AI the future of customer experience

In 2021, Artificial Intelligence augmentation will create $2.9 trillion of business value and 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity globally, according to Gartner.

Gartner defines augmented intelligence as a human-centered partnership model of people and AI working together to enhance cognitive performance. This includes learning, decision making and new experiences.

“Augmented intelligence is all about people taking advantage of AI,” said Svetlana Sicular, research vice president at Gartner. “As AI technology evolves, the combined human and AI capabilities that augmented intelligence allows will deliver the greatest benefits to enterprises.”

Artificial intelligence today is properly known as narrow AI, in that it is designed to perform a narrow task (e.g. only facial recognition or only internet searches or only driving a car). However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create general AI. While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.

Customers accustomed to the service standards of Internet companies expect the same level of consistency, convenience, and personalization from their financial service providers. In banking, they expect exceptional, seamless omnichannel experiences and innovative product value. It has become indispensable for companies to rethink the customer experience, to optimise existing and new innovations and to meet the challenge of the industry to offer a true-to-scale individual experience.

Artificial intelligence and customer experience initiatives will be non-negotiable for companies in 2021 and beyond. To remain competitive, incumbents like banks need to become artificial intelligence vision and implementation, and that means transforming the entire stack of skills, including the engagement layer, AI-based decision-making, core technologies, data infrastructure, and operating models. This is the biggest challenge, but if done right, it is also the most exciting opportunity today.

84% of customers say that the experience a brand offers is more important than the product or service itself. 88% of the most powerful B2B marketing teams are dedicated to customer experience initiatives.

By integrating the newly designed customer engagement with other levels of the AI and analytical capability stack, it can enhance a bank's competitive position and financial performance by increasing efficiency, access to and scale of customer living. For banks, integrating key personalisation elements with customers through a range of touchpoints is crucial to deliver better experiences and results.

The redesign of customer loyalty offers AI banks a deeper and more accurate understanding of customer context, behaviour, needs and preferences. The redesign of personalization offers customers not only better leads but also a more unique experience. Relevant personalization shows that if you understand the different needs of a customer, you can help him.

Data-driven insights from artificial intelligence and machine learning offer exceptional customization opportunities for connected customers looking for personalized experiences that are relevant, empathetic, and real-time. Many of the first AI developments aim to help companies expand their customer service beyond what they can do with unlimited human resources. AI technology can meet in a variety of ways the growing demand for real-time self-service experiences, from supporting voice-driven payments and transactions to automating complex decision-making and product recommendations.

By 2025, 95% of customer interactions are expected to be AI-enabled. Popular brands are leading the way by piloting interactive bots, such as Flo, a chatbot from Progressive Insurance that delivers insurance deals in the blink of an eye on Facebook Messenger.

Kai Consumer Banking is a conversational AI solution that humanizes the digital experiences customers crave. From instant translation to conversation interfaces, artificial intelligence technology has an obvious impact on our lives.

The latest innovations in Artificial Intelligence push the limits of what is possible, what is practical and what people expect from their financial institutions. Across industries, companies are investing in data analytics and digital technologies to transform the customer experience, add self-service features, modernize contact centers, and migrate legacy technologies to the cloud.

Deloitte Digital's Dounia Senawi talks about how companies are responding to increased customer expectations by investing in technology and rethinking the way everything works. Fujitsu Financial Technology Services Transforming your customer experience is life-changing for most of your customers. The pandemic has highlighted the need to invest and accelerate the pace and severity of this change.

The banking and insurance sector is a data-rich business where customers and their transactions generate enormous amounts of information. It is a rich source of insights, ideas and knowledge about what is happening, not only in real time, but also about what the future holds. Data is key to your confidence in the future, and improving the customer experience in financial services depends on it.

On this continuum, you will see metrics evolve that focus on cost, productivity, durability, loyalty, and mood to measure service experience and product engagement. Transforming customer service from a value to a cost center requires new results-based metrics to align agents behaviour with delivering your defined customer experience. How customers think about your brand is determined by every interaction, even on the phone.

California-based Pivotus bridges the gap in customer loyalty with its state-of-the-art, real-time, interactive live chat platform that helps banks extend their relationships with their customers. The company offers bankers and customers a chat platform on which they can interact in real time. The web-based workforce management application enables personal bankers to view customer histories, manage multiple chats, and provide the flexibility to bring together multiple support professionals on the same platform.

This year, customer service staff face unique challenges as they face their own new remote working environment and increased call volumes. Contact centers can improve customer success and resolution of initial calls, while reducing costs through intelligent call routing strategies, the use of alternative service channels such as chatbots and virtual assistants, self-service strategies driven by voice recognition and NLP, and recommendations for the next best actions from predictive analytics technologies.

As more interactions shift to digital platforms and the pandemic increases the use of e-commerce and telemedicine, customers expectations have become critical to understanding them. Banks have not only a financial obligation but also a fiduciary responsibility to support their customers in this difficult time.