The Best Way to Create a Conversational Banking Experience

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the financial services industry around the world. In just a few decades, the data aggregation, security, authentication, products, and services sectors have become reliant on technology.

Banks have been working to improve their client interaction approaches. They’ve adapted modern technology to fit the unique nature of their employment.

According to a study by Digital Banking Report, 75% of financial institutions are considering using conversation AI, data, and analytics to determine the optimal next step. To improve the client experience, banks must maximize their use of technology by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

What is conversational banking?

Digital banking via voice, text messaging apps, or visual interaction technologies is referred to as conversational banking. It implies you can use messaging apps to communicate directly with the bank. Conversational banking also provides banks with crucial information about their customers’ goals, financial behaviour, intentions, and wants, allowing them to upsell, cross-sell, and provide relevant advice.

Conversational banking is a broader term that encompasses more than just text and voice conversation. The technology itself entails intelligent client engagement. The key goal is to comprehend the needs of the customer and provide the best feasible answer.

Benefits of conversational banking

Customers can connect with chatbots, voice assistants, and human agents via live chat, mobile apps, and receive individualized guidance without having to visit a branch. On your clients’ preferred channels, it bridges the gap between ease and personalization.

Let’s break down the rewards for customers and banks separately.

Benefits for customers

The key benefits of having a conversational platform for consumers are as follows:

• 24×7 availability – Customers do not have to wait for a response to their query because it is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Bots are ready 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer clients’ most common financial questions.
• High-quality service — The issue is recognized faster, and an efficient solution is supplied with the help of digital engagement technologies. The number of touchpoints is reduced, and first contact resolution is improved.
• Proactive engagement — Reaching out to clients ahead of time allows them to obtain a quick response when they need it. Customer happiness and brand loyalty enhance because of this.

Benefits for banks

• Cost savings – Chatbots can handle common client requests efficiently, lowering operational expenses. Businesses spend roughly $1.3 trillion responding to these requests, and bots can save you up to 30%.
• Reduce mistakes – Manual labour is prone to errors, which can lead to major issues. Conversational banking ensures that services are delivered without errors and that issues are avoided. For example, AI chatbots are pre-programmed with the relevant data, ensuring that there are no errors.
• Easy scalability – During peak banking hours or unanticipated spikes in consumer requests, bots are easily scalable. They can handle a huge number of chats without increasing the company’s costs.

With the use of AI, we can better serve our customers.

If there’s one rule of customer service, it’s to “make it as easy as possible for the customer.” Conversational AI excels at reducing the amount of work required from customers.

Major financial institutions are increasingly allowing their customers to do routine tasks—such as checking their balance or paying a bill—by speaking or typing to a virtual assistant (VA). Many companies are increasingly turning to virtual assistants to provide round-the-clock, cost-effective customer service.

• Swedbank, one of Sweden’s leading retail banks, developed its virtual assistant to assist its agents in finding the appropriate solutions to customer questions. However, it quickly put its virtual assistant to work on its website, where it now directly answers more than 80% of client requests and enables tailored services like balance inquiries.

Swedbank has also given its VA the ability to perform certain actions for its customers, such as replacing or unblocking their cards, thanks to increased integration. (The VA now handles 25% of all debit card replacements.)

• BNP Paribas Personal Finance Spain is another wonderful example of a company that launched a virtual assistant to achieve two goals: greater customer satisfaction and increased efficiency.
• More than 90 common consumer questions are answered by the VA. If it is unable to assist the client—or if it senses symptoms of impatience or aggression—it can effortlessly transfer the customer to a contact center person, providing them with all the information they require to continue the conversation. Two years after its launch, the VA is satisfactorily resolving 46% of customer queries without any agent involvement.
• Wings Financial Credit Union, Minnesota’s largest credit union, began working with Nuance to add voice AI and vocal biometric security to its services. The interest in conversational AI fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic centered around healthcare, but the financial space added plenty of momentum in demand for the tech.
• S. Bank last year launched a voice assistant for its mobile app to allows users to carry out their banking requests using conversational language and imitating the experience of talking to a bank teller.
• Bank of America’s existing virtual assistant, Erica, grew in popularity and was utilized more frequently. 

What is the best way to create a conversational banking experience?

You must research and extensively evaluate the latest banking trends to create an attractive conversational banking platform. However, if you want to streamline the flow of your financial service, you should follow the processes below.

Let’s talk about how to build an excellent conversational banking platform.

Map your customer journey

The first step in creating a great conversational experience is to map out the customer journey. You can provide the type of assistance they require by establishing customer journey maps.

The following are the major components of customer journey mapping:

1. Identify the touchpoints – Banks must determine all the ways in which a customer interacts with their company. It aids in the delivery of a unified omnichannel customer experience across all channels.
2. Plan for delivering consistent CX — Once the channels have been determined, it’s time to establish a strategy for engaging customers and providing a consistent customer care experience.

Identify the common queries asked by customers

After you’ve generated customer journey maps, you’ll need to figure out what the most frequently asked questions are. General questions, onboarding, application-related questions, transaction, and account services are all possibilities.

After you’ve made a list of questions, you can:

• Use a bot to automate FAQ’s — By implementing a chatbot, you may filter and automate the repetitious questions. The bot will be always available to answer questions and increase engagement.
• Deliver hybrid customer care – Provide hybrid customer service by having a bot handle common questions and a human agent handle complex ones.

Define the areas for human assistance

It is impossible to achieve 100% automation, and customers may want human support at some time. As a result, understanding those exact points of the customer journey encounter is critical for identifying friction points.

• Knowing where your clients interact with you can help you install the necessary technologies to engage them and provide a conversational banking experience.
• Use video chat to have tailored customer discussions — Video chat allows you to not only give effective solutions right away but also to have individualized client conversations.
• Bots that provide real-time assistance – Even when your crew is unavailable, using a bot solution allows you to communicate with your clients around the clock.

Select a conversational platform

The answers given in a bot conversation are not always correct. So, when it comes to inferring purpose or comprehending context, human assistance is preferable.

• You can implement a hybrid support strategy by using bots to react to simple customer questions, collect feedback, and transfer complex interactions to the appropriate human agent for assistance.
• The move from bot to human should be seamless. The solutions should also be compatible with the channels via which you want to provide a conversational experience, such as live chat and texting.

Protect the privacy and data of your customers

Conversational e-banking, like texting apps, comes with its own set of risks. Banks must take steps to preserve clients’ data privacy and maintain their trust to provide a safe and secure e-banking experience.

Here are some security precautions that banks can take:

• Compliance — To provide a compliant banking experience, the finance, legal, compliance, and security teams must work together holistically.
• Secure messaging — When a customer uses a messaging app, they must be able to securely provide their information without it being retained in the app. To achieve this, it’s necessary to make use of a fully encrypted messaging software.
• Chatbot security – Using a chatbot allows you to take a variety of security precautions to safeguard your customers from hackers and fraudsters. Personal information, for example, should only be shared after a customer has completed an identity verification process.

Track your progress across all channels

It’s critical to not only discover the channels but also to track their success. Regular customer feedback and NPS surveys can be used to gauge the conversational banking experience. It will reveal how well you are able to resolve consumer complaints as well as areas where you may improve.

Want to talk about conversational AI?

AI-powered solutions have become an important aspect of business development strategies, allowing financial institutions to stay competitive. This technology lowers operating expenses, enhances customer service, and streamlines procedures. According to an OpenText poll, nearly 80% of banks realize the benefits of AI, 75% of them are already using the technology, and 46% want to install AI-based solutions in the near future.

Appello helps financial institutions create outstanding conversational experiences. Get in touch and a member of our development team would be happy to talk with you about how we’ve helped other companies make the transition.