With Eno, Banking Gets Conversational

Text messaging. It’s that thing everyone is doing all the time; so much so that people occasionally run into each other on the street or get tennis thumb from sending too many back-to-back emojis.

Texting is ubiquitous — and as part of Capital One’s ongoing efforts to help our customers more effortlessly manage their money, today at SXSW we launched a pilot of Eno, the first natural language SMS chatbot from a U.S. bank. Select customers who log into our mobile website will be invited to join the pilot, and we’ll roll it out to more customers in the months ahead.

But wait — how do we know that customers even WANT to text with their bank? Well, that’s easy — they already do. In a funny way, we launched a chatbot long ago — we just didn’t know it. You see, Capital One has an SMS alert that very clearly asks customers to text back one of two specific words: confirm or deny. It’s that simple, and we don’t understand much else. And yet, a surprisingly high number of responses from customers include something other than those two words. We get questions, explanations, emojis — you name it. Eno 1.0 is our first step toward fulfilling this customer need to engage with us in text conversations about money.

Eno uses a natural language processor to understand the different ways that customers communicate over text. For example, Eno shares balance info in response to both “What’s my Quicksilver card balance?” and the more abbreviated “Quicksilver bal.”

And, what’s texting without emojis? Customers can send Eno the bag of money emoji 💰for a quick summary of their accounts or a thumbs up emoji 👍 to confirm a payment.

Eno can answer many basic questions about a customer’s Capital One credit card and bank accounts (see examples below) in natural language, and when it can’t, it often provides a link to the exact page on our mobile web site that addresses the customer’s question. Eno is new and still learning, but Eno learns from every chat, so it will get better and better at conversations over time.

So, Who is Eno?

We put a lot of thought into both the name and potential visual treatments for Eno. The name Eno, which is “one” spelled backwards, ties to the brand. We also liked that if you google the words “eno definition”, the response is “cool, awesome”. We didn’t want to convey a race, gender, age, etc., through the name or visual representation of the character. That way, we avoid any unconscious biases folks may have, and Eno can remain whatever customers conjure up in their heads.

Learn more about Eno and a sign-up for our pilot waiting list at www.capitalone.com/Eno. If you’re a Capital One customer in Austin for SXSW, stop by the Capital One House at Antone’s and join the Eno pilot today. Eno is looking forward to chatting with you!

What Questions Can Eno Answer?

Customers can ask Eno questions about:

• Account balances for your Capital One credit card, checking account and savings account
• Recent transactions for your Capital One credit card, checking account and savings account
• Capital One credit card bill due date
• Available credit and credit limit on your Capital One credit card
• Paying your Capital One credit card bill
• Your account summary
• Your payment history
• Your bank routing number (You know, that thing you need about once every six months and never know it off the top of your head…)

Customers can also have some fun with Eno, and ask things like:

• R u a human?
• Where are u?
• Tell me a joke, Eno!
• What do u look like?
• What do u look like?
• Are you a boy or a girl?
• Eno, what’s in your wallet?

So check out www.capitalone.com/Eno to learn more about Eno and sign-up for our pilot waiting list.

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