Article
AI and video banking join forces
With technology, one plus one is often greater than two. AI and video technologies complement one another perfectly, and combining them can deliver tremendous value to any financial institution. And this is not just a futuristic vision; various scenarios can either be delivered today or will likely take shape in the not too distant future.
April 5, 2019
By Damien Simonneau, Director of Financial Services Solutions Marketing, Vidyo
Artificial intelligence is expected to play a big role in financial services — really big. According to a study by Autonomous Research, "over $1 trillion of today's financial services cost structure is exposed to replacement by machine learning and AI."
While the main use case for AI in financial services has been to shift calls to self-service or to a chatbot to lower contact center costs, there is a lot of potential to use AI for higher-value conversations. This is especially true when combining AI with another hot technology in the banking world — video.
Video banking is being widely adopted throughout the financial services industry. In fact, the latest edition of our annual video banking report highlights that 82% of financial institutions plan to offer video banking services.
With technology, one plus one is often greater than two. AI and video technologies complement one another perfectly, and combining them can deliver tremendous value to any financial institution. And this is not just a futuristic vision; the different scenarios below can either be delivered today or will likely take shape in the not too distant future.
Predictive routing
AI-powered predictive routing engines can use historical performance data and match customer and employee attributes to predict which contact center agent is most likely to achieve targeted business goals.
For those financial institutions that have video banking programs in place, it becomes possible to identify the inquiries most likely to be valuable and route them to agents who not only have the right profiles to address the needs, but are also video-enabled. Customers can then have a fully engaged, face-to-face interaction that is more likely to generate a positive outcome.
Next best action
Contact center platforms such as Genesys leverage AI to suggest the "next best action" to agents in real time. This recommendation is typically based on an analysis of the customer profile, the type of inquiry they are making, and keywords being used in the conversation.
The next best action can be virtually anything, but an obvious example is offering investment products to customers who look open to advice and have significant balances in their deposit accounts. At a video-enabled contact center, the suggestion can be to offer a particular product and to escalate the interaction to video in order to have a more engaged and effective conversation that is likely to facilitate the closing of the transaction.
Chatbot-to-human escalation
In an attempt to keep their contact center agents focused on high-value transactions, many financial institutions have started to deploy chatbot applications for lower-value interactions. However, even as chatbot technologies are rapidly improving and can effectively address basic needs, they cannot establish a personal connection that can build confidence and drive customers to share more of their needs or invest more.
What they can do well, though, is identify pivotal moments, such as when customers' emotions are running high, when they need advanced expertise, or when their inquiry requires human intervention — and escalate the conversation to a video-enabled agent who can personally handle the request with face-to-face engagement.
Thanks to this escalation mechanism, financial institutions can take advantage of the benefits of the two technologies — low cost and fast self-service through chatbot and highly engaged video conversations for the most valuable interactions — to deliver a best- in-class remote banking experience.
Biometric identification
Having a reliable way to identify a customer is a fundamental step in closing a financial transaction remotely, and is almost always a compliance requirement. In most cases, it includes verifications such as asking customers for their account number and other questions including address, birth date, and social security number.
While video banking is already bringing value to the identification process with the ability for customers to present an ID that the agent can take a snapshot of, an even bigger breakthrough will be the use of facial recognition software. An AI-based software program can analyze the video stream to verify that the photograph of the identity document that is presented matches the face of the individual who is holding it. It can also facilitate and expedite the process of checking that the document has not been forged, digitally tampered with, lost or stolen.
It will also be possible to recognize existing customers' faces so they won't need to answer any verification questions or provide documents to be identified. This will be a great step forward in both customer convenience and security.
Real-time sentiment analysis
Analysis of the video and audio streams will also dramatically enhance the assistance that can be provided to the agents. Facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and keywords all reflect underlying states of mind, and uncovering them in real time feeds more informed suggestions to agents, who can then act more effectively.
Simultaneous interpreting
Speech recognition, automatic text translation, and speech synthesis are all making rapid progress. It's easy to envision applications in the not-too-distant future that will combine these technologies with video interaction. This will enable participants to speak their own languages but see on screen or even hear a translation of what the other party is saying.
For financial services institutions, this means being able to more easily serve a global customer base and always having the best expertise available, regardless of location or language differences.
Analytics
Last but not least, contact center executives are constantly looking for ways to better collect and analyze the content of interactions to improve the quality and effectiveness of their services, provide more value to customers, and identify relevant post-contact actions. With speech recognition, the audio content of a video conversation can be transcribed into text, stored, and analyzed like any other text-based interaction channel.
Video obviously includes even more valuable analyzable information than just an audio call, a text chat, or an email. AI engines that take this information into account will enable much richer data-mining capabilities.
Video is a crucial channel for addressing cases that cannot be handled by self-service, and one that has enormous potential when combined with AI. It can and will improve the financial services experience for customer and institutions alike — especially for those inquiries that really need a human touch.
Damien Simonneau is director of financial services solutions marketing at Vidyo. www.vidyo.com/
