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To maintain a good relationship with customers, it is key to develop conversational journeys to be able to answer customer inquiries 24/7 and offer satisfactory solutions.
Issues related to applying for a loan, placing a fixed-term deposit, or access to a credit card are just some of the queries that arrive daily at Banco Comafi. Thus, in order to continue optimizing its customer service, they created Sofía, the virtual assistant with conversational AI in charge of solving the public's queries immediately and always taking care of their privacy
For all this, Banco Comafi is this year's “Featured Conversational Journey for Banking”. Martín Frascaroli, CEO of Aivo, talks with Fabian Mealla, Banco Comafi's Digital Banking Manager, to learn more about his experience strategy.
Personalized customer experience
How was the path from a bot that answered 20 or 30 questions to a transactional platform? How was this evolution process?
The truth is that it was a process from minor to major. When we implemented Sofia we defined what we wanted from the virtual assistant. We started with Sofía 1.0, as we call it, providing 24/7 assistance and delivering an effective and efficient response to what our clients were demanding. A client is unique and needs a dedicated response to their needs. And then we started with the upgrades. Obviously, our starting point was “the bot has to solve, Sofia has to solve”. And we started working on that line.
Always focusing on being able to integrate technology, the Aivo tool that you very well provide us with the core of the bank, and, being able to generate a personalized customer experience. In other words, we have the only conversational bot in the market, through which we provide personalized attention to our clients, identifying them quickly, simply, and securely.
If you had to give us some examples of some actions or transactions that a user can do, what could they be?
Today, with Sofia customers can check their balance, can see their latest movements, and receive their account or card summary in PDF in real-time (which is one of the pain points of all banks or financial institutions). They can also make a withdrawal without a card and can activate a debit card.
Related article: How banks are using chatbots to boost their business
You were one of the precursors of starting to pay attention on WhatsApp, mainly in Argentina. How risky was it at the time and how is it today?
To begin with, when we started with the bot, we obviously started with what was the web chat and then move on to WhatsApp. We started to put together the roadmap of what we had to do and what we had to comply with, beyond having the account marked at a security level.
We set up the security components so that when the client says a simple "hello" to Sofia, Sofia knows what customer is on the other side and knows that this connection is secure, all the information that she can give to the customer is totally protected and any interaction could be totally private, it does not allow another client to steal the customer’s number.
The control that we have is an overlanding control, that is, there is no client that can have two identical WhatsApp numbers, which gives us the security of all this. It also allows us for some transactions to be able to add an OTP factor that allows us to additionally validate that the customer is on the other side with their cell phone and to be able to do so more securely.
Regarding the numbers, as I was telling you, today our WhatsApp penetration is 70%. Why? Because it's simple, secure, 24/7, it has 80/20 of all the inquiries made by our customers (especially individual banking) and it allows us to generate relationships and immediacy, and that's the most important thing.
An innovative digital experience with Aivo Studio integrations
How was the adoption process of Aivo Studio? Do you have a continuous integration roadmap? How was that process that requires an acceptance or incorporation of the technical area?
The truth is that we are fortunate to have a very important technical team, very professional, we have a team dedicated to Sofía from API banking that allows us to interact with Aivo Studio and be able to develop experiences directly from there.
They perfectly translate the experience that we are creating at a commercial level to be able to transfer it to code, to this simple tool that is Aivo Studio.
Aivo Studio allowed us to move quickly from 1.0 to 2.0 as we say. That is, to be able to integrate and identify the client, to be able to interact quickly with the client. For me, this is one of the main pillars of this success and obviously, the Aivo and Comafi teams have quickly capitalized on everything that has to do with the use of this tool.
In that sense, in February 2022 we implemented with Aivo Studio the first integrations that involved balance inquiries and credit card statements. We have a very ambitious roadmap until the end of the last Q of this year, where we have been trying to deliver a new feature every sprint.
The last one we have recently put into production was the investment integration where a client can make a fixed-term deposit for Sofia. Here what we are advocating is that the customer, instead of going to a branch or call the call center to make a fixed term, chooses Sofia to complement the digital offer.
And the last thing we have been working on recently (and we are already doing the first tests at the heavy user level) is what has to do with recharging cell phones, satellite TV, or public transport cards to be able to travel on public transport. Today we are closing the test and tomorrow we are putting into production what is the payment of services, which for us is a huge joy because we continue to give muscle to Sofia, we continue to provide services and the client takes it that way. Today at NPS our satisfaction value is at 85%.
Related article: In-Depth Guide Into Banking Chatbots in 2022
How is the process of choosing what's next? How is the process of evolving or listening to the customer to create a customer-centric experience that is relevant to the majority?
We listen a lot to what customer service is, whether it is branches or call centers. We try to measure what that demand is, we do the survey and from that, we start to build what is the digital experience, from the integrations we have available and the areas we have to build.
For example, one of these points was the activation of the debit card that we were talking about before. It is a totally archaic paper process that generated a lot of operational burdens, and Sofia came to propose this solution by interacting and integrating an additional player such as Prisma. Today we have more than 5,000 activations per month through this channel, which was a very archaic process. Today you receive the card, and by scanning a QR you activate the card with Sofia's automated experience. Something totally new, innovative, and we are going for more.
Is there a Sofia 3.0 plan?
Today, we are working on the 3.0 plan, the truth is that I am spoiling a little bit. Sofia 3.0 is going to culminate with that title once we are able to market products through the bot. We are aiming to be able to sell loans and to be able to offer credit cards in the future.
Do you want to achieve these results?
If you haven't already, you can check out the full list of Aivo Awards featured customers and discover the story behind their conversational bots.
And, if you want to implement our technology in your customer service strategy, don't hesitate to schedule a call with one of our representatives.
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