BOT BRIEF

8 Things Your Bot

Should Do to Make
Customers Smile

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 BOT BRIEF

8 Things Your BotShould

Do to Make Customers Smile
There are good reasons to be excited about bots.
There’s no need to download a new app for every service. You can chat with your

33,000
friends, order food, get a ride with Uber, and transfer money, all without leaving
your favorite messaging app. Chatbots are conversational—no need to learn a new
interface or navigate complex menus. BOTS ARE NOW RUNNING IN
FACEBOOK MESSENGER.
Chatbots are casual yet useful—just what millennials seem to like. And they are
available to serve millions of customers 24/7—a perfect fit for companies that
want to deliver instant customer service while cutting costs.

And bots can run on popular messaging platforms that have billions of uses -
over 33,000 bots are now running in Facebook Messenger.

But not all is rosy in chatbot kingdom. Examples of poorly designed bots are easy
to find, even among the highest profile ones. Many of them will make you shrug at
their lack of effectiveness or even lough out loud when you witness their clumsy
responses.

Given the widespread immaturity of these chatbots, it’s no wonder that when it The Poncho weather bot gets
comes to banking and finance, many industry experts claim bots are not ready confused even by simple questions

for prime time.

This is not stopping banks and other financial

institutions from moving forward with their plans
to launch AI-powered bots, recognizing that early
shortcomings of the technology can be overcome
and not willing to concede the chatbot channel to
new players that are making a play for the incumbents’
share of wallet.

Financial institutions are faced with the challenge

of striking a balance between the need to utilize
innovative approaches to better serve their customers
and the risk of losing the confidence of their
customers by delivering an uneven experience.

Financial institutions are moving forward with their plans

to launch AI-powered bots

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While bots are new and will take time to mature, there are several key
requirements they must be able to accomplish in order to be seen as
useful and trusted by customers when it comes to their finances.

1. Carry an intelligent conversation

Many of the bots we see today utilize simple natural language processing that
seems cool at first but quickly falls apart as the conversation progresses. To
carry an intelligent dialogue, the bot must be able to maintain the context of the
conversation (this is where the Poncho bot fails in the example above).

 t the same time, it has to be flexible enough to recognize that natural

A
conversations don’t always progress linearly – the bot must be able to process an
unexpected reply and adapt to changes in the course of the conversation.

2. U
 nderstand personal context
A smart bot is able to understand individual customer situation and needs in
order to provide content, advice, and offers that are tailored to each customer at
A smart bot can respond to changes in
any given moment. If all the information is generic, it will be shallow, unengaging, the course of the conversation

and in many cases, not very useful.

3. A
 ccess real-time transaction data
If the data presented by the bot is outdated and inaccurate, customers will
very quickly lose trust in the information and stop using it. For example, a
recommendation by the bot to make a payment when another transaction just
posted could result in overdrafting my account—obviously not a scenario that
would make me trust the bot with my finances.

4. R
 euse existing content
As the number of channels used by customers continues to increase, creating
new content repositories for each channel becomes a burden and a challenge
that most financial institutions cannot keep up with. At the same time, customers
expect the bot channel to be at least as knowledgeable as existing channels.
With this requirement in mind, it is crucial for the bot to be able to access content
created and maintained in digital repositories used by existing channels (e.g.
webpages, FAQs).

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5. Be useful
If all a bot can do is show my account balances, it’s not going to increase
engagement. The bot must have deep enough knowledge to be helpful, at least
on some specific topics (e.g., help me save more, manage my rewards, etc.)
That’s not trivial, and that’s why bots need to be purpose-built – you can’t expect
a bot to know everything, but you want it to have deep knowledge on the issue
you are trying to get help with. And with PayPal noaw supporting payments
through Facebook Messenger, the bar has been raised once again, as customers
expect to be able to transact through the bot channel.

6. W
 ork seamlessly across channels
Customers expect a consistent experience across the digital landscape—online,
mobile app, Facebook Messenger, Amazon’s Alexa, etc. A conversation may
start in Facebook Messenger, move to Amazon’s Alexa, and continue in the
bank’s online or mobile app. Creating the bot as yet another operational silo
is a real danger for banks – they must integrate the bot into their overall
omnichannel strategy.

7. L
 earn quickly and get smarter with time
To deliver a true personalized experience, the bot must get to know customers
better through ongoing interaction. It should be able to take cues from the way
individual customers react to information and advice provided by the bot as well The bot should have deep knowledge
to help with specific issues
as explicit feedback provided by the customer—using this information to adjust
to personal preferences over time.

8. Anticipate customer needs

As much as people are excited about bots, usage data show that almost half of
all bots are only used once, never to be contacted again. Undoubtedly, this has
to do with the shortcomings of early implementations discussed above, but
even more adept bots may suffer a lack of engagement. You can’t just sit back
and wait for the customer to approach your bot. To get customers in the habit
of conversing with your bot, it needs to proactively reach out to customers with
information, insight, and advice – presented at the right time and place based on
predictive analysis of individual customer needs.

Is your bot ready for Day One?

To learn more about Personetics Anywhere and how it can help your financial institution launch a
bot solution that is ready to serve your customers on Day One, contact us today for a free demo.

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