Digital teams at leading US and UK banks have implemented chatbots into app and online channels to improve user experience and increase customer value to the organisation.
This is a paradigm shift for banking chatbots. Just a few years ago clunky bots served up one-dimensional responses, often failing in their sole purpose of keeping customers away from more costly help and support channels such as call centres. With key developments in digital engagement, not least in generative and predictive AI, chatbots are creating value and raising the stakes in customer experience. Here are a few ways they’re doing so.
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- Improved customer interactions
Gone are the days where a user needs to search through a long list of FAQs to get the information that they are looking for or limited bot knowledge bases which then quickly divert to agents. Now, customers can find the answers to their questions far more quickly through new conversational interfaces.
The growing integration of GenAI means that banks now have the ability to better understand the user’s intent. Chatbots can also leverage data from multiple data sources and knowledge bases.
A prime example is Dutch challenger bank, Bunq which launched AI-powered personal banking assistant Finn late last year. The chatbot delivers visual spending insights and can answer questions directly related to finance (for instance what categories the customer spends the most money on), financial planning (how long it will take them to become a millionaire) and indirect lifestyle queries (such as details about a restaurant), with which it connects with third party apps such as Google Maps.
By expanding beyond the provider’s core capabilities, Finn makes banking much more enjoyable – a choice rather than a necessity. Bunq may expect to see users engage much more regularly as it ties its service to customers’ lifestyle needs.
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Solutions track the availability and the application of chatbots across account opening, onboarding and servicing journeys, whether in-app and online, to understand how customer facing bots support retail checking, small business, lending, cards, and investments customers. Increasingly, digital assistants have begun to better enable customers to complete key actions without being off-ramped to another channel.
Keeping users in a single channel is a key target for digital teams aiming to provide friction-free experiences. Chatbots are no different: containing the user within the chatbot interface to complete a journey or query can provide a truly streamlined experience, but it’s still an emerging capability. Among a selection of leading chatbots offered in the US retail checking market, activation response types – where an entire query is resolved within the chatbot modal – has increased by just 8.3 percentage points since 2022. However, generative AI-enriched assistants can now more easily integrate activation to fully complete some key intents.
While the majority of virtual assistants still only navigate users to the relevant page for the customer to perform the action themselves, on average, capabilities are evolving. Previously, chatbots were limited to one or two intents, stretching from answering knowledge-based questions to basic actions such as displaying the customer’s balance. Now, advanced chatbots can action an average of five intents. These prompts include reporting a lost card, providing transaction details, or making a payment. In the case of Fargo, Wells Fargo’s digital assistant, actions conducted on behalf of the user can include the payment of bills.
This trend is being further driven by advances in interaction design – where the bot console is moving from a Q&A chat-based interface towards better integration with the other parts of the banking platform.
- Targeted recommendations and sales
Leading chatbots provide a conversational interface that delivers personalised product and service exploration. More often, they’re powered by generative and predictive AI.
Credit Karma’s Intuit Assist recommends financial products and provides personalised feedback based on credit score, financial needs and the customer’s life stage. Built for consumer and small business customers, the conversational chatbot responds and learns from activity, offering detailed responses on credit card choices and savings options.
This could be a key area for banks moving forward. The Curinos 2024 Great Britain Shopper Survey found that the most important factor for consumers switching banks over the past three years has been the provider’s ability to manage finances. A well-positioned, AI-trained chatbot with the ability to truly engage with the customer on their own terms while thinking about the longer-term lifecycle of the customer relationship could serve purpose.
This month marks the second anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT, and with that, the broad acceptance of conversational engagement with chatbots by a large and growing number of consumers and businesses. This is a channel that digitally-active consumers wants to use. Financial institutions must take notice of this key banking trend to watch as we head into 2025.
Suraya Randawa is Head of Omnichannel Experience at Curinos
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