Chatbots are growing in popularity in the banking sector

Chatbots are being used in multiple different areas by banks large and small. Even traditional banks around the world like Bank of America dozens of other larger banks are starting to utilize automated discussions to improve customer support, gather more leads and provide an overall better customer experience.

All conversations with bots are also recorded and can be used to build a lot of data, that can help decision making in the future.

Chatbots tools can be used on almost any device with internet. This means  your customers phones, laptops, or even standalone kiosks in your branch offices.

‍Marketing activities and lead generation

Chatbots can be utilised by banks in multiple different marketing activities. We see that banks gain leads a lot through interactive content such as calculators, estimators and other tools. Chatbots can be used to create this type of solutions

For lead generation and marketing we strong recommend using a scripted chatbots instead of an ”open question” type bot. The difference is that with a scripted chatbot users can only answer with pre-created answers.

Example use cases for marketing activities:

1. Loan calculators, insurance calculators, application forms
   
   You can utilize the chatbot to give your users a loan estimate, and then gather their lead details or book a meeting with a bank. This can be utilized for bank loans, car loans, business loans or any other types of campaigns.
   
   You can also build application forms that get filled in a chatbot format instead of a traditional format.
   
2. Part of direct outreach campaigns
   
   As cold emails and cold calls are going out of chatbots not only present a less irritating front but also add a novelty factor to the entire process of lead generation.
   
   Instead of a form using a chatbot provides a novel entertaining way for users to engage with a brand.
   
3. Recruitment
   
   Chatbots are a great way to filter recruitment leads. You could build a script that filters out bad quality candidates and focuses on the good ones. These leads can be integrated into any systems.
   
4. Lead generation and lead routing from front page
   
   On your front page you can have a lead routing chatbot that will direct certain customers to certain pages.
   
   For complex questions or questions that the chatbot doesn’t understand we would recommend users to log in to their online banking and we can have a separate online.
   
5. Sales material (Daily exchange rates, Financial tips, budget planning, etc)
   
   Chatbots can be used as a part of a banks sales material, and we can create graphical chatbots that tell the story of being a customer of a certain bank step by step.

Customer support

Banks have numerous of customer requests that are completely repetitive. From a customer support bot, we recommend using a bot that is only available once an user has logged in to the online banking, so you can verify the identity for any issues.

For banking questions we recommend a FAQ type bot, that has livechat support linked to it if the bot is unable to answer. The goal is that the bot can answer up to 90% of answers, but 10% of questions continue to live support team or call centers.

Use cases for customer support bots in banking. All of the use cases listed below can be developed into a single bot.

1. Lost credit card cancellation
   
   One of the repetitive use cases is the credit card blocking due to theft or lost card. You can create a bot that will do this rapidly.
   
2. Customer support and FAQ answers (on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter)
   
   Every bank has a long list of repetitive questions that their customers are asking. A chatbot can answer the most common questions easily. These could be like:
   
   Where is my nearest branch, where is my nearest ATM, how much is there in my account, what kind of loans you offer and a lot more.
   
3. Feedback collection
   
   After an user has done an action, you can easily request them to answer a set questionnaire through a chatbot to get feedback.
   
4. Money transfers
   
   Please transfer 200 from my account to bank number x. Money transfers are also possible through chatbots.
   
5. Crisis communication
   
   Chatbot in your website is a fast and low work way to communicate any information in a crisis. For example with the current Covid-19 crisis, you could easily communicate your processes to your customers.

Chatbots for banks Internal use‍

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Often forgotten part of chatbots is the internal usage. You can create all similar use cases for your internal team. The chatbot could be used to send SMS to all your employees, with answers processed, or then be placed in your intranet or website.

Use cases could for example be:

• Internal hiring and job listings
• Internal applications and forms
• Employee satisfaction questionnaires
• Complaints questionnaires. You can get an overview of happiness in your organization.
• FAQ answers
• Communication in Crisis for example Covid-19

Other benefits

From any of the customer support or lead generation activities, you get statistics that can help you build your banks customer support, or new products.

You will receive a list of questions and answers which is very useful data in the future. You will also be able to find out automatically what your customers are asking for, which might be a tool that helps to keep your bank relevant.