FinovateSpring Power Panel: Harnessing AI to Boost Mobile Engagement
According to IBM’s 2021 Global AI Adoption Index Report, 74% of all companies are exploring or deploying AI in their products, and 43% reported that their AI rollout accelerated as a result of the pandemic. In other words, AI is now table stakes for companies across verticals in 2021.
In a panel at Finovate Spring, four Fintech leaders from Fin VC, Royal Credit Union, Kin Insurance, and CleverTap, along with moderator Theodora Lau of Unconventional Ventures, discussed the ways their companies use AI in the Fintech space when it comes to data collection and analysis — and how AI can help find new ways to engage and retain consumers.
Here are the panel’s key takeaways on how AI is boosting engagement and delivering results for growing fintechs this year.
Smarter AI = Better UX
Colin Boones, the VP of Digital Experience at Royal Credit Union, explained how his company’s major AI initiative during the pandemic has been the deployment of AI-powered chatbots.
Initially used for around 300 FAQs, the chatbot has learned how to recognize the estimated 2,000–3,000 different ways those questions can be asked. Since its rollout in June 2020, functionality has already been added to help customers find branch/ATM locations, as well as provide members with transaction history. More complex transactions — like transfers — are on the chatbot development road map.
Above all else, though, Boones explained how the chatbot helps them collect “voice of member” data that allows his team to improve UX and service offerings. Even if the chatbot cannot help a customer, all interactions are stored for review so they can learn what members are struggling with and how they tend to ask for help.
Modernizing Marketing with AI
Sean Harper, co-founder & CEO of Kin Insurance, deploys his AI capabilities in two distinctly different ways. The first is UX-forward strategies like classifying images and processing documents vital to onboarding customers and insurance claims. Digital intake saves time for both the company and the customer during onboarding and when filing claims.
According to Harper, Kin is one of the few players in the insurance industry that also uses AI to enhance their marketing efforts. The insurance industry is “historically not good at target marketing,” he explains. It’s an industry with an old-school marketing mindset preferring to focus on OOH and TV advertising as opposed to sophisticated digital marketing tools.
Using Kin’s AI capabilities, Harper’s team can easily identify potential customers at the right time in their consumer journey to convert new customers at a higher rate and lower cost than their competitors.
Supercharging Segmentation with AI
“It’s no longer OK to do simple user segmentation on basic demographic data,” said Daniele Di Nunzio, CleverTap’s Head of Sales, Americas, noting that AI can help fintech brands make their segmentation much more sophisticated — and effective.
“CleverTap’s AI-powered micro-segments help our clients identify the best day, the best time, the best time of month to engage users…all on one nice dashboard,” said Di Nunzio. Using RFM analysis, CleverTap helps companies understand which customers are their champions, which ones they are likely to lose, and numerous micro-segments in between. In addition to automated segmentation, CleverTap also uses AI to help companies reduce friction points on their onboarding and sales funnels by identifying bumps along a customer’s journey in an app.
As all the panelists and reports agreed, the data collected through AI is meaningless if there isn’t a team on the other end to process and analyze it. In this way too, CleverTap is a useful tool — specifically the Real Impact Dashboard. This reporting dashboard shows marketers exactly how and by what extent users respond to campaigns — everything from revenue generated to churn.
The Bottom Line
The panel ended with a simple multiple-choice question for all the panelists:
What is the biggest opportunity for businesses using AI?
- Cost savings
- Better user experience
- Better use of data
- None of the above
Four of five panelists chose option B: “better user experience.” At the end of the day, using AI to optimize the user experience will pay dividends in terms of user engagement and retention. The challenge, of course, is having the means to process the massive amount of data now available and turn it into actionable marketing strategies.
