How Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) Optimize Banking Experiences

The Future of Mobile Banking

Mobile banking is the new normal. 71% of Americans use online banking services at least once every month. Today, most financial institutions have banking apps that allow customers to check account balances, transfer money, and manage finances in one convenient location – with the added benefit of not having to leave their house. Having the bank at your fingertips allows for a flexible and personalized banking experience anytime.

• 71%
• of Americans use online banking services at least once every month.
  Source: Forrester

Technology that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) make self-service banking efficient and easy. Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are one such technology that can facilitate a streamlined banking experience. According to Forrester, about 30% of American financial institution customers have checked their account balances through the help of an IVA. But 30% leaves the banking industry with much room for improvement.

This whitepaper will delve into the need for AI-powered IVAs in helping banks drive personalization.

What is an IVA?

IVAs are communication tools that interact with people using AI, ML, and voice recognition technology to generate personalized responses. IVAs are intuitive and can understand natural-language customer requests through natural language processing (NLP). NLP is a learning algorithm that identifies patterns and makes decisions/predictions independently, relying on collected data and human input.

IVAs can sometimes be confused with chatbots. Chatbots are message-based technologies that allow customers to text inquiries to a virtual agent and receive immediate help through contact center AI. These virtual assistants can understand voice-based and text-based inquiries. Banking IVAs, however, can handle a more complex range of finance-related questions and transactions.

IVA Use Cases in Banking

The most common calls to financial institution customer service agents are to resolve billing issues and receive account management support – services that IVAs are well-equipped to handle. By streamlining these everyday banking tasks, customers receive resolution without waiting, and customer service agents have time to address more pressing customer needs.

For example, let’s say a customer wants to check their account balance through their mobile banking app. Using an IVA, a conversation might look like the conversation to the right.

With an IVA, the customer is helped within seconds. This is an example of self-service in action. The customer bypasses wait times and can seek this level of support at any time of day.

Top 3 Banking Use Cases Supported by IVAs

• Check balance
• Tech Support
• Transfer Money

These three tasks take agents the most time to resolve and provide the greatest opportunity for IVA automation to cut costs and increase revenue for firms. IVAs can support a wide range of similar customer service requests that improve the experiences of bank and credit union members.

Other Common Banking Use Cases

• Confirm transactions
• Escalation/complaint
• Make payment
• Stop payment
• Marketing/promotion

Benefits of IVAs for Financial Institutions and Their Members

Meaningful and positive customer experiences lead to long-term client relationships, and, as business leaders know, these relationships turn into repeat purchases and increased brand loyalty. Some people believe that only human contact center agents can cultivate and maintain client relationships, but that isn’t true.

IVAs can go the extra mile for customers through personalization. IVAs help businesses nurture leads and support customers with tailored follow-ups and communications throughout the client relationship. For example, if an IVA sees that a customer has a payment coming up or identifies a purchase opportunity that fits a customer profile, it can send a message letting the customer know and providing the next steps. Enhanced personalization is a valuable customer service tool to maintain client relationships.

Financial institutions that implement IVAs into their customer service tools will encounter benefits across all lines of business, including the existing contact center. Benefits for the financial institution include the following:

Increase Loyalty Through Customer Experience

Customer retention and loyalty are vital to all financial institutions and keeping customers happy is the way to ensure it. By answering every call immediately and providing personalized service, IVAs reduce customer wait times and increase first- touch resolutions, two important KPIs in customer service. When these factors improve, customers feel more satisfied.

Reduce Costs

Conversational AI tools like Mosaicx provide several cost-reducing features to financial institutions. For example, Mosaicx allows for 24/7 customer support without needing to invest in additional contact center employees. This saves money that would’ve been spent on onboarding, salaries, training, and overtime pay. Similarly, having technology that automates transactions allows financial institutions to have smaller contact centers that can focus on the most challenging customer service requests. Since IVAs manage common challenges customers face without a live agent, customers are able to do self-service banking. Giving customers the ability to serve themselves strengthens the customer journey and minimizes costs. Mosaicx also provides a start-continue-finish customer journey. Mosaicx seamlessly transfers a customer to a contact center agent, providing all relevant information, eliminating the time required to begin the customer service process.

Generate Revenue

How can an IVA generate revenue? An IVA informs banking customers about upcoming promotions, like extra miles if they sign up for a credit card. Once customers read about the promotion, the IVA assists them in the ordering/payment process. Virtual agents are also able to send proactive messages to customers to help them complete transactions (e.g., bill pay). By encouraging customers to engage in new banking opportunities and reminding them to pay bills, IVAs bring more money to financial institutions.

How Banks Drive Personalization with IVAs

It is no longer enough for banks to have online chatbots address customer inquiries. People want a personalized customer service experience. With AI-powered IVAs, customers have a banking experience that rivals the familiarity of walking up to a teller. Below are ways IVAs use data to provide personalized customer experiences.

Data Utilization

IVAs use AI and ML to analyze customer data to learn about customer behavior and predict customer needs. Once an IVA can predict a customer’s unique banking behavior, it can send personalized messages to customers about upcoming bills to pay as well as bank offers like extra points or investment opportunities.

Intelligent Customer Support Journeys

IVAs also follow new customers along their banking journeys. By monitoring how customers navigate opening a new account at a financial institution, conversational AI technology uses previous actions to suggest future process upgrades to make the banking journey more efficient.

Immediate Customer Service

Building on the points above, unlike conventional contact centers, IVAs provide immediate and constant service, 24/7. Customers can contact their financial institution over multiple channels, including over the phone, online, or through a mobile app. Customers can check account balances, transfer money, and confirm transactions across these channels without ever needing to speak to a human agent. IVAs also leverage customer data to improve future issue resolution.

How Mosaicx Drives Personalization

Banks have an opportunity to gain customer trust through innovative, high quality customer experience. Giving customers new technology that enhances their personal banking journey is a way to tell financial institution customers that their banking experience matters to the institution. Investing in conversational AI products like IVAs allows banks to show up for customers who may feel like their requests are being ignored.

Mosaicx enables personalized experiences for financial institution customers when they reach out for service or support. It is like having the best employee engaged in every interaction to answer questions and facilitate transactions 24/7. This is accomplished through identification, personalization, prediction, and intelligent conversation.

Identification

Mosaicx can quickly identify customers based on their phone number or account number. Once identified, IVAs can immediately access relevant information about a customer’s account status, balance, credit, transaction history, etc.

Personalized Experience and Prediction

Once Mosaicx identifies the customer, it can predict why they are contacting the organization. By using data about when a customer usually pays a loan, checks a balance, or schedules a transfer, Mosaicx easily determines the issue and possible solutions.

Intelligent Conversation

When a transaction is presented in the form of a conversation, the customer feels in control of the conversation and can get support quickly and efficiently. As Mosaicx’ IVA understands dynamic human dialogues — speech or typed — the customer can speak or type naturally and quickly get from initial contact to resolution.

How Mosaicx Helps Financial Service Providers Personalize Customer Experiences

Financial institutions have a large amount of customer data that they can use to offer more personalized banking. However, most financial institutions do not have the tools to best use that data. Enter Mosaicx. Mosaicx leverages conversational AI technology to deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences. It understands conversations and can efficiently and accurately solve customer inquiries, including moving the customer to the “next best action” using predictive intent. Mosaicx can accurately anticipate why a customer is reaching out and help customers manage their accounts, make online payments, check orders or claim statuses, and resolve common requests.

Meet Mosaicx

If you’re planning to renew or revisit customer engagement strategies, now is the time to meet Mosaicx.