Banco Solidario tripled their resolved inquiries with conversational AI during the pandemic

Banco Solidario, one of Ecuador’s most important microfinance banks, is known for their innovative assessment and risk management practices. In 2019, they turned to Genesys and Aivo with the goal of using digital tools to provide better customer service, enhancing the work between their agents and the bot. This is their story.

A bank at the service of the people

Banco Solidario was born out of a merge with UniBanco in 2013, after both had been granting loans to those with high economic vulnerability for almost two decades. Their focus is providing services to microenterprises, a segment ignored by traditional banking and vitally important for progress.

It was the first bank in Latin America to specialize in microcredit with 100% private capital, and is exclusively devoted to doing that. Throughout its journey, Solidario has received $650 million in foreign investment and granted more than $11,456 million in microloans and microcredits, supporting the growth of more than half a million startups.

Until 2019, the bank’s call center relied on in-house technology, which ultimately meant it was harder and harder to keep up with the new demands relating to constantly-evolving customers.

To respond to this challenge and with help from Seteinfo, Aivo’s partner, they decided to take a chance on Genesys Cloud and AgentBot to modernize their customer service and provide an omnichannel experience.

Marisol, the new banking assistant

In this new customer service structure, Aivo’s conversational intelligence played an essential role: automating empathetic and personalized FAQs.

There was a two-part implementation process. The first phase was activating the bot at the start of building the knowledge base. This step took six weeks and the strategy was to gather the frequently-asked questions that came to the call center.

On the other hand, the second phase was about making the necessary integrations so the bot answers transactional questions both on the web and WhatsApp.

That’s how Banco Solidario’s banking assistant, Marisol, was brought to life, answering questions about customer service hours, loan requirements, savings account balance, payments due, etc.

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Teamed up with Genesys

Marisol doesn't work on her own. With integration between Aivo and Genesys, conversations with the bot can be automatically transferred to a human agent within the same chat window.

At the beginning, Marisol’s transfers to contact center operators reached 35%. After improving the integrations and refining the knowledge base, Banco Solidario dropped it to 20%. And in the last quarter of 2020, they managed to decrease it even more to 14%.

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Out of everyone who contacts Marisol, only 14% of them need to be transferred to a consultant. The rest are getting an effective solution on the same channel and in the same session, which is a sign of success for us,” explains Damian Cruz.

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Also, thanks to Genesys Cloud, the bank could manage the growing interactions on mobile digital channels, giving customers the same personalized treatment they can get at physical branches. Today, Genesys Cloud is at the core, orchestrating all service channels: voice, e-mail, chat and Aivo’s bot.

A secure experience

Two fundamental pillars of Banco Solidario’s experience in the bot strategy are privacy y la security. Since financial information is involved, the bank took action to protect user data.

Information is encrypted during transfer and storage, and sensitive data is displayed on concealed screens. Plus, customers can only access the information through two-step authentication, by sending an OTP (one time password) to their devices.

With the webchat, they created a temporary web view with a unique URL that automatically closes after a set time in case the user forgets to close the window.

Non-stop innovation

For a lot of companies, COVID-19 was the guiding force for digital transformation. But not for Solidario. The bank was already testing work from home since implementing Genesys Cloud and AgentBot, and it was a pilot experience that guaranteed business operated as usual when the health crisis erupted.

As a result, Marisol’s daily inquiry volume tripled compared to the days before the pandemic, with 90% retention and 86% effectiveness.

“This is not a trend, and we didn’t do this to save money or improve response times. Our perspective is towards a digital transformation where people are at the center of change,” Cruz concludes.