Now is the time to go beyond FAQs and leverage the full potential of virtual agents

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has intensified pressure on contact centres. First, the number of customers contacts has increased. A major UK bank saw call volumes rise with more than 40% in March and NatWest stated in April call volumes have increased tenfold. Meanwhile, customers reported extremely long wait times on Twitter, complaining about customer service. Second, financial institutions are being confronted with the emergence of new contact reasons or ‘intents’. Customers in financial distress require empathy to resolve their queries, as well as expertise. Freeing up human agents by utilising virtual agents where possible is now more important than ever to cope with this increased and changed demand.

In recent years, many financial institutions have launched virtual agents in an attempt to reduce costs, increase operational efficiency and improve customers satisfaction. Most banks (including neobanks) in the UK have launched branded FAQ virtual agents (e.g. Rita from Revolut, Arti from NBS, Cora from RBS, …). These virtual agents are usually heavily scripted with customers having to use structured inputs (buttons) to interact. They also do not solve queries and redirect to other channels like the website, mobile app or call centre.

In my experience, FAQ virtual agents have not been able to reduce the pressure on contact centres. Customers are unable to perform transactions and cannot get personalised advice. Since most chatbots are only capable of providing information, customers often still pick up the phone to get things done. Exceptions like Erica from Bank of America have shown that it is possible to create end-to-end transactional virtual agents that take away the need for human intervention for paying bills, reporting lost cards and managing scheduled payments.

There are parallels to be drawn with previous evolutions the banking industry has been through. Online banking was offered as early as the nineties, but customer use only really took as of the late 2000’s. The rise of mobile banking was enabled by the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and then Android smartphones in 2008. It took off from 2010 and adoption is still growing. Each time, the same root causes were responsible for the relatively slow uptake: immature technology, customer trust issues and a clunky customer experience. Virtual agents face the same issues today, but the technology is maturing fast and almost 50% of customers are open to banking via virtual agents, finding it faster and more convenient.

Financial institutions should take advantage of three enablers that help unlock the full potential of virtual agents:

1) NLP/NLU technology, which has matured with several vendors like Google, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft improving their services, providing not only better NLU but also support for more languages.

2) Conversational middleware that facilitates the creation of conversational flows that are more visual and thus accessible to non-technical folks.

3) The recent focus on APIs by banks, driven by Open Banking, allowing an easier integration with backend systems.

Now is the time to go beyond FAQ chatbots and create virtual agents that can handle end to end complex transactions.