Financial services companies need to expand the use of artificial intelligence to earn customer trust with quality, fast service and security.
“From 2010 to 2020, the amount of data created, ingested, copied and consumed around the world increased from 1.2 trillion gigabytes to 59 trillion gigabytes,” according to a Smartstream white paper.
“A 2020 Statista forecast indicated that global data creation is likely to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025. Yet despite this wealth of data, the financial services industry remains surprisingly information poor.”
According to a report by The Economist, four in five senior bank executives agree that unlocking value from AI will separate winners from losers in the financial services space. “But companies are treading cautiously, weighing business benefits against regulatory complexity and the need to maintain customer trust. Most banks (62%) agree that the complexities and risks associated with handling personal data for AI projects often outweigh the benefits to customer experience.”
Financial services companies have been using basic AI for targeted marketing and other basic applications for a number of years. But to better serve customers and make intelligent use of the vast amount of data they collect, financial services firms are turning to AI for more and more applications.
Below are four examples of how financial services companies are using AI to take CX to the next level:
1. Improved sentiment analysis
Turkey-based DenizBank turned to speech analytics to better understand customer moods and needs during the pandemic. With agents working remotely, the solution and associated technology were critical to improving customer service, said Altug Merhap, senior vice president of DenizBank.
The AI-based language analysis program enabled the bank to achieve a 95% accuracy rating for customer queries, meaning bank employees were able to more accurately understand the root causes of problems, resulting in faster responses to customer needs, Merhap added. The analytics solution helped identify needs more effectively and enabled agents to take immediate action to advance the customer journey. “As the pace of change accelerates, we continue to work to maximize agent performance and create happy customers,” Merhap said.
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2. Quality Assurance
Banks are using AI for the quality assurance (QA) process and verification in the contact center, said Bill Staikos, senior vice president, evangelist and head of community engagement at Medallia, though he noted the efforts aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Typically, financial services contact centers only screen 2% to 4% of all calls per day.
The more advanced financial services contact centers automate the QA interception and review process, so all calls are analyzed and scored in real time, Staikos said. “This has benefits for the customer, the agent and the company as a whole. The agent’s supervisor can use this information for up-to-date coaching; Platforms also provide QA insights directly to the agent so they can make changes in real-time as well. The consumer benefits because the quality of calls improves over time.”
The financial institution also benefits, Staikos said. “Because individuals don’t screen the calls, these teams can be redeployed within the organization. Because all calls are analyzed and scored by the AI, business risk is reduced because the AI can be trained to look out for rudeness, fraudulent behavior, or other customer-distracting agent behavior.
3. Improved response times
Research by Mitto, a provider of omnichannel communications solutions, found that a third of respondents with negative banking experiences would rather go to the dentist than interact with their financial institution, said Andrea Giacomini, Mitto’s CEO.
Contact center responsiveness is sometimes overlooked. Delays in receiving authentication codes via email or phone, sometimes caused by an invalid code, will result in 41% of consumers considering abandoning their pursuit, Giacomini added. “The ability to instantly provide two-factor authentication is critical.” According to Giacomini, nearly half of all consumers prefer SMS to phone calls or email for these quick interactions. That number rises to 70% for Gen Z and Millennials.
Implementing an AI-powered routing system will allow banks to maximize delivery speeds through a proactive and adaptive network, Giacomini said. “This system can understand message type priority to ensure time-sensitive information is delivered promptly to the recipient.”
Related article: 4 ways AI, analytics and machine learning are improving customer service and support
4. Enhanced Identity Protection
A study by Cisco pointed out that 61% of customers said they wouldn’t do business with a company unless they trusted how it was handling their data, which is a critical concern for financial institution customers, Patricia said Thaine, co-founder of Private AI and CEO.
“As encryption has become the standard, a critical remaining vulnerability is the risk of data being exposed by a malicious employee or an outside hacker, or when data is decrypted for analysis purposes, e.g. B. when processing a customer support ticket,” said Thaine. Removing a customer’s personally identifiable information (PII), also known as de-identification, is often an option considered to keep data safe and private and create even more granular data access controls.
An ideal de-identification solution leverages both advances in edge machine learning and re-identification risk assessments — complex skills built on domain expertise that Thaine says cannot be expected from the average developer. “Rule-based systems are insufficient to securely de-identify sensitive data such as faces, car license plates or personal texts in unstructured data sources. When expertly crafted with artificial intelligence, data can be de-identified with over 99% accuracy, dramatically reducing the likelihood of a user’s information being compromised while retaining its value for data-driven decision-making.”
Final thoughts: Financial institutions are pushing to expand AI
Financial services companies will continue to expand their use of AI technology as they become more comfortable with it and see the success their competitors are having with it.
“The decision for financial institutions to adopt AI is being accelerated by advances in technology, increased user adoption, and changing regulatory environments,” reads an Insider Intelligence eMarketer article. “FIs are being pushed to increase their IT and AI budgets to meet higher digital standards. Younger consumers prefer digital banking channels, with a full 78% of Millennials never going to a branch if they can avoid it.”
