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Customer experience is a competitive driver of growth when successful and the greatest source of risk when failing – with AI as its best ally. In Part 1 of this article, we’ve seen the impact AI is having in the banking sector. Now let’s take a look at its impact on the Customer Experience (CX) and the role IT Service Providers may play.
Financial Institutions benefit from having an extended customer base (with whom they have developed a long-term relationship), and from access to valuable data. However, they must transform their vision and internal processes to keep up with the Digital edgy environment.
The perks of AI for the CX
Through the use of AI, banks can reduce costs, mitigate risks, increase revenue, and ultimately improve the customer experience. This can be achieved because AI can unleash value across the customer experience by autonomously collecting data and generating actionable insights to make intelligent, convenient and informed customer-wise decisions.
According to Celent’s research [1], applying AI to the banking customer lifecycle, while continually managing risk and fraud, can help banks across four key phases: acquisition; servicing, nurturing/retention; and growth.
Gartner’s survey showed that 77% of the surveyed board members view AI as one of the biggest game-changers, if not the biggest, for their organisations. The real challenge is to turn the promise that AI holds into tangible use cases in CX. In addition, interactions with Gartner’s clients show that, for many AI initiatives, they struggle to:
- Select suitable use cases that contribute clearly to their business objectives (this note focuses on CX priorities);
- Build and maintain momentum by focusing on quick wins early on;
- Prove ROI by attributing and quantifying benefits.
Additionally, Gartner’s AI and ML Development Strategies Study found that improving the customer experience was the number one motivation for organisations that had already deployed AI/ML initiatives or were planning to do so imminently [2].
Assumptions for the near future
Gartner advanced some strategic assumptions for years to come concerning the impact of AI on the CX.
- By 2022, 20% of customer service will be handled by conversational agents.
- By 2023, 80% of consumer apps will be developed with a “voice-first” philosophy and 30% of customer service organisations will deliver proactive customer services by using AI-enabled process orchestration and continuous intelligence.
The role that an IT Service Provider may play
In this era, collaboration is key for companies to win the game of digital disruption. The fact that companies may lack some in-house expertise, in this particular case in AI deployment, represents an actual advantage for IT Service Providers which may play a major role.
Facing the current challenges of the market and the need to enhance CX as a Digital Transformation source, Celfocus’s solution Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation aims at leveraging banks’ customer knowledge while delivering a service of excellence, thanks to its modular and integrated framework which is anchored in 2 main modules. The first comprises the tools and technologies to augment customer knowledge by activating every single customer through automated AI and Cognitive data insights. While the second one provides the possibility of delivering tailored experiences that trigger new targets, portfolios and customer lock.
The fact that Celfocus Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation framework is able to automate and orchestrate back office processes, while leading to shorter turnaround times, faster answers and transaction transparency, can serve the bank with an improved service, regardless of the channel used. As a result, the customer is at the centre of the experience as it should be – enhanced through the use of automated AI.
Learn more about Celfocus Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation here.
The bottom line
Organisations who will be successful and ultimately the winners in digital disruption will be those adopting a customer-centric approach, having the necessary skills to turn vision into reality and having a transitional process in place.
Since an enhanced customer experience should be at the centre of Digital Transformation, improving it through the end-to-end process must be the ultimate goal. It may seem a paradox but banks that can focus on the customers’ needs and emotions are the ones thriving in the long run in this digitalised world.
Emerging technologies, like AI, will not just impact companies’ businesses, but they will also modify the sectors in which they operate. Beyond that, in particular the banking industry, banks should team up with IT Service Providers to be delivered the necessary technological skills and deployment to assess and guide them through their transformational process.
References
[1] Maximizing Customer Value Through AI-Driven Relationships by Celent
[2] How to Use AI to Improve the Customer Experience by Gartner
