By Sophie Packer, Digital Marketing & Innovation Co-ordinator, ThinkEngine

Firms in the financial sector that pursue innovative technologies are inevitably going to have a greater focus on their core business activities. The automation benefits associated with conversational tech can lead to a future-ready business model that will make day-to-day operations work with greater efficiency.

Increasingly, a greater number of Financial Services firms are acknowledging the benefits of conversational software (like chatbots) and how these solutions can help all aspects of the business, not just one department. Integration is becoming a top priority, with its ability to be adaptable, streamline business processes and increase productivity (quickly!). Let’s not forget the obvious benefit, cost-saving! Does this make innovation one of the most important aspects of business growth?

In this article, we outline some of these key considerations of chatbot solutions and how they can be most powerful when they are considered as productivity tools.

Major cost savings

There is no denying that chatbot solutions lead to significant cost savings, by automating tasks your workforce have more time to concentrate on their day-to-day activities. This laser focus will significantly increase productivity in other areas of your firm too. The reciprocal benefits can be vast, in some instances it can be a cultural game-changer.

By introducing conversational marketing tools into your company, you can eliminate time-consuming tasks that an employee may spend hours on, everyday. The simplicity and ease of automation removes the need for human intervention, making processes considerably quicker, and potentially, in time, saving the cost of headcount. A win-win.

Another key benefit is that conversational platforms use no/low code builders – you can now build a whole workflow without a single line of code! As such, there is no need for the high-cost costs associated with developers, nor the need for high levels of training. Consequently, this has a positive productivity knock-on effect. Such situations means that workflow or chatbot amendments can be completed by employees easily (often with little or no training) due to software being that simple and intuitive.

Would you like some spare cash flow to reinvest in your Financial Services firm? I don’t know a single one of our clients that would say no to that!

So, how do chatbots really save you time?

Recent studies have found that 60% of work time is used for non-work related tasks, such as meetings, gathering information, delegating and messaging (Draper, 2019). Wouldn’t it be great if some of these tasks could be automated? By using conversational marketing platforms this is possible. Automated technology can facilitate these tasks that humans either could not process, or would take a longer period of time to accomplish. Technologies like AI drive create positive change and fast-track our ability to complete more tasks in less time.

An additional area that could save you time by using conversational tools is within the sales funnel. If you have a chatbot on your website, it’s more likely that your leads will flow down your sales funnel quicker. With 57% of chatbot users saying they have greater visibility into customer needs expectations and behaviours (Landbot, 2019) by using a conversational tool. This means all that time you’ve spent in the past collating data on your ideal customer and sales leads can be actioned via a chatbot – making good use of your data and time. Using learnings from data will drastically impact your ability to tailor workflows and customers journeys more frequently, this approach leads to a greater understanding of how your visitors interact with your business online.

Global organisations are already releasing the significant benefits associated with chat assistants in particular, with 57% stating they have had more than a 20% reduction in customer churn (Landbot, 2019). You could argue that this would mean that you’d be handed back 20% of the time in your day, at the expense of a few clicks.

Chatbot integrations for a smooth and seamless approach 

Conversational marketing software integrates with a wide number of platforms that can be used in all departments of the business. This ‘blank canvas’ technology and approach means that it can be used for almost anything which has a process flow, and with the 3rd-party tools, everything can be streamline even further. As I mentioned earlier, non-work-related activities take up a large portion of the workday – tapping into time cutting technology is your gateway for an easier job, and for leaders, it means they have a more productive team.

Integrations with solutions like calendar platforms mean that clients can directly book meetings into your dairy themselves, cutting out the middle-man (no wasted time on back and forward emails to arrange times and days!). You can also integrate payment processes into your chatbots, making client payments smooth and seamless. Solutions like this mean that clients get a choice and being able to have alternative solutions is great for business continuity planning, no one wants a single point of failure! The list is endless… give of take, if you name it, a chatbot can probably do it!

So, if that’s not enough evidence to demonstrate time saving, cost-cutting and productivity-boosting for your business, then I really don’t know what is! Conversational technologies can automate your business growth and provide more flexibility for staff members to work on other core-business tasks, which consequently will make a greater impact on business revenue.

Is your financial services firm ready to pick up the pace and invest in a chatbot solution?

References

Landbot (2019). Chatbot Statistics Compilation 2019: the State of Market & Business… [online] Landbot.io. Available at: https://landbot.io/blog/chatbot-statistics-compilation/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

Draper, L. (2019). Breaking down the Anatomy of Work Index. [online] The Asana Blog. Available at: https://blog.asana.com/2019/10/anatomy-of-work/#close [Accessed 6 Apr. 2021].