How Top 7 Banks Use Chatbots to Enhance Customer Experience

Consumers of information range from the end consumers of the bank to the CxOs in the financial services sector. Looking at chatbots as the new age contact center executives, banks have now started to transform to 'conversational banking' while minimizing cost and TAT along the way. Most forward looking financial institutions are assessing the feasibility of deploying chatbots to deliver contextual insights to the right person at the right time and through the right channel.

Here is how some of the biggest banks of the world are using chatbots to boost their business.

1. Bank of America

With the announcement of Erica – a voice and text enabled chatbot in 2016, Bank of America, which is one of the largest banks in the U.S., started off the financial chatbot revolution. Erica is an intelligent digital assistant designed to help customers make smart banking decisions and also performs a wide range of other tasks including paying bills within the BofA app, keeping customers updated about their FICO scores and identifying areas of savings for their customers based on their financial habits.

2. Capital One

With a gender neutral name – Eno, Capital One launched its second text based chatbot in 2017 which enables customers to use their smartphones to manage their money. Eno helps customers to pay their credit card bills and keeps them updated with information like account balance, payment history and transactions. Prior to Eno, Alexa skill was launched by the company. The skill allows its customers to keep a check on their credit payments' due dates, their account balance information and more. Moreover it can provide a complete analysis of the customer's spending habits by reviewing their transactions.

3. MasterCard

Choosing to hang out with their customers at the place where they hangout the most – social media, MasterCard has made its digital service more conversational by offering a bot on Facebook Messenger. It reaches its consumers through one of the largest social networking channels by helping customers with their payments and enabling them to keep a tab on their account information, purchase history and spending patterns. Updates based on cardholder behavior and loyalty are also provided by the bots in the form of offers and benefits.

4. American Express

The American Express bot, similar to the MasterCard bot, is based on Facebook Messenger. The US Consumer and OPEN card members can get real-time access to their account and get answers to card related queries. The bot helps customers to look up their purchase history, get reminders for cardholder benefits and contextual recommendations. 'Add a Card' feature that requires linking the credit card to the Facebook account, enables users to make in-app purchases on Facebook.

5. DBS Singapore

Asia's lone digital-only bank – Digibank by DBS, offers its customers a 24 hour virtual assistance through its mobile app. Acting as a personal banker, Digibank helps DBS's customers with their banking activities and answering their queries. The assistant can interact both through voice and text and customers can check their current interest rate, review payment history and make money transfers. Over 10,000 common banking questions can be answered by the bot and in case of an off-the-limit query, it can connect the customer to a bank agent via live chat.

6. JPMorgan Chase

The largest bank in the US, rather than offering a bot service to its customers has chosen to streamline its back office operations using bots. With COIN, the bank can now go through complex legal contacts in a faster and an efficient way than what was possible with human lawyers. Launched in June 2016, COIN has helped JPMorgan save over 360,000 hours of manpower. The bot is also used to analyze and categories employees' emails, provide access to software systems and handle routine IT tasks. The company now plans to deploy the bot to identify new income sources and manage risks effectively.

7. Royal Bank of Scotland

Luvo, RBS's chatbot automates the online customer service efforts of the bank. IBM's Watson has been used to develop Luvo. Using natural language processing, Luvo doesn't force its customer to select from a list of options and understands their requests made in plain English. RBS is looking to increase Luvo's range of interaction by including personalization, emotional understanding and predictive analytics.

Thanks to digitization, understanding the consumer's latent needs and redefining their touchpoints has become a priority for the banking industry. And, with bots getting more intelligent due to AI advancements, it'll be of great importance to the business of banks to build a more intimate customer relation. These chatbots are also bringing in better ROI margins for the large banks deploying them in their various functions. AI is a natural step in the journey of banks and insurers want to reduce costs while not compromising on the customer experience.