05 Sep
How Can Traditional Banks Challenge the Fintech Space With Conversational AI?
In today’s highly digitized business landscape, customers have come to expect seamless engagement across the broad spectrum of banking and financial services. More than two years into the pandemic, thanks to powerful advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, blockchain, and other technologies, a new wave of digitally-enabled financial firms have taken the entire banking industry by storm.
Fintech firms, also known as the digital challenger banks (Venmo, CashApp, PayPal), have quickly exploited traditional banks’ inability to scale up their digital transformation initiatives. Long branch queues, highly complex application forms, cumbersome login procedures, stringent guidelines, and inconsistent banking portal designs for different use cases have deterred customers from engaging with traditional banks.
Instead, banking customers have now made a steady move toward fintech firms providing an easy, cohesive, and well-designed suite of online and mobile banking services. From opening a bank account to making immediate peer-to-peer transfers to shopping online, executing international transfers, or making contactless payments, the ability to effortlessly perform common banking tasks from the convenience of one’s home and at the fingertips has made third-party fintech services a go-to choice for the younger, new generation of customers.
Research shows that 88% of incumbent financial institutions believe that part of their business will be lost to standalone fintech companies in the next five years.
However, all is not lost for traditional banks. To ensure frictionless banking experiences, reduce customer dropout, and build unified digital banking practices that can help traditional banks challenge fintech firms, it’s time to adopt conversational AI in banking, more popularly known as conversational banking.
Let’s explore more.
Introducing Conversational AI in Banking
Conversational AI in banking can help traditional banks challenge fintech firms. AI-enabled chatbots in banking can recognize, understand, and resolve simple and complex requests while avoiding back and forth for the customers.
An intuitive conversational interface, unmatched speed and convenience, and the ability to offer a wide range of banking services on various digital channels, including social messaging apps, SMS, IVR, and the web, make conversational banking one of the strongest tools to challenge up and coming fintech firms.
Legacy banking systems are not capable of supporting the changing market expectations of today’s banking customers. With chatbots in banking, traditional banks can offer services akin to fintech firms while allowing banking agents to focus on other critical tasks that require higher attention.
Some of the features that chatbots in banking offer include the following —
1. 24x7 accessibility
Customer dynamics have changed drastically during the pandemic. Coming across a customer who needs banking services or answers to basic banking queries at an odd 2 am at night is not surprising in today’s times.
Even when bank branches and call centers have closed shop for the day, banking chatbots can help customers get answers to their queries and help them with any support they need 24×7.
2. A cohesive and intuitive experience.
Conversational AI in banking can help customers access a range of banking services via text or voice. Specifically, banking chatbots can overcome the hassles of traditional IVR systems and guide customers through everyday banking services such as money transfers, loan applications, blocking lost cards, closing and opening accounts, etc.
Also known as conversational IVR, banking chatbots integrated within traditional IVR systems can improve first-call resolution by quickly providing personalized answers and solutions to customer queries.
Customers are freed from the hassle of filling up long, complicated forms. Instead, chatbots can handle their queries, automate transactions, and comprehend what the customer really wants using natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) technologies.
What’s more, contact center agents can leverage chatbots to draw up relevant background information on the customer, thus ensuring speedy query resolution.
3. Multilingual and omnichannel
Banking chatbots can be made available over a plethora of channels in the customers’ preferred languages. Technologies such as AI, NLP, and context management make it possible for chatbots to provide consistent experiences across all channels while ensuring customers can easily switch channels without having to start over.
Consistent conversational banking experiences leave a positive impression of your bank and its services. Moreover, allowing customers the option to chat in their preferred language makes them comfortable with your bank’s services, keeps them engaged, and is more likely to help banks retain them.
Personalized banking at the fingertips
Conversational banking chatbots can provide scalable, cost-effective, and personalized banking services at the customers’ fingertips. Customer support bots in banking can integrate with backend systems and also form comprehensive customer personas to act as “personal financial advisors.”
Not only can banks then offer personalized financial insights and product recommendations, but they can also design products and services tailored to their customer’s needs.
Additionally, banks can drive revenue and sales by offering customers products they are eligible for but aren’t fully aware of.
Sneaking in a quick example of a banking chatbot
How can Acuvate help?
At Acuvate, we help clients build intelligent chatbots using our accelerator BotCore, Microsoft’s Power Virtual Agents.
Interested to know more about Conversational AI or chatbots. Connect with us today.
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