August 15, 2022

A Complete Guide to Conversational AI for Banking Industry

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Many people are still unaware of how much artificial intelligence has been progressing for the past several years. Around the world, the market for artificial intelligence is worth about $328 billion every single year! However, that market is expected to be worth about $1.4 trillion by 2029, specially with the use of conversational AI rising in the corporate world.

That means that the global artificial intelligence market is growing by around 20.1% every year. That rate of growth, partially the result of conversation AI, is enough for the entire industry to quadruple in value just between 2021 and 2029. If you look around the world, you will find that the vast majority of industries never enjoy this kind of explosive growth.

What is so great about conversation AI that it should contribute to this kind of success? Advances in artificial intelligence now allow chatbots for banking to revolutionize the customer experience. Chatbots for financial institutions are likely to become standard.

Read on to learn more about conversation Ai and how these transaction box tools can change the world of banking forever!

What Are Conversation AI Chatbots for Banking?

Conversation AI lives up to its name. It is a new kind of artificial intelligence that can carry on a natural conversation almost like a real person. Of course, people have claimed that they have finally created conversational computer programs before.

People who have heard these kinds of announcements may have become used to assuming that they are exaggerated. So how do we know that things are different this time?

One strong indicator of the quality of modern conversation chatbots is that people often do not realize they are speaking with a chatbot at all! When companies first started using these chatbots, they found out that customers often took a long time before realizing that they were not speaking with a human agent.

That is just one reason that it is now common practice to make sure to advise people when they are speaking with a chatbot. These days, conversation AI is so convincing that these kinds of notices are essential to avoid confusing people.

How Do Conversational Artificial Intelligences Work?

But how has the field of artificial intelligence progressed so quickly? Of course, there are a lot of reasons. However, one of the main contributors is its ability to establish natural, open and human-like conversations. 

Conversational AI technology usually relies on linguistic or semantic engines. A semantic engine, an evolved version of the linguistic one, uses multiple AI technologies to guarantee modern, instant and effective interactions.

Unlike a traditional chatbot, conversational AI isn’t just a set of structured flows of pre-built questions and answeres. In contrast, it uses different layers to establish open conversations.  

Among other things, a conversational AI bot powered by a semantic engine identifies typos and spelling errors, understands the message intent beyond the written text, connects a question with the previous one to make sure the customer receives the information they're looking for, evaluates possible answers and selects the best one, and adapts to multiple to multiple languages, understanding regionalisms and slang.

Learn more about Aivo’s conversational AI.

The Benefits of Chatbots for Banking

Many people are used to thinking about chatbots as a double-edged sword. They may provide some efficiency, but they often bother customers and clients with their silly mistakes.

However, everything has changed since the advent of more advanced artificial intelligence systems. These days, chatbots provide almost nothing but advantages. And the advantages they do provide are far greater than those of past systems.

Enjoy Integration for Your Platforms and Channels

As a general rule, computers are great for tasks that are repetitive and monotonous. Because these tasks are simple, chatbots can figure out how to perform them. Then, they can perform them thousands or even millions of times faster than a human user.

That is why calculators are much better for performing complicated arithmetic than even the smartest human. How does this apply to customer inquiries across many platforms and channels?

In the past, banks and other institutions had two choices for reaching people. They could either maintain a complicated presence across many platforms and channels, or they could insist that anyone who wanted to talk to them do so by reaching them through just one or two channels.

Both strategies have significant disadvantages. However, you can get the best of both worlds with conversation chatbots. When you think about it, moving between different platforms and channels to read customer messages is a dull and monotonous task.

That makes it perfect for a chatbot! It is actually quite simple to teach chatbots to move between every channel and platform that a bank wants to maintain. They can then consolidate all of the messages they find into a single place to deliver transactional, resolutive and personalized information. 

For instance, banks can use an integrated AI chatbot to provide each customer with information about their account balance, spendings on debit/credit card, loans, expiration dates, among others. It can also process payments, activate debit/credit cards, and much more. 

Banco Comafi, one of Argentina most important banks, uses multiple integrations to provide a comprehensive banking assistance through their bot, specifically on WhatsApp. In this way, customers can just send a text message on WhatsApp to access their home banking information in a conversational way. As a result, they are automating more than 40K monthly inquiries with 95% efficiency and 1 minute average support time. 

Learn more about their story and how they did it here

Chatbots for Financial Institutions Are Realistic

Many people cannot tell when they're speaking with a chatbot versus a real person. So what does that mean? It means that chatbots are now much more pleasant to speak with than they used to be.

In the past, it was not clear if chatbots were worth the trouble they caused by annoying customers. However, customers are now becoming more and more satisfied with the service that conversational chatbots provide.

The Banking Industry Can Stop Putting Customers on Hold

Now that chatbots can provide satisfactory service, we can make the most of the advantages they provide in efficiency. The vast majority of customer inquiries have to do with one of a short list of simple problems.

In many cases, a conversational chatbot can open and close an inquiry to a customer's satisfaction. That means that banks and other institutions can stop relying as much on armies of customer service representatives performing the same monotonous task over and over again.

This means that customers can stop waiting on hold for a human agent. Anyone who has looked at the data realizes how much customers hate being put on hold. Solving this one problem alone can revolutionize the customer experience for a bank.

AI Options Make the Customer Experience More Efficient

When a chatbot manages an inquiry for a customer, the customer has their problem resolved with a maximum of efficiency. Of course, this does not always happen. Sometimes, people still need to speak with a human agent.

However, even in these cases, chatbots make the customer experience more efficient and pleasant. Before they hand off the customer to an agent, they can collect important information. This can include identifying information as well as understanding the problem the customer is experiencing.

That means that the customer will start speaking with a human agent who already understands their problem. The human agent will also not have to ask them for identifying information.

Transactional Bot Tools Can Benefit Your Employees

All of this is good for employees as well as for customers. The worst part of customer service for many people is the monotony. They start every conversation the same way, asking the same questions.

Only after several repetitive minutes can they get down to the unique facets of the problem a customer is experiencing. However, with chatbots, human agents can start on the unique facets of a customer's problem right away. This eliminates monotony for employees.

Enjoy Using AI That Improves Over Time

The longer you use modern chatbots, the better they get. That is because they continue to learn in response to the feedback of customers and users. As much as you enjoy the benefits of your chatbots when you first use them, you will find that they get even better over time.

Leverage Powerful Data Analytics

Chatbots also collect and organize vital data about customers. With data analytics, this information can provide vital insights. These insights can then inform the strategies of savvy business leaders.

Understand How Conversation AI Can Revolutionize Banking Customer Experiences

The more that you know about conversation AI, the more you will appreciate how it can improve the customer experience in the banking industry. Chatbots for financial institutions are becoming more popular all the time, and that is no surprise.

To learn more about how chatbots for banking work and how artificial intelligence tools might be able to benefit you, book a demo today!

Are you looking for new ways to improve your CX?

Our customer service solutions powered by conversational AI can help you deliver an efficient, 24/7 experience  to your customers. Get in touch with one of our specialists to further discuss how they can help your business.