Banks are exploring how to best develop and retain personal relationships as financial interactions move online.
Here’s what they need to know.
Replicating in-branch experiences isn’t only about providing customers with tailored responses and greeting them by name. It’s also about giving those customers the ability to control their interactions: how, when and with whom they handle their financial situations.
Some customers may want to call, some may feel more comfortable texting and some may change their mind and want to head to their local branch in the middle of a conversation. Chatbots — often powered by rules-based artificial intelligence — can automatically populate responses, but may fall short when it comes to fluid and intuitive communications that customers want, potentially complicating their issue resolution.
To address this shortcoming and improve digital communication capabilities, some banks have decided to build their own technology. Umpqua Holdings Corp., which has $30.9 billion in assets and is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, launched its customized Umpqua Go-To platform in 2018. The stand-alone app was developed and built in-house at Umpqua’s innovation lab, Pivotus Ventures, according to The Financial Brand. Umpqua Go-To allows customers to personally select which banker they want to interact with based on who was available online.
But many banks don’t have the bandwidth, resources or budget to build their own technology from scratch. Instead, a bank can choose to partner with a financial technology company such as Agent IQ.
The San Francisco-based fintech helps banks communicate with their customers using augmented intelligence. Augmented intelligence is used to enhance and assist human-based communication, unlike artificial intelligence, which often aims to replace it.
At institutions that use Agent IQ, customers can choose a specific, personal banker to communicate with through digital channels, which can include mobile messaging, web chat and SMS text messaging, as well as social media channels like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.
Agent IQ uses asynchronous technology: Customers and bankers can pick up conversations where they left off, at any time and through any channel. The conversation records are saved after a banker or customer leaves a session and can be referenced afterward by either party, by another banker or for compliance purposes.
Bankers are always looking to improve their customers’ experience. In fact, Bank Director’s 2021 Technology Survey found this to be the second most popular response driving banks’ technology strategy; 68% included it in their top three objectives.
And as it turns out, customers respond well to 24/7 access to personal bankers.
Independent Bank Corp., the $14.5 billion parent of Rockland Trust Company based in Rockland, Massachusetts, has seen significant engagement with the Agent IQ platform since its implementation. Since late May 2021, over 37,000 customers — approximately one fifth of their online customers — have used the platform without the bank marketing it or notifying customers of its presence, said Patrick Myron, Rockland’s senior vice president of retail network strategy and sales analytics, during a recent webinar hosted by Agent IQ. That’s an average of 500 to 600 weekly conversations that customers are opting into because they want to reach their banker digitally.
“We’ve done customer surveys,’’ he said. “The majority [of the results] are seven out of seven. They really like the engagement – the ability to talk to a banker any time they want.”
Chatbots are built to interact with customers with predetermined responses. That automation can be useful for directing traffic to certain webpages or answering yes and no questions, but many financial situations are complex and can’t be appropriately addressed solely by chatbots. Instead of being transferred to a bank representative 10 minutes into a conversation with a chatbot, Agent IQ will show the customer who’s available to communicate at the start of the interaction.
According to Bank Director’s 2021 Technology Survey, chatbots may not even be what banks want. Seventy-eight percent of respondents stated the bank doesn’t use chatbots. Only 15% had chatbots and 7% were unsure if the bank had them.
Augmented intelligence can enhance digital communication between banks and their customers, not replace it with algorithms. Firms that leverage it, like Agent IQ, may be an attractive solution for banks looking to create and maintain digital relationships with their customers.
Agent IQ is included in FinXTech Connect, a curated directory of technology companies who strategically partner with financial institutions of all sizes. For more information about how to gain access to the directory, please email finxtech@bankdirector.com.
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