A Year Into The Pandemic: The Rise of Chatbots in BFSI
“COVID-19 has generated leadership and organizational support by highlighting the need for digital transformation as a means to reach customers and maintain operational resilience”.
Are Chatbots The Future of Banking?
Deloitte reported that the forced adoption of online, mobile, and call center channels, as well as overnight virtualization of the workforce and ways of working, are two fundamental shifts prevalent in the industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read also — Chatbot Design: What Makes A Good UX:
Increase Adoption of Online, Mobile and Call Center Channels
According to 19 top banking experts, improving customer experience is something that most of them consider crucial for the sector to thrive. A report by Twilio indicated that 89% of consumers these days prefer to use messaging platforms to communicate with businesses however, only 48% of businesses are equipped to connect with their customers through online platforms.
Banking has been one of the largest players in the market leveraging a conversational interface like chatbots to improve their customer service for its artificial intelligence and high response rate. KPMG supported that existing chatbots have a greater role in handling online prospects. From answering frequently asked questions (FAQs) to providing waiting-time messages as well as cross-selling, it helps with freeing up resources for better manpower allocation.
Virtualization of Workforce and Ways of Working
With the current work from home arrangements, internal processes have to be digitalized in order to adapt to the new normal. It is apparent that the self-serve nature of chatbots has increased workplace efficiency while attending to customers’ needs. With that said, why not leverage chatbots to streamline work processes as well?
One of the many use cases of chatbots in the BFSI sector includes the provision of adequate support to employees, speeds up repetitive tasks, and facilitates more complex and time-consuming back-end operations like internal documentation or employee training. What would take a human agent 8–10 minutes to respond to, chatbots have the capabilities to do it in seconds as it fetches information much faster. Imagine how much time will be freed up amongst employees when it comes to daily mundane tasks?
Use Cases in the BFSI Sector
- Sacombank Bot
Sacombank is one of the top 10 private joint-stock commercial banks in Vietnam and is ranked as the top 500 largest banks globally this year.
As part of their digital transformation effort, Sacombank needed a solution to
a. Manage the influx of customer enquiries with frequently asked questions that have caused a strain on their manpower;
b. Automate the retrieval of customer information to offer the best recommendation for card plans and other settlement services.
Context Recognition
Sacombank Bot is equipped with context recognition capabilities, in simpler terms, the ability to understand users’ intent and hold a natural conversation without having them repeat the topic of conversation. 2359 worked with Sacombank to design an ideal dialogue flow that leads customers to the desired end goal. Upon development, we were able to identify the possible intents and the different contexts that will surface during the conversation. This ensures that the bot has the ability to understand and hold a natural yet accurate conversation with customers.
Answering of FAQs and cross-selling
The main purpose of this bot is to answer repetitive questions revolving around the products and services available. Equipped with a comprehensive knowledge management system, the bot is able to provide assistance when it comes to Sacombank’s attributes, promotions, and privileges. It has the capability to serve 88 percent of customers thus far in addition to the ability to cross-sell products by prompting alternatives and relevant products to the customers.
Human Fallback Mechanism
It is inevitable that chatbots will fail to understand some enquiries from customers due to the words used or questions that are out of the bot’s scope. Sessions would then be initiated to transfer to a live agent who is better able to resolve the query.
Omnichannel presence
Do you know that there are currently over 100,000 active bots on Facebook Messenger? And Sacombank Bot is one of them. Different customers require services that adapt to their needs and are always able to assist them through their preferred channel. The Sacombank Bot has the capability to reach out to customers on Facebook and their own website.
2. NTUC Enterprise IT Helpdesk Askbot
NTUC Enterprise is the holding entity and single largest shareholder of NTUC Social Enterprises such as NTUC FairPrice, NTUC Foodfare, and NTUC Income. On a daily basis, the IT team in the company received a high volume of IT service requests from internal employees. Additionally, with the work from home arrangements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to find a digital solution to avoid any disruption to the IT team in responding to the internal teams’ requests. To facilitate the shift online, they needed a self-serve chatbot solution where employees are able to resolve common IT issues themselves while freeing up the IT team to manage more complex issues.
Button-based Chatbot
Often, many people are unaware of a bot’s capabilities and the appropriate questions to ask because they do not know the underlying issue of their problem hence, having a button-based feature guides employees to explore topics and possible areas to check on to solve their problems more effectively. With a better understanding of where the issue lies, the bot is then able to provide step-by-step guidance on resolving their requests. This controls and minimizes the chances of the bot misreading the intent of the users.
Human Fallback Mechanism
The IT team at NTUC Enterprise consolidated a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and the common issues raised, which enabled the chatbot to handle day-to-day repetitive requests. The bot encompassed a wide range of FAQs, however, at times when the bot encountered a unique request or more complicated tasks out of its scope, a custom form for users would be offered to raise a ticket which an IT personnel would then follow up and provide a resolution. With the chatbot being able to manage the FAQs, the IT team has more bandwidth now to focus on complex issues, giving users a quicker response time as well.
With the deployment of this chatbot, the IT team at NTUC Enterprise reports a sharp decrease in support tickets raised and sees a reduction in average handling time. With frequently encountered issues being self-resolved by the employees, this leaves the IT team to efficiently resolve more complex issues resulting in a decrease in response time.
Chatbot For Businesses is The Future
The COVID-19 Pandemic has created a place of uncertainties, shifting the mindset of many businesses to adopt a digital-first strategy. One thing for sure is that the conversational interface and artificial intelligence of chatbots are the greatest benefits for organizations as it brings high ROI across various digital platforms. The future of the BFSI sector lies in the hands of AI Chatbots to streamline work processes and customer service automation.
Want to Know More? Talk to Us!
At 2359, we have the expertise to advise what works best for your organization. Not sure how you can integrate chatbots into your work processes? Fret not, with a strong portfolio in the BFSI industry, we are here to assist you! Read more here: https://botbot.ai/
Looking for a consultation? We would love to have a chat with you.
