Oliver Welch, Senior Director at Yext

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial services (FS) industry has been on the rise in recent years, with many providers looking to AI to improve their operations and provide a better experience for customers. This is especially important during times of economic uncertainty, when customers are looking for ways to protect their assets and make informed decisions about their finances.

One major challenge that FS providers face during times of economic uncertainty is the need to provide high-quality customer service. For the FS industry this can be difficult, as customer inquiries and concerns often increase during this time, leading to support staff and customer service centres becoming overwhelmed by the volume of requests they are receiving.

Meet customer on their channel of choice

When speaking with FS providers, from large retail banks to insurers or wealth managers, I always hear the same thing: they want to be able to serve the customer on the customer’s channel of choice.

Customers now have access to many different mediums with which to engage FS brands, such as site search, online web chat or on Google. The challenge for providers is to surface useful content and serve the customer with accurate, helpful responses wherever they engage.

This is far easier said than done. Internally, content often sits across multiple content silos and is fed, often inaccurately, to the endpoints where the customer may be starting their journey. This spider’s web of content means that it is often siloed and not fit for every channel.

If a customer cannot find the information they need on a FS provider’s website, they will quickly turn to the most trusted source on the internet – Google, where they know they will get an answer. However, this means that the interaction is out of the provider’s control – and Google could provide incorrect, even misleading, or damaging information to the customer.

It’s more important than ever for companies to get this right during a financially challenging time, as some customer queries may merit more urgent responses. For example, if a customer searches “I can’t pay my mortgage” then they need to be quickly provided with a contact number to speak with a real-life customer service agent – and they won’t want to be left clicking around to find a solution.

Use AI technology to address this challenge

Technology can help to filter the type of problem the customer has and divert them to the best channel to provide the answer – be it online chat, website content or a contact centre – regardless of where they start their journey.

At the centre of this challenge is knowledge management. This means bringing the knowledge held within an organisation together in one place and ensuring it can be easily surfaced to the customer, contact centre agents, or branch staff to help answer questions.

The knowledge and content that is available also needs to be up-to-date and relevant. For example, two and a half years ago every company was quickly generating content to answer questions about COVID. We’re seeing a similar situation now with FS organisations needing to suddenly produce content about the cost-of-living crisis.

AI technology can help FS providers address this challenge by providing them with the search tools they need to generate answers that directly address consumers’ concerns across a variety of channels.

Every customer journey starts with a question – and if a brand can answer that question straight away, then it will build trust. Search is paramount to this. We all ask our most intimate questions on Google or put in whatever we’re looking to buy on Amazon. Both experiences are seamless and offer an instant, helpful, and accurate answer to the customer question using only a search bar on the website.

Searching a brand or company website should be the same and AI can facilitate this by helping to truly understand customer questions. This starts with natural language processing (NLP), which is then layered with additional algorithms to truly understand customer intent and serve up the most useful content. The technology may be complex, but the result for your customers is just the opposite: clear answers to their questions delivered directly from a search experience.

Embrace the future – or risk being left behind

Customers now expect to find the answers they need in a matter of a few clicks – and if they don’t, they’ll bounce right back to Google. The net result of this could be that a customer looking for a product (such as a mortgage) finds a better answer on Google and chooses to shop elsewhere. Or, if it’s an existing customer that’s engaging (with a retail bank, for example) they may get frustrated and ring the first contact number they find for the organisation. This then leads to increased workload and inefficiencies, with customers bouncing around the wrong switchboard searching for answers. This again erodes trust and negatively impacts key customer experience metrics such as the bank’s Net Promoter Score.

Overall, the use of AI in the financial services industry will provide numerous benefits during times of economic uncertainty. By providing the tools to generate answers that directly address consumers’ concerns, AI technology can help to improve customer service and protect customers’ assets. With all banks’ current advertising campaigns focussed on looking after the customer, it’s more important than ever to build trust – and it all starts with the digital search experience.