Situation

Customer service interactions are often a source of frustration for bank employees and customers. Though financial institutions dedicate considerable resources to customer service, many still struggle to answer inquiries quickly and effectively resulting in low customer satisfaction and high employee turnover. Contact centers answer the need, but the average phone interaction costs between $35 and $50. Even worse, the average attrition rate is 40% for customer service employees.

Challenge

A bank serving millions of customers had a contact center team of fifty people answering thousands of calls per month. Agents spent all day on the phone, answering the same questions repeatedly and dealing with customers frustrated by long wait times. In addition, the team couldn’t meet its KPIs due to constant turnover.

Solution

Together with the bank, we prioritized goals for the virtual assistant based on usefulness for customers, the bank, and employees. Starting with simple questions, we designed a user interface and defined the flow of information. We created the first “Financial Contact Center Chatbot” (FCCC), a virtual agent to act as a customer’s first contact point, guiding inquiries, producing information, and solving challenges. The FCCC enhanced the effectiveness of human agents helping analyze and route customer interactions. For each inquiry, the chatbot identified the user’s mood, analyzed the interaction, learned from how the question was asked, and ran the processes required to resolve the issue or route it to a specialist. It then produced an analysis of the interaction to streamline the process going forward and generated a report for managers.

Results

The number of simultaneous requests handled increased from fifty to more than 25,000. Resolution time decreased from an average of ten minutes to only two, an 80% reduction. With the implementation of the chatbot, the number of users served daily increased from 1,750 to more than 25,750. As an added benefit, the bank’s support teams now use it as a resource for training new employees.