Financial institutions aren’t known for their innovation. Traditionally, bureaucratic processes and red-tape slowed the pace of change within these organizations. But not anymore. Tech companies are driving the digitization of this industry (and dragging old-fashioned providers into the future).
Especially with the emergence of generative AI, which has radically expanded the capabilities of automation, it’s time to put the skepticism to rest around using chatbots in fintech. In fact, according to our in-house trends research, adoption of AI automation has grown by 63% in financial services thanks to breakthroughs like generative AI, the tech behind ChatGPT.
It’ll come as no surprise then, that forward-thinking fintechs are looking to implement automation solutions for their customer support. Here are 5 ways that fintech companies can use customer service automation to supercharge their support.
1. Be there for your customers 24/7
When it comes to their hard-earned cash, customers don’t like to wait for an answer. They want their problems solved immediately, no matter what time it is. That’s why it’s so important for fintech customer service teams to deliver round-the-clock support and fast resolutions.
For companies with a global customer base, like international money transfer provider TransferGo, the need for high-quality, 24/7 support is especially acute. That’s why Povilas Ciuplys, TransferGo’s Chief Customer Officer started to look for an automation solution. As well as creating better experiences for customers, automating routine requests will benefit agents too:
“A good employee experience is one where you challenge your staff in just the right way — rather than making them deal with tedious and repetitive tasks.”
- Povilas Ciuplys, Chief Customer Officer, TransferGo
Of course not every interaction can be fully automated, especially when sensitive customer data is involved. But a fintech chatbot can easily handle self-serve customer intents (such as password reset or address change) around the clock — without any need for agent involvement. Just be sure to choose an automation provider who, like Ultimate, makes security and privacy their number one priority.
What’s more is that with the help of generative AI customers can really have their cake and eat it too. That's because they can receive instant support for their queries while also having more natural, human-like conversations with your chatbot than was ever possible before.
2. Solve issues faster with smart triage and data collection
For issues that do need to be escalated to an agent, partial automation is still incredibly useful for fintech companies. By collecting information upfront, automation helps support teams to reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) and deliver better customer experiences. A chatbot in fintech that's powered by generative AI, can talk with your customers about their issues, gather any relevant personal information from them, and add it to the support ticket so that your agent is primed to hit the ground running when queries do get escalated.
One example where smart triage and date collection drastically enhanced the customer experience was at the sustainable mobile banking company Tomorrow. With the help of Ultimate's chat automation solution, they managed to cut their AHT in half . Now — with a chatbot taking care of routine requests — they’ve hit a 30% automation rate across all chat conversations. This allows Tomorrow’s support team to dedicate more time to complex cases that require an agent’s talents.
Building on this success, Tomorrow decided to join Ultimate’s beta testing program for our Ticket Automation solution in the Freshworks ecosystem. Ron offered this advice to other CS leaders thinking about automating their support:
“Don’t be shy about introducing your customers to automated replies. They will appreciate the fact that someone is taking care of their request immediately.”
- Ron Gerber, Head of Customer Support, Tomorrow
As with chat, Ron and his team could build out automatic ticket responses to request additional details (such as date of birth, account number, or transaction reference) from customers. This pre-escalation triage means that once agents get to a ticket, they have the context they need to resolve issues quickly.
Learn more about process automation for fintechs.
More on Ticket Automation
3. Cut ticket backlogs and manage surges in support request volumes
Problems are unavoidable — particularly in such a disruptive and fast-moving industry as fintech. But while you can’t control when issues will come up, you can plan for how to manage the aftereffects.
When UK-based fintech company Pockit reached out to us at Ultimate, they were struggling with a ticket backlog of 17,000 emails. Complications with a third-party supplier had forced a two-month hiatus on all transactions — and agents didn’t have capacity to respond to all of the support requests that flooded in. Enter: AI-powered automation.
“In just two months, we were able to reduce about 95% of our support tickets backlog. We also reduced our response time from weeks to under two days, thanks to Ultimate’s Ticket Automation.”
- Jamie Hopper, former Customer Service Manager, Pockit
Ultimate’s native Zendesk integration meant Hopper and his team could integrate their automation solution into their CRM software — allowing them to identify and deflect their most frequent customer intents. Now, with CS automation in place, Pockit can seamlessly manage future surges in support requests.
4. Provide accurate support with suggested answers
Accuracy and consistency are key when supporting customers through troubles with their finances. Whether it’s helping someone to fill out a fraud claim, or guiding them through the process of updating their account details — you’ll want to provide them with the most accurate and up-to-date support. An AI chatbot for fintech can certainly help. And once again, generative AI comes through to drastically enhance the powers of automation when it comes to providing accurate support with suggested answers. That's because it can instantly craft example replies for your agents based on sentiment analysis.
At Tomorrow, Gerber and his team quickly learned to love using Ultimate’s suggested answers tool. Powered by natural language processing (NLP) technology, their chatbot can reliably understand a customer’s intent and then offer agents an assisted reply. Not only does this improve consistency, but allows agents to answer customer queries faster.
5. Offer multilingual customer care
With 75% of customers more likely to choose brands that offer customer service in their native language, multilingual support is no longer just a nice-to-have. But hiring and training agents to cover each of the languages your customers speak can be costly and time-consuming.
Here’s where AI comes in. With the help of Ultimate’s solution, TransferGo can now offer chat support in multiple languages: including Polish, Turkish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian. Similarly, Tomorrow rolled out multilingual chat automation to serve their customers in both German and English – with plans to add more languages in future. With generative AI, your chatbot even recognize and mimic regional variations with native level fluency -- all without having to train it to do so.
Implementing an AI chatbot in fintech customer service teams is a no-brainer. From providing 24/7 support to amazing CX — our customers have seen the benefits to prove it.