September 23, 2023
by Sandra Nikolov / September 23, 2023
From creative fields to e-commerce and software engineering, there’s no limit in sight for how generative AI – the tech behind ChatGPT – will change the way we live and work.
Using generative AI in fintech is no exception, as the use cases for automation only continue to get more sophisticated.
In fact, according to a recent report by McKinsey, generative AI could deliver an annual value of up to $340 billion in the banking industry alone.
One of the main areas where generative AI really packs a punch is in fintech support, as this groundbreaking tech has also revolutionized the potential of customer experience (CX) automation.
This article gives you the lowdown on why you should implement generative AI for your fintech support and provides key examples of how to get the most value out of it when it comes to supercharging your customer support.
Before we get into why and how you should use generative AI in fintech support, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what it is and how it works.
Generative AI is the latest iteration of automation technology, which powers tools like ChatGPT – which took the world by storm at the end of 2022 – as well as DALL-E, Google’s Bard, and MidJourney, to name a few.
These tools are able to almost instantaneously process huge amounts of data and then generate entirely new output – whether that be images in the case of DALL-E or text, as with ChatGPT.
The secret to these bots’ success is that they are trained on large language models (LLMs) - massive data sets of content posted online by real people.
When prompted, a text-based bot powered by generative AI can instantly comb all of this to summarize texts, perform translations, and even analyze sentiment. It can then communicate all of this in an unprecedentedly natural, conversational way.
While the uses for generative AI chatbots are many, one area that’s been getting particular attention is the utility of this tech for optimizing customer support. In fact, some reports predict that chatbots powered by generative AI will handle as much as 70% of customer conversations by the end of 2023.
So let’s delve deeper into the particulars of how this could be especially useful in the fintech industry.
Let’s face it, the emergence of generative AI has completely changed the game when it comes to support automation. One Zendesk report showed that 67% of customers surveyed actually prefer self-service over speaking with a human agent. In turn, LinkedIn posts abound about the perils of companies not integrating AI into their businesses in some form.
Simply put: Now’s the time to get started with automation if you haven’t already.
In industries like fintech, where market competition is particularly high, you certainly don’t want to fall behind the curve. But beyond simply jumping on the bandwagon, data indicates that use cases for automation are rapidly becoming more sophisticated and compelling, with the adoption of AI automation growing by 63% in financial services or finserv last year alone. And with generative AI, the list will only continue to grow.
Aside from all the hype and lofty claims, you may still be wondering just how exactly generative AI applies to fintech specifically. So let’s break it down.
Generative AI is perhaps most famous for providing a far more advanced conversational experience for customers than traditional bots. Powered by LLMs, this tech has helped chatbots do things like pass the Turing test, which is a method for determining whether machines can indecipherably mimic humans.
What this means for generative AI in fintech is that you can automate your customer support without skimping on the quality of your CX. In fact, your bot can even perfectly mimic your brand tone of voice and adapt to your customer’s mood by performing sentiment analysis.
Generative AI doesn’t just talk the talk by mimicking pleasantries better than its predecessors. It walks the walk by offering more personalized support that gives your customers the answers they’re looking for – all tailored to their specific queries and data.
With generative AI, you can connect to multiple knowledge bases or help centers to enable more localized support and set content rules that allow for more precise and customizable responses. Not to mention that you can choose from different bot personas that ensure conversations always stay on brand.
Rather than sending customers a bunch of links to generic FAQ pages for them to sift through– something that we’ve all probably experienced once or twice when dealing with an old-school chatbot – a gen AI chatbot provides your customers answers tailored more precisely to their queries.
For example, a generative AI-powered chatbot can provide info on banking policies that are specific to a customer’s region and language preferences.
This prompt level of personalized support can help significantly with reducing customer churn. That’s a pretty big deal when you consider that up to 80% of customers reported switching to a different brand after just one negative support interaction, according to a study conducted by Qualtrics.
Particularly in industries like fintech, which deal with handling people’s hard-earned cash, the goal of CX automation shouldn’t merely be deflection at all costs. Rather, your chatbot should be more of a helping hand that assists your human agents in doing their jobs better.
With generative AI in fintech, for example, your bot can converse with your customers about their queries, take into account the context and history of interactions with your brand, pull out relevant information from the chat, and instantly add it to the support ticket so that your human agents are primed to hit the ground running when a request does get escalated.
This is also true even when it comes to self-servicing on queries like card activation, checking transfer status, and dealing with payment issues – but more on all this later.
The utility of generative AI doesn’t end once a query has been escalated to an agent. Even for the heavier-lifting tasks that require a human touch, generative AI can make your agents’ lives a whole lot easier.
That’s because, in addition to pulling data and populating support tickets prior to escalation, it can craft example replies based on sentiment analysis and conversational context. This way, your human agents can offer accurate and empathetic support much more quickly. As a result, you will achieve both higher employee and customer satisfaction.
Alright, so we’ve covered some of the qualities that make this new technology worth writing home about. But we have yet to go into any particular depth about how all this translates to specific use cases for generative AI in fintech.
As we shall soon see: From card activation to providing instant info on things like transfer status, gen AI-powered chatbots and fintech go hand in hand. So without further ado, let’s talk about how you can intelligently use generative AI in fintech to enhance your CX.
Most of us have had to navigate through one of those eery automated phone menus when attempting to activate a new card. Beyond being a bit of a hassle, it also requires entering sensitive information into the void.
Thanks to generative AI, this chore can now be a thing of the past.
Instead, customers can instantly and securely activate their cards right in their mobile banking apps whilst still having the feeling of talking to a human agent. That’s because, through automation, APIs can be implemented to do things like confirming that the card number entered is correct and then requesting the card activation in your backend system.
Enabling your customers to self-serve with ease, directly in-app, by automating this essential step in the customer journey may just be the thing that sets you apart as a forward-thinking industry leader.
Being in the business of caring for people’s money means that your ability to provide the most comprehensive customer care possible is key. Of course, being there for your customers round the clock is one important pillar of doing so. From canceling a transaction to paying bills on time, your support team is likely dealing with urgent, high-stakes requests.
By implementing generative AI automation where possible – such as with address changes or password resets – your customers can self-serve whenever it suits them.
As a result, they can arrive at faster resolutions and will have higher satisfaction in choosing to trust you with their hard-earned cash. Enabling more options to self-serve at any time of day or night via chat, email, or phone will also give your agents more capacity to focus on the more complex queries when they arise.
By instantly integrating with your back office systems, your generative AI chatbot can provide customers with transfer status info directly in the chat. This can prove extremely useful for lots of reasons, such as if a customer enters in the wrong banking details when making a bank transfer, or it slips their mind that they double paid a bill.
Once your bot has instantly pulled up your customer’s transfer status, it can ask them to verify it in their account and then confirm whether they are eligible to cancel before escalating to a human agent to complete the cancellation.
We live in a globalized world, and we’re often banking across borders as well. This means that there’s a good chance fintech companies are serving multilingual customers. And trying to manage your transactions in a foreign language is even less fun than it sounds.
So if you can manage to meet your customers in the language of their choice, you can really open up new avenues not only for scaling your support offering but for your business in general.
While in the past, bots could use natural language processing (NLP) to offer multilingual chat automation, with generative AI, you can do so instantly without having to program or train your bot. What’s more, is that a generative AI chatbot can even pick up on regional dialects to offer seamless support at native-level fluency.
Thus far, we’ve covered plenty of ways you can use generative AI in fintech to optimize your CX, but we’d be remiss not to mention how to actually get started with this new tech.
Luckily, the days of needing professional bot builders with extensive backgrounds in programming or linguistics are a thing of the past. That’s because, with generative AI, you can bypass the time and effort spent painstakingly designing dialogue flows, training the bot, and maintaining it over time.
In fact, in just a few minutes, you can integrate generative AI into your customer support offering. Plus, virtually anyone can start using generative AI tools – and we don’t just mean asking ChatGPT about the meaning of life or if it can write a poem about your favorite food.
Note: Before you get started, you will need two things: a text-based source – such as your company’s knowledge base or help center – that your bot can draw upon to answer customer queries and an API integration (such as OpenAI’s open API.)
So let’s run through how you can get started with your very own generative AI chatbot.
Now that we’ve covered the why and how of using generative AI in fintech, it’s worth pointing out that there are some key ways to really get the most value out of this revolutionary technology – and avoid some of the common pitfalls associated with it.
Like any new innovation, it’s always a good idea to proceed with some caution, as there are still kinks being worked out.
ChatGPT, and other generative AI tools like it, do have their limitations. Known as hallucinations, these bots can provide inaccurate answers, often accompanied by made-up sources to back them up.
What’s more, is that a bot can have blindspots depending on the breadth of the data set used to train it. For example – and contrary to popular belief – ChatGPT is not even drawing on the entire internet when it formulates answers to your questions, so it’s far from being an all-knowing superpower.
And finally, due to things like programming biases, AI can wind up mimicking human biases in harmful ways.
Therefore, it’s important not to throw all caution to the wind when it comes to integrating generative AI into your fintech support. Instead, you’ll want to keep the following best practices in mind.
Safety and security are undoubtedly of the highest priority in the financial services industries, so it’s important to touch on how these intersect with generative AI in fintech.
Indeed, not all generative AI providers are created equally, so it’s crucial to check for safety certifications such as GDPR and SOC-2 type 2 compliance – the gold standard for cybersecurity protocols – when evaluating which automation platform to choose.
Generative AI is still quite new, and its capabilities are only beginning to be harnessed in the fintech space, so it's natural to fear the unknown to some degree. For one, the information provided by ChatGPT is not always accurate, especially depending on the kinds of queries you ask. Certainly, this is a concern when considering whether to use generative AI in fintech, but there are definitely things you can do to put guardrails in place.
Namely, it’s best to make sure the data source you connect to, such as your knowledge base, is in top shape with clear and accurate information for your bot to draw from.
You’ll also want to set clear parameters about which kinds of topics your generative AI chatbot can discuss with your customers. A good gen AI chatbot provider, for instance, will have options for setting limits on what kinds of things your bot is able to chat about in the support context. That way, you don’t have to worry that your bot will start waxing lyrical about religion or philosophy in response to a support query.
We’re only just beginning to understand all the ways that generative AI can be used in the fintech space, as this tech is starting to make its way into the mainstream. While it’s worth proceeding with caution when it comes to any new technological breakthrough, businesses that don’t use generative AI are likely to fall behind in an increasingly competitive finserv market.
Not to mention that automation is a surefire way to cut costs while simultaneously scaling your business. And that’s why forward-thinking companies are already integrating it into their businesses – whether in their backend processes or their customer-facing support.
Aside from adopting generative AI in fintech just in order to keep up with the Joneses, however, there are plenty of compelling ways that this tech can add value to your business. From offering customers 24/7 support in the language of their choice to increasing your human agents’ job satisfaction by automating their most mundane tasks, generative AI can help you scale your support and boost customer satisfaction.
With the ease of use in setting up a bot within minutes, there’s no reason why you can’t get started today.
Learn more about intelligent virtual assistants and how they can improve customer service and satisfaction.
Sandra Nikolov is a Senior Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Ultimate with a focus on the fintech industry. She is passionate about creating smart solutions to help clients enhance and scale their CX through automation.
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