As more financial institutions adopt chatbots to converse with their customers, the numbers reveal not just cost savings but increased efficiency. Galileo Financial Technologies, the technology platform behind SoFi, has seen significant improvements—such as response times improving by 65% and a 50% reduction in chat drop-offs—when customers interact with an intelligent digital assistant.
These developments make a compelling case for any bank looking to improve both customer relations and the bottom line. In a PaymentsJournal webinar, Dave Feuer, Chief Product Officer at Galileo, Diane Tucker, Senior Vice President for Global Operations at SoFi, and Christopher Miller, Lead Analyst of Emerging Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how AI chatbots are transforming businesses.
Capturing Micro Moments
The first step in designing how conversational AI should interact with a customer is analyzing their intent. Why is the customer seeking assistance? Insights can be drawn from their recent activity, current events, and the products or services they use. Understanding—or even predicting—the reason behind the interaction enables a tailored experience that shows the bank’s focus on the individual.
It’s not just about cost savings; it’s about fostering deep engagement. Opportunities to capture significant moments for a customer are known as micro moments. Customers often reach out to their bank when something has gone wrong. It’s up to the bank to build on that engagement, earn trust, and turn that micro moment into a spotlight moment—one where the customer feels their needs were met quickly, efficiently, and in a personalized, customer-centric way.
“Micro moments are about being where a customer needs you to be, and staying out of the way when they don’t,” said Feuer. “You want to make banking seem easy, personal, and connected but not feel like it’s imposing. Don’t send push notifications five times a day to annoy a customer. Don’t make it take 10 minutes to identify who you are and why you’re reaching out. Banks should know their customer is, and so should your intelligent digital assistant. It’s up to the AI agent to humanize the experience, to provide the confidence that their problem is going to be solved.”
When more help is needed, the handoff between the chatbot and the agent has to be seamless. If the agent has full context, customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
“That’s something we all hate doing when it comes to customer service,” said Tucker. “I just told you my problem, I gave you all the context, and now I have to start all over. As part of our vision, it’s almost like a transfer from person to person, versus the archaic chat tool that requires a repeat for the human agent.”
Miller added that generative AI and consumer-facing AI agents are sometimes portrayed as capable of solving every problem.
“What I’m hearing here is a narrow case of a specific agent that is designed to solve the particular problems of a member of a particular financial institution,” said Miller. “We have to remember that there’s a specific person with specific needs, and that’s the value of AI.”
Seeking Self-Serve
Gauging the customer’s emotional state is a key part of that. If someone is a victim of fraud or there’s money missing from their account, that call needs to reach a human. Galileo leverages sentiment analysis to detect customer emotions in real time.
People want their problems solved fast. Speed is the number one driver of customer satisfaction. Second is efficacy—resolving the issue on first contact.
Complicating matters is that there is now an entire generation that does not want to speak to humans. This emerging group grew up with purely digital experiences across every aspect of their lives and expects that to extend to their banking relationship. At Galileo, 50% of customers are disappointed if they can’t self-serve. The digital assistant provides the ability to deliver on that promise.
“Many of our members prefer not to talk to someone, and they’re disappointed when they have to talk to human,” said Tucker. “They don’t mind it, but they would rather self-serve.
“One of my favorite use cases is applying for a loan. Debt and income can be very confusing and frustrating and can lead to an emotional moment,” she said. “We provide the bot as a help tool to guide them through the decision making without having to pick up a phone or without having to talk to human. At the end of the day, satisfaction is being delivered through conversational AI.”
Personalization often comes down to understanding the customer’s personality in order to customize the experience. One person might welcome being presented with new options, while another just wants to check their balance and would find it intrusive if a bot interrupted them.
The character of the institution also matters. A traditional bank may want to keep things coldly professional, whereas a fintech might aim for a tone that’s young and hip. It’s not just about understanding the customer’s emotion—it’s also about projecting the institution’s brand personality.
“It goes back to knowing our members and what channels they prefer to communicate with,” said Tucker. “If they’re relying on conversational AI to get their money, so that they can spend less, why not make the AI agent their financial assistant? We have to make sure as we evolve, we meet consumers where they are. If companies claim to be member centric, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all. It’s a one-to-one strategy.”
It’s Not a Crock Pot
Banks can now analyze the frequency and depth of AI interactions, as well as the rate at which conversations escalate to human agents. This helps gauge how much customers trust the intelligent digital assistant. The ideal outcome is a win-win: improved response times and fewer dropped conversations.
“For us it’s about making sure that we’re there for customers wherever they are in their journey, and figuring out the key micro moments in which to surface the intelligent digital assistant,” said Feuer. “So the question is, how can we be there? Is it speaking experiences, is it an in-vehicle experience, or is it micro experiences like on a watch? What are the surface areas in which a customer expects their bank to be there for them, connecting into the fabric of experiences and really providing the same context across all channels? How to attack those surface areas is where we’re spending most of our time.”
According to Tucker, some people make that mistake of thinking you can simply bolt it on and it will work. “It is definitely not a crock pot,” Tucker said. “You can’t just set it and forget it. You have to ensure that to you understand what you’re trying to solve for. We do a lot of research into understanding what our members are contacting us about and understanding what problems we want the chatbot to solve.”
Miller noted that the conversational AI servicing approach isn’t really about AI at all. “It is about an approach to determining needs for customers and then applying whatever technologies are appropriate,” Miller said. “A lot of folks are being told by their boss that they need to have an AI strategy. You don’t need an AI strategy; you need a business strategy.”
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