Why the Banking, Finance and Insurance industries should embrace virtual agents before they’re left behind

By Sanjeev Kumar, VP EMEA at Boost.ai

Technology’s relationship with the world of finance is one of contradiction. Innovation is a crucial part of the industry, and fintech in particular is a cutting-edge space. However, legacy banks remain averse to embracing new tech that they see as risky and untested globally. If recent trends, like the broad move to digital banking, have demonstrated anything, it’s that the world of finance is in the midst of seismic change and that there is even more significant change to come.

2022 has been a challenging year across all industries. Younger generations show less loyalty to service providers, brands, and workplaces. In an unsettled world, organisations need to set themselves apart. Consumers are spoilt for choice and pressed for time. It has never been more critical for banks and financial institutions to offer customers a premium service and to have rock-solid employee retention schemes in place.

The solution lies with artificial intelligence (AI). Intelligent automation, virtual agents and conversational AI are proven systems for financial institutions to address customer and employee churn directly. As an ever-increasing number of financial organisations adopt these technologies, it is no longer a matter of if but of when conversational AI becomes a necessary and commonplace solution in the finance industry.

How Intelligent Automation works

Intelligent automation combines artificial intelligence and automation technologies to automate low-level tasks. For example, freeing up workers to engage in the tasks they have been trained for, rather than low-level administration and simple customer requests.

While intelligent automation can take several forms, one of the more common forms we see in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industries is virtual agents. Virtual agents use advanced natural language algorithms in the form of conversational AI to understand the user intent of internal and external queries and provide contextual answers. For example, one virtual agent might be in place for customer complaints, while another will be installed to deal with internal service desk requests. On an individual level, the benefit is evident for employees – job satisfaction – and for customers – service satisfaction.

Intelligent Automation in action

It is not just a recommendation to embrace a modern, digital-first customer banking experience, but at this point, it is an expectation. With banks and insurers being slow off the mark, new entrants to the industry have been able to quickly grab market-share by offering sleek, efficient, and customer-friendly services built around AI technologies.

Call centres garner much ire from customers; they are clunky and time-consuming; however, human interaction still plays a vital role in customer service processes. The problem is that human interaction should only be utilised when necessary, not as the first port of call. For example, if a virtual agent cannot resolve a query, then a person will be on hand to bring in their expertise to solve whatever the problem is.

However, thanks to conversational AI, this is rarely a problem that banks and finance institutions need to deal with any longer. With the right implementation, virtual agents can resolve over 90% of customer queries. Any remaining service tickets are often more complex and can be handled by human agents, creating a streamlined, yet highly personalised, service.

So, what’s holding organisations back?

In a word, fear. Fear of customer backlash at ‘robots’ responding to their complaints. Fear around the security of allowing AI access to vast swathes of customer data. Fear of cost-to-benefit ratios. 85% of executives agree that fear holds back innovation efforts often or always in their organisations. Yet nine out of 10 organisations are doing nothing to ease those fears.

While understandable,, these fears are increasingly misplaced, as advances in conversational AI technology have helped to dispel these concerns. Intelligent virtual agents are making sure that badly designed chatbots are being relegated to history. Security is prioritised with these solutions as well, making sure that customer and query data is stored and protected appropriately. And intelligent automation does not need to be expensive. Businesses can pick and choose the extent and scope of automation they wish to employ, with the ability to test out a solution before going all in on it. Most importantly, conversational AI and automation technologies are no longer just for large corporations with enormous economies of scale; smaller-scale businesses can craft bespoke automation tools that work to their scale too.

Personalisation is a growing facet of conversational AI and a growing priority for customers. As AI technology advances, new applications within BFSI will burst forth – from spotting fraudulent activity through pattern tracking to identifying potential attempts at fraud by understanding customer keystrokes and voice patterns – and the opportunities are endless.

The future is bright, the future is automated

The time is now for steady, streamlined adoption of virtual agents and conversational AI. With digital banking becoming the primary form of banking, particularly as consumers become more digitally-savvy, building a cohesive digital offering for customers has never been more critical, and conversation AI has a huge role to play in enabling this.

Creating the optimum experience for customers and employees is only possible by building on solid foundations, and it’s critical that businesses have the right technology in place to achieve this. And when it comes to building foundations, conversational AI has a huge role to play. This technology not only helps customers to receive better-quality services, but employees see less time spent on mundane administrative and low-level tasks. The benefits even reach corporate decision-makers, who can achieve higher customer satisfaction, more employee retention and a sleeker and more efficient internal and external communication resolution with conversational AI.

Of course, it is important to note that not every organisation’s AI solution will be the same, but it is abundantly clear that very few organisations will be able to do without one in the coming years.