#Facebook has formed a team to tackle #blockchain initiatives. And it has put the former PayPal President David Marcus in charge of the effort. Marcus’s involvement implies that the blockchain effort might have some financial services implications. Last December, Marcus joined the board of Coinbase, the #cryptocurrency exchange. Facebook announced a whole slew of executive changes […]
Bank Innovation
EXCLUSIVE — #Cryptocurrency #exchange platform #Cobinhood #goes #live today, as it gears up to launch its first digital wallet in the coming months. The online platform already has 40K signups, according to its Chief Executive Popo Chen, who told Bank Innovation the goal behind the platform is to allow traders more return on investment (ROI) […]
Bank Innovation
EXCLUSIVE – #Contactless #payment capabilities are now available on wearable maker #Garmin International’s #latest #smartwatch. Today Garmin International, along with payment #technology provider FitPay, said that its payments #feature, called Garmin Pay, is now #live on Garmin’s smartwatch Vívoactive 3. Whether the announcement, which comes just in time for Black Friday, will help lure buyers […]
Bank Innovation
Cloud accounting platform #Xero added top U.S. bank #Capital One to its roster. Ryan Himmel, financial partnerships lead for Xero told Bank Innovation this partnership is a big win for the company “not only on the account that Capital One is a huge bank, but also because we were able to deliver the finished product so quickly.” […]
Bank Innovation
#Alexa now has about 12,000 skills on its platform (the 10,000 milestone was in March) since opening it up to developers in 2015, according to Ford Harris, senior business development manager at Amazon Alexa. “When we set out to build Alexa, we were looking to bring this #Star Trek experience to customers,” Harris said during the Amex […]
Bank Innovation
Leading Accenture’s #FinTech programme is one of the most exciting jobs in the business. It gives me a great ringside seat on the latest innovations in this space and the #digital trends that will transform every area of banking in the next few years. In this, the second blog in my ongoing series, I want to focus on the new #channels that are opening up, and what they mean for how #banks engage with their customers.
Channels are critical. They’re nearly always the first point of contact between customers and financial services providers and, as such, they set expectations around the type of service that’s likely to be provided from then on. Over the years, we’ve seen many startups in the labs looking at this area. No surprise. Digital affords unprecedented opportunities for completely reinventing the quality of experience that customers receive.
Banks are adopting various different strategies for evolving their traditional channels. Some have focused on the branch as a primary point of contact, and branch network optimisation has been a theme for many of our clients, maintaining branches where they identify value and pulling back where they’re either unused or not economically viable.
Some new challengers are going mobile-only. But many in the middle are looking at a whole range of approaches. With #customer #engagement of such high importance, a key priority is enhancing channels to make them easier to use: making use of voice as an authentication tool, for example.
Whatever the course of action, all the initiatives we see have one primary objective: providing an easier and more convenient customer experience. The latest leap forward in this regard is the use of chatbots. These are like ‘live chat’ services that let people interact in real time with online services. The big difference? There’s a robot not a person at the other end of the proverbial line.
Chatbots have been around for years in many different forms. Old-school messengers like ICQ, for example, had a simple version of this #technology that exercised call and response based on hard-coded logic and/or guesswork.
It might seem counter-intuitive that a command line-based interface would be the next big thing. But it’s a trend that’s been prompted by platforms. Facebook’s chatbot platform, for instance, has proved particularly popular with some sectors of the population. So have the platforms offered by WeChat, Snapchat and WhatsApp. The ease of interacting with all of these via mobile has been a major factor in their uptake.
The chatbot model has evolved from answering relatively simple questions to leveraging machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and textual analysis APIs to answer more complex ones. These models learn over time, getting better at interpreting our intentions and executing them quicker.
Some chatbots are standalone apps. London-based startups in this space include Plum, Chip and Cleo . Plum’s been promoted as the first AI-powered Facebook chatbot that lets customers ‘micro-save’ small sums without having to think about it. It does this by connecting to users’ current accounts, learning their spending habits, predicting how much they can afford to save and automatically depositing small amounts into their Plum savings account on a regular basis.
Chip’s another micro-saving chatbot. The startup’s USP is that it opted to develop its own iOS and Android chatbot, rather than depending on an existing messaging app. Cleo, meanwhile, is an AI-powered chatbot that lets users check all their bank account and credit card data in one place. By allowing them to keep tabs on their spending, it helps users improve budgeting and get smarter with their money. The chatbot also suggests ways to improve saving, whether that’s rationalising subscriptions or identifying better value financial products.
The next big trend could see people engaging with a bank’s/partner’s third-party proprietary chatbot as a servicing platform (“tell me my balance”, “send money to X”, “tell me when my repayment is due”…etc). A number of players have been looking at how services might be provided through other people’s channels.
But will incumbent banks be willing to provide APIs so they can form part of other people’s bots/platforms (like Monzo’s done by enabling its service to be used on Amazon’s Alexa)? It’s an interesting question. Will they be comfortable with sensitive customer data being relayed through other peoples ‘walled gardens’? In some respects, PSD2 may answer this question for them.
With 2017 being touted as the ‘year of voice’, expect to see more vendors seeking to launch similar propositions to Amazon’s Alexa. As that happened, perhaps we’ll leap from text to voice even quicker than we think. For banks, this will add momentum to their push to reduce the number of calls real people need to answer.
There’s a lot of opportunity right now. But banks should exercise caution in how they expand the channels through which they engage—and as they move forward, do so consciously and strategically. Otherwise costs will continue to go up, with customers fragmented across both low- and high-cost channels. Leaders in this area will have a clear point of view on their channel strategy, and they’ll apply this thinking to their response to PSD2/open banking.
That said, people still like to talk to people. And that’ll never change. We’ll be watching closely to see how this space evolves.
Thanks for reading.
The post New channels, new voices: Customer engagement goes digital appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
Another bank is #live with a digital #wallet. #Wells #Fargo & Co. joins JPMorgan Chase and Capital One in launching a bank-branded mobile payment platform, or digital wallet. These instruments for making transactions via mobile phone are meant to compete with PayPal, which has been abuzz lately with rumors of a possibleRead More
Bank Innovation
Singapore is pushing to become a key #fintech hub not just for Asia but for the world.
FinTech – Finance Magnates | Financial and business news
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