10 Ways Chatbots Are Making Banks Smarter

As discussed in our earlier blog, Chatbot is shaping business growth. The AI-powered machine, with its capability to mimic human behavior, is adding value to business vertical – providing them with the endless ways to cater the customer needs. One such business which has undergone remarkable growth with the advent of AI-chatbots is Banking and Finance sector.

Bots are giving banks and financial organizations an edge over the competitors by enhancing customer experience, streamlining their compliance processes and saving money and efforts while doing so. The bots are embarking a new phase of banking – from mobile banking to conversational banking – by offering a myriad of facilities and advantages.

A Glimpse of the Endless Possibilities that Chatbot Offers

1. Ease of Use

Most of the customers get frustrated and leave the banking platform, if asked to fill their details again and again. Chatbots come to their rescue in this context, without compromising on the authenticity and security aspect. The bot interacts with the customer and uses the conversational elements to ensure authenticity. Besides, it let the customers repeat their previous transaction/activities with a single command.

And the best part is that the users need not download or open a particular platform to get perks of the banking services; a bot serves them with the best services while chatting on Facebook messenger or updating their pictures on Instagram.

2. Personalized Banking Services

Thanks to chatbots, standing in endless queues at the bank and doing the paperwork to access banking services is a history now. Today, the users can check their bank balance, get a monthly statement, transfer money, update their details, and perform many such processes using a simple interface via chatbots. They can perform all the account-related activities while sitting on the couch at their home or while commuting to their office.

Besides, they can also view a graphical representation of their spendings and earnings, and even get assistance from the chatbot to take their next financial step wisely. In a nutshell, chatbots have made it possible for the customers to leverage the benefits of different facilities without putting much efforts and time. On the other side, this approach has cut down the workload of the bankers, making the process seamless.

The very best example is Erica, a voice- and text-enabled bot of BofA (Bank of America), which helps customers to make smarter and faster banking decisions. The digital assistant sends personalized notifications, study customer transactions and identify the areas where they could save money, facilitate bill pay service, and much more.

3. Omni-channel Support

With a wide range of communication channels available around, it is quite tricky for the bank and financial institutions to reach their target audience and cater their needs. They find it hard to plan for each communication channel – messaging service, website, app, emails, call – and get higher value out of each platform. However, it is possible with chatbot development.

A bot can act effectively across all the platforms without having to be reprogrammed individually. It can offer a holistic communication medium across all the platforms, providing ultimate services to customers in the way that fits in their lifestyle. In other words, chatbots empower banks to offer omnichannel support without making a hole in their pocket.

4. New Account Generation

The AI-powered chatbots have simplified the process of opening a new account. All a user need to do is to answer a few questions and the bot will do the whole process. Isn’t it easy?

5. 24×7 Digital Support

The banking industry, with the help of Chatbots, are delivering 24×7 assistance to their customers. The bots, unlike humans, do not feel fatigue because of which they are able to deliver exceptional services to their customers day and night.

The bots help customers with different tasks like updating their KYC details, getting familiar with new schemes and services, troubleshooting account-related issues, etc. The chatbots resolve the user queries in minimal time, acknowledge them about the same and ask for the next command, which enables the users to ask multiple queries in a single conversation. Unlike calling on a helpline, they need not strike conversations per task.

6. Automate Processes

Bots, in the banking industry, manages the commonly asked queries while making the banking representatives free for investing their time in a more profitable way. In other words, chatbot machines handle the daily chores and cut down the requirement of an extra workforce at the bank, without compromising on the experience at the customer end.

Ally Assist – the personal digital assistant of Ally Bank is another example proving the impact of chatbot development services on the banking sector. The bot assists users to monitor their accounts, pay the bill, make transactions, track transactional patterns, etc. using natural language processing technology. This way, the bot uplift the customer experience by the act upon common customer service queries as well as make the bank representative free for performing complicated tasks.

7. Fraud Prevention

Another reason behind the rising popularity of Chatbot banking app is its functionality of fraud prevention.

Chatbots keep an eye on the actions taken related to financial services, like withdrawal of money, swiping a card, etc. in real-time. They send a notification to the account holder acknowledging the activities and allowing them to stop the transactions using a pre-customized command. This way, the banks are able to prevent fraud using chatbot development services and build customer loyalty.

8. Profitable Marketing

Banks provide a myriad of facilities. However, not all customers are familiar with all the benefits their banks offer. A chatbot understands the human behavior and pushes the related banking service/products at the right time. This way, it promotes the banking services and increases the conversation rates without annoying users.

9. Launch of User-centric Schemes

Intranet-based chatbots learn from the user behavior as well as prompt them to share their feedback. With the insights obtained from all the branches, the chatbot helps the banking management to study the impact of their existing schemes and refine them or introduce new plans, if necessary.

10. Efficient Workforce Functioning

An employee is no more required to log in to HRMS and request for accessing/updating his details or apply for a leave. Neither, he has to meet the HR officials in person. With the help of AI-powered chatbots, they can easily apply for leave, view their personal and payroll details, request for overtime payment, check their compensation history, and much more. They can also interact with bots to get their doubts clear and work more efficiently. In short, the chatbot assists the employees and encourage them to work to their fullest potential, without involving another human in the whole conversation.

Artificial Intelligence and Chatbot technology are making banking convenient and effective by delivering contextual and personalized responses. Though the future of conversational banking is not yet clear, the growing adoption of chatbot development services in the banking sector proves the competitive benefit of investing in the technology over those who are still wondering their next move.

THE AUTHOR

Saurabh Singh

CEO & Director