04 Aug
Top Use Cases of Chatbots in the Banking and Finance Industry
Chatbots have come a long way since the first time they were used by a banking application in 2015. With advancements in AI, NLP, and new communication channels like Google Home, Alexa, and social media platforms, they are now widely being used by almost all popular banks and financial institutions.
These ChatBots perform various repetitive tasks easily and accurately. Further, they can be personalized for each of the customers.
The conversational bots can be text-based or voice-based. They can be accessed from a mobile app, a banking website, social media messaging platforms, or voice-based personal digital assistants.
Generally, ChatBots used by banks are more popular in the finance and banking industry. However, chatbots are used for more complicated and personalized tasks beyond conventional uses.
Though as bank customers using digital services we all experience ChatBots, they are also used by employees working in financial institutions to retrieve information easily. When we go to a bank to learn more about a policy the employee retrieves information not from big bundles of paper on their desks, but rather from the organization’s memory using a ChatBot.
In 2017, Acuvate published a blog on top use cases of chatbots in the banking and finance industry. A lot has changed in these five years. They can guess the information we seek, suggest policies and initiatives, and are more convenient to use.
Here are 5 ways banks and financial institutions are using chatbots
1. Addressing Customer’s concerns
Unlike banking personnel, digital tools like websites are available for customers 24×7. To make it further easy for users, chatbots integrated into websites and mobile apps can answer the most common questions faster and with fewer clicks.
For example, reporting a hacking attempt, locking your account to stop a hacking attempt, or finding out more information about an unidentified debit would previously require the customer to log in to the website, search for the option, and take action. These are the most common tasks that a banking chatbot in the banking website or social media app can answer in just a few seconds. Since the app is on your mobile phone, verifying your credentials is easy. Here’s an example
The ambit of the operations a chatbot can perform has greatly widened these days with advancements in security systems and technologies. ChatBot interactions are now more personalized and natural.
2. Retaining old customers and expanding customer base
Customer engagement is beyond human interactions between customers and employees at the office. With more customers using digital tools like websites, apps embedded in mobile phones, and other personal digital assistants like Google Home or Alexa, each of these tools have ChatBots to answer customers and cater to their needs in time.
These tools simplify various processes and save time and effort. ChatBots are integral to all digital tools to engage with a large number of customers and provide personalized services. They define the quality of service and ease of operations a financial institution provides its customers.
For example, ChatBots identify new customers and present them with options of information they are more likely to seek. For older customers, ChatBots identify them, address them by their name, and with knowledge of their account details, they present a different set of actions for each of them. With advanced ChatBots, customers can’t say if they’re talking to a human or a digital assistant.
When embedded in IoT digital assistants like Alexa or Google Home, the latest advancements in NLP ( Natural Language Processing) technologies help the audio-based Chatbots provide a pleasant conversational experience to customers along with information they asked for and may be interested in.
3. Generating useful Marketing Leads
Modern ChatBots backed with Artificial Intelligence can build interest in a financial institution’s products and services. Chatbots are the perfect tools to implement digitalized marketing techniques to find new customers and sustain old ones. They are effective in keeping customers active by providing the convenience of being there for them always.
The ChatBots collect information from customers and provide them with information on various initiatives that are likely to interest them. This helps in identifying potential customers and in growing the customer base.
4. Recommendations and upselling
As the services of banking and financial institutions grew wider, it is important to let the right customers know about the right policies and initiatives. Intelligent digital systems like chatbots can more accurately identify interested customers. Chatbots make it easier to maintain customer profiles, identify who wants to buy other products, and get feedback on existing products and services.
Moreover, these Chatbots learn and adapt to situations. Hence they learn more about customers and get better and more accurate over time.
5. Personal Financial Assistant
Chatbots help users track their spending and receive a timely reminder of impending payments. Payments can be automated to avoid late fees. They do help customers refrain from overspending and provide regular reports of their expenses.
The information collected by chatbots can be used to profile customers based on their financial needs, status, and expenses. They especially make loan approvals and investment decisions easier and more manageable.
How to build the most reliable chatbots?
Chatbots reduce costs, no doubt, but that’s not the main advantage. They provide a better customer experience and make essential processes simpler. Every bank and the financial institution needs a chatbot.
However, these simple solutions are not so easy to build. As with any other financial system, since they involve sensitive information and must be error-free, they should be built with care and by trustable experts. Moreover, unlike physical assets, digital infrastructure like chatbots need to be updated continuously to address changing needs of customers and to stay relevant and competitive in the market.
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Over the past few years, we have helped several enterprises build & launch bots to meet the needs of their employees, customers, and vendors. After observing several enterprise scenarios large landscape of user intents, and common pain points across various departments, we spent more than 15 person-years of research, design & development on building a highly flexible and powerful enterprise bot builder platform – “BotCore”.
BotCore is the perfect accelerator that enables banks and financial institutions to train, build, and launch customized conversational bots powered by artificial intelligence. Using “Cognitive Abstraction” it can leverage an AI service available today and are scalable for future services.
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Pradeep Tigulla is an accomplished sales leader with a passion for high-quality customer service in Banking, Insurance & Financial Services industry. With a demonstrated history of more than a decade of sales experience in technology. A proven track record of establishing new territories, managing large customer accounts, and building relationships to form bonds and business commitments. He has been an integral part of the company’s growth and moving upward and onwards in his career
Pradeep Tigulla