How to Use Chatbots in Banking Services

Gartner estimates as much as 25% of companies will use chatbots for customer service by 2020. This is a clear testament to the usefulness of chatbots in providing customer support.

The banking industry is especially well-suited for chatbot deployment. This is because linear and less complex queries like “what is my account balance?” can be easily solved using chatbots.

Banking is one industry where chatbots can be deployed even in their current state, without too many advanced features. From answering customer queries to assisting them with day-to-day banking transactions, chatbots can do it all.

In this post, we will discuss the various potential use cases of chatbots in banking services and how they can evolve in the future.

Use Cases of Chatbots in Banking Services

If you want to use chatbots in the banking industry, you can start with something as simple as a bot that answers commonly asked questions. This is something that you can immediately implement, without a lot of investment.

Here are some of the most popular ways in which you can use chatbots in the banking industry.

Resolve Customer Challenges and Answer Queries

Customer service is one area where chatbots can help banks save a lot of time and money while providing better support. Chatbots can easily handle frequently asked questions and provide instant answers around the clock.

This lets you cut down on employee costs required to run a 24x7 customer service center. In fact, by 2022, chatbots are estimated to be responsible for cost savings of over $ 8 billion per annum.

Moreover, your customers can get instant access to resources and answers to their queries without having to wait on a call to connect to an executive. According to recent research, chatbots save more than 4 minutes per conversation in the banking industry.

For example, BBVA uses our chatbot to instantly answer commonly-asked customer questions. This ensures that customers don't have to wait to get their answers. Additionally, it also helps them open their accounts with the bank.

Act as a 24x7 Banking Assistant

Along with answering questions, chatbots can also help users with their day-to-day banking transactions and tasks. Does a user want to send money to a payee account? They can ask a chatbot to do it. Does a user want to block or unblock a card? They can simply ask and a chatbot can do it for them.

From paying your bills to monitoring your spends, chatbots can help you with all of your regular banking needs and transactions.

Collect Feedback and Gain User Insights

Another way to use chatbots in banking services is to leverage them to collect customer feedback. They can do this simply by sending a survey or asking a few questions during or after their interaction with a customer. It could be something as simple as asking for feedback on their recent interaction with the chatbot or as complex as a detailed survey.

Chatbots interact with customers frequently and, therefore, can also be used to gain insights into customer behavior. These insights can then be used to target individual customers with personalized recommendations and promotions.

Generate Leads

Chatbots can not only assist your existing customers but can also help you to acquire new ones. Whenever someone visits your bank’s website, you can train your chatbot to say hello and guide them to the right page.

Chatbots can be used to gauge the interest of your website visitors, suggest the right products, and guide them to open an account. They can also assist your visitors in selecting the right type of account and card that is best suited for their needs.

The Future of Chatbots in the Banking Industry

As discussed, the banking industry is well-suited for the immediate adoption of chatbots for a variety of use cases. However, the functionality and features of the chatbots that the banks have currently deployed are not very advanced.

In the future, chatbot interactions will evolve from answering simple queries and handling simple transactions to more complex ones. Here are two ways in which the chatbots of the future will evolve:

Chatbots will become true financial advisors

As AI continues to move forward, chatbots are no longer mere complements to customer service and information, and they are becoming true financial advisors. By containing historical data, behavioral predictive software and other intelligent analysis platforms, chatbots will be able to detect customer consumption habits, provide them with personalized financial advice and help them manage and save money.

Related article: How Chatbots are Helping the Finance Industry

In Aivo, we are already creating and perfecting these applications for some of our clients in the financial industry, who not only want to improve the experience of their clients but also want to give them greater autonomy to make smarter decisions when it comes to spending their money.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Chatbots

The banking industry is already witnessing the adoption of text-based chatbots for a variety of uses. The next logical step is to move to voice-based technology where chatbots will respond to voice-based queries.

Given that voice-based digital assistants like Alexa and Siri are already quite popular, these can be adopted in the banking industry as well. A lot of banks have started experimenting with IVR chatbots and this trend is likely to grow further in the future.

Better Chatbot Interactions Powered by AI and NLP

Currently, the chatbots being used by banks usually answer simple, linear queries and are quite transactional. However, in the future, chatbots will evolve to a level where they can provide more human-like interactions and can handle complex queries.

Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) will fuel this change. NLP helps chatbots understand the context behind a query and not just literal words. AI provides the ability to learn and evolve with time. Therefore, the chatbots of the future will be able to learn from their past conversations to understand contextual queries and handle even more complex queries.

Related article: Artificial Intelligence: What is it and how does it work?

According to the previously-cited research, chatbots will have more successful conversations in the future than they currently do. In fact, the success rate for banking interactions by chatbots is expected to be as high as 93% by 2022.

Along with handling complex queries, their overall conversations will also improve. This is likely to diminish the line between chatbot and human interactions over time. Even bots will provide personalized, human-like conversational experiences to enhance customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

The banking industry is ripe with possibilities when it comes to the adoption of chatbots to help customers and assist them with transactions. There are a lot of ways in which you can use chatbots in banking services that will benefit both you and your customers.

If you are not currently using chatbots, try these to provide better banking services to your customers.