatbot is fully equipped to be a personal money manager in ways that a human can hardly replace.
6. Lower operational costs
There is a one-time development cost of a chatbot that must be trained with information before it can handle thousands of customers over multiple channels. Moreover, building a chatbot that functions on multiple customer touchpoints is cheaper than developing a custom banking app, especially when operating on a cloud-based framework.
7. Tackling COVID 19 lockdown restrictions
With the enforced work-from-home culture, customer service operations are facing the biggest trouble in the form of adaptation to remote work. Customers on the other hand are struggling to receive support in the form of required information in a timely manner, resulting in a huge backlog of support requests, delayed response to customer queries, stacks of unanswered calls and emails for the companies.
Deploying chatbots can not only be a cost-savvy experiment but will help in engaging more customers due to its speed and right information dispersal, along with a potent means to achieve Return on Investment (ROI).
The next generation of personal financial wellness
Financial wellness is a theme most banks are focusing on this year.
Banks have historically provided education or planning templates to help with budgeting and overall financial wellness. That just isn’t enough any longer.
Millennials are gravitating towards fintech apps that “do it for me” or have AI assistance. This is because millennials and the following generations are accustomed to digital services that deliver timely and valuable data-driven insights.
As banks compete with fintech giants to create more and better insights, pairing these insights with Conversational AI will truly transform the engagement model.
Conversational AI in the form of an AI-powered Virtual Financial Assistant (VFA) serves as a financial coach in your customer’s pocket. When insights are delivered by a flexible VFA in natural language, customers can interact with, increasing engagement as well as the potential for positive outcomes.
Virtual financial assistants can take engagement and loyalty to the next levels in banking
“Insight-explore-action,” is likely going to be every customer’s top priority.
When a customer gets an alert or text that a bill is due, they do not want to then have to make a mental note or click on a link only to navigate a few menus. The expectation is to have a virtual financial assistant follow-up with a question of what date to set up the payment for, then complete the setup right there in the chat or voice session.
As customers leverage the VFA and its enhanced engagement method for routine tasks, they will derive a better service and outcome and be also open to exploring other similar solutions. Each task completed through the VFA represents higher engagement, better service and lower cost-to-service for the banks.
As new features get added to the VFA – account opening and loan origination – the customer data gathered through the VFA becomes a feedback loop to guide better product offerings and more personalized insights.
VFAs also help banks cross-sell. Leveraging this enhanced engagement of VFAs as a 24/7 financial coach will promote loyalty as well as better financial outcomes, both things vital for banks to plant themselves back at the center of providing financial solutions to their customers.
