Conversational Banking: The Future of Banking

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The conversational AI market is booming, and the technology will be further implemented in the banking industry. How do we know this?

First, a reported 32% of banks already use some form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their operations. Plus, according to Digital Banking Report research, about 75% of financial institutions consider using conversational AI services at some point.

When conversational AI meets banking, one gets conversational banking. This offers massive benefits to banks and financial institutions. 

Let's find out more about these advantages and explore conversational banking's full potential.

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Conversational banking falls into the category of digital banking. The phenomenon takes bank-client communication to the next level. 

What does it mean? 

It means banks can provide real-time customer services through several channels, including mobile apps, voice banking, text messaging, websites, and chatbots.

Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) companies and conversational AI platforms are responsible for integrating conversational banking strategies. They help banks learn from customer interactions and provide tailored support throughout the customer journey.

In short, conversational banking puts customer experience first. The phenomenon grants a more human approach.

There are two parties in conversational banking - banks and customers. Here’s what the interaction looks like:

• Banks establish omni channel communication mentioned above, integrate AI, and implement automation. The goal is to simultaneously align banking services to boost both profits and customer satisfaction. 
• On the other hand, customers interact with banks through these communication platforms, get instant replies to their questions, and receive customized services.

When done correctly, the technology creates a win-win situation for both sides. Now, let's look at some voice banking services coming with a conversational banking package.

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Voice banking services cover a range of different areas. In a nutshell, these are the tools banks use to offer personalized customer service to boost customer satisfaction. These services include the following:

• Conversational customer support
• Account opening services
• Call center experience
• Banking customer journey
• Customer onboarding

Let's explore each one of the aforementioned voice banking services in detail.

AI in banking and finance helps improve customer support.

According to Juniper Research, about 90% of banking interactions are automated. Conversational AI for banking uses voice-based assistance to help clients complete their financial and banking operations.

For instance, a person can access voice banking services to make a money transaction, review an account, renew some policies, and handle a refund. What is more, it all can be done round-the-clock and in a simple manner. Conversational banking grants customers more freedom over their banking experiences.

As we mentioned above, conversational AI is integral to conversational banking. AI-powered virtual agents grant a human-like interaction to bank customers. For instance, conversational Interactive Voice Responses (IVRs) significantly reduced wait time while increasing First Call Resolution (FCR). 

The report by Capgemini Research Institute states that IVRs bring a 92% reduction in customer wait time and an 80% increase in FCR. These numbers mean better customer experience and more personalized service.

A study by the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests voice communication is always better than textual one, namely because it creates a stronger bond.

From a broader perspective, banks and financial institutions can use voice assistants powered by AI to aid the entire customer journey. From autonomous self-service experience to more personalized service. Voice banking services help radically boost client satisfaction.

Banks use conversational banking to build effective relationships with customers. Customer onboarding plays an integral role in the process. It entails proper mapping of customer touchpoints and using multiple channels to resolve customer issues.

Equipped with voice services, financial institutions and banks can make client onboarding much better. It can be achieved through the following:

• Real-time assistance to new clients
• Demonstration of product value
• Adapting to customer's needs

New banking customers need to feel they are taken care of. While human agents are the one offering proper onboarding experience, conversational banking instruments are catching up real fast and soon will do better jobs than human assistants.

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A great conversational banking experience does not emerge from thin air. The same is true for customer experience, customer engagement, and customer satisfaction. Luckily, advanced technology plays a big role here. Let's explore some of the best options you can try.

In conversational banking experience, video proves to be a powerful instrument. If a customer looks for financial advice or wants some onboarding information, screen-to-screen communications is the best one. According to Forbes, video-based content establishes trust.

In the past, banks used human agents to create live videos or to make pre-recorded demos. Now, there are AI-powered Video Bots. These are tools simulating human-like interactions. The technology is based on AI, ML, NLP, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

It is apparent the introduction of AI took customer support to another level. Currently, it is not about whether to implement AI in banking and finances, it is about how to make full use of the technology. Respectively, tapping into AI in conversational banking relies on the following next-gen tools:

• Conversational API. It entails interaction with customers using 13 different messaging channels.
• Voice API. It enables voice agents to engage in customized voice calls from customers.
• vTalk.ai. This conversational AI platform uses all what NLP, ASR, and AI can offer to boost conversational banking experience.

These instruments utilize the power of AI to redefine customer experience and make digital banking highly personalized. It is what customer-centric banking is all about.

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Conversational banking powered with AI and ML gave rise to instruments redefining the nature of customer support. However, it is crucial to identify how AI can promote decision-making in banking in relation to assisting customers, getting new customers, and retaining established ones.

Following are the AI-based decision-making steps conversational banking grants to improve banking experience for new and established clients alike.

If you decide to use conversational banking, you should start with mapping your customer journey. This will show you what type of support banking customers require.

Keep in mind the two key elements of customer journey mapping:

• Establishing customer touchpoints.
• Planning for long-term customer experience.

Afterwards, you need to map to each particular category of customers. Basically, there are new prospects, new clients, and the established ones. Putting the aforementioned elements together grants better conversational banking experience.

Once you have customer journey maps, it is time to deal with FAQs. These can include onboarding issues, general inquiries, transactions, account services, and application-related queries.

After you identified the queries, you can categorize them in two lists:

1. Queries that can be automated with a chatbot.
2. Queries that cannot be handled with human agent assistance.

When listing the queries consider the pre-identified touchpoints and various types of customers you established.

Regardless of any degree of human-like assistance conversational AI offers, a 100% automation is impossible. At this point of virtual assistants' development, these tools cannot entirely substitute human agents. However, they are close.

Knowing the right customer touchpoints helps you deploy the proper tools to engage clients. At this point, AI-based assistants in banking identify areas that require human touch. It all leads to a more balanced customer support.

With traditional chatbots, secure messaging can be a real issue. The introduction of AI-powered tools helps resolve that. It is apparent that conversational banking entails some degree of risk associated with customer data protection. However, AI-based decision-making helps reduce the risk to the minimum.

Safeguard your client's privacy and data with the following aspects:

• Secure messaging with AES-256 and RSA-4096 encryption.
• Adherence to legal and financial compliance

These are two factors driving the security of customer data during their conversational banking journey.

All in all, the elements mentioned above drive the power of AI-based decision-making banking. These are the things you can get and then use when dealing with conversational banking.

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We've covered many elements linked to the nature of conversational banking. It is time to address the elephant in the room - benefits conversational technology grants to banks.

Conversational banking strategies represent a great opportunity to drive down costs of customer support in general. Having a messaging app along with a banking app is a costly thing in itself. Adding the cost of customer support representatives can mount up real fast. According to GlobeNewswire, businesses spend about $1.3 trillion a year handling customer support requests.

IBMindicates chatbots alone can help save up to 30% in customer support costs. At this point, having a conversational platform is a direct way to reduce costs of banking customer service.

Conversational banking leverages technology that helps have a positive impact on CLV. When customers have different communication channels to interact with banks, they are more likely to interact with these financial institutions more frequently.

Rewarding banking clients with omnichannel communication brings forward:

• Greater customer satisfaction
• Higher Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer churn rates reduction
• Better conversation rates

These factors help create and promote CLV. Having proactive customers who have all the means to reach you is one of the best things conversational banking can offer.

Above, we've spoken about customer support cost reduction. When properly applied, conversational banking can help cut all the operating costs.

How? It grants the following:

• Better human resource allocation - you doesn't need as many human agents as before.
• Greater customer feedback to help prevent future service-related issues.
• Enhanced account security and customer data protection, which minimizes the need for customer support.
• Fraud reduction that helps avoid costly litigation.

AI-powered conversational banking helps drive down operating costs by decreasing reliance on human-based customer support, increasing the quality of customer feedback, and enhancing client privacy along with data security.

Conversational platforms help build deeper relationships with clients. Yet, tapping into conversational banking technologies also opens new horizons in propagating rapid innovation.

For instance, the older generation of banking customers preferred face-to-face communication and email as a part of banking experience. There is growing body of evidence suggesting that new generations perceive emails as obsolete. It means that to respond to such shifts banks need to innovate their approaches.

In general, customers are likely to be more engaged when they have relevant and convenient means of communication. With AI-powered tools, banks can analyze customer needs, better understand client habits, and deliver what people prefer. As a result, with conversational banking you receive satisfied clients who will be loyal to your services on one side, and banks operating efficiently and effectively on the other side.

Image source: vTalk.ai

Building an AI-powered virtual assistant from scratch is an endeavor not many can handle. That is why, the best way to tap into conversational banking is to appeal to companies that have enough experience and expertise in the technology.

It is time to speak about one of such companies - vTalk.ai. This is a platform helping set AI-powered voice assistants. These tools can work to boost incoming and outgoing calls. Using the power of neural networks, vTalk's voice agents can be trained, which means you can add intents and set up different scenarios.

Image source: vTalk.ai

With vTalk.ai, you get a built-in analytics system, have access to customizable dashboards, and receive tools for recording calls. Moreover, we use the best underlying conversational AI technologies available on the market. NLP, ASR, ML, and AI integrated into vTalk.ai platform provides a high precision voice recognition and help deal with most complicated customer queries.

vTalk.ai anticipates to bring value to its clients with the following features:

• Trainable neural network within the tool to make future interactions more natural and human-like
• Ability to handle both incoming and outgoing calls
• Integrated tool for building and setting up various scenarios along with intents
• An option to transfer calls to human operators
• A feature of sending SMS and emails based on the call results
• A built-in analytics system with dashboards for better performance review
• Call recordings with an option to convert speech into text

The aforementioned aspects are the ones making vTalk.ai distinguishable from the competitors. With the platform you can be sure to get high-quality conversational banking solutions for a reasonable price.

Conversational AI for Banking & Finance from vTalk will automate your banking and financial tasks and improve customer experience.

Industry defines conversational banking as a digital banking approach directed at boosting bank-customer interaction. It is delivered through distinct voice banking services lying at the center of customer-centric approach.

Respectively, with proper virtual assistance tools, conversational banking aids the entire decision-making process as well as redefines customer service. Basically, with conversational technology boosted by AI you get a great opportunity to reduce customer support costs, decrease operating costs, and accelerate innovation. All these aspects create a win-win situation making customers satisfied and banks more effective.

If you are ready to bring forward the full power of conversational banking, vTalk.ai is there to help. We are ready, and the last word is up to you.

Banking voicebot is an AI-powered technology granting users an access to banking services through distinct voice commands. The latest iterations of the tool provide human-like interaction adapting to each given customer inquiry.

The future of AI in banking is bright. One can expect Artificial Intelligence to make banking services much more efficient. Moreover, AI helps enhance security and take data protection to another level.

When it comes to limitations of financial services AI, one can suggest the following:

• High maintenance costs
• Potential risk to human employment
• Regulatory and compliance scrutiny
• Complex algorithms requiring constant updating

AI in banking can be used in various ways. First and foremost, it helps improve the security of financial transactions. Second, AI makes banking services more cost-effective. Finally, AI makes banking customer-centric instead of product-centric.