Voice AI: Keeping customers happy

By Sourabh Gupta

With the world slowly pivoting from Covid-19 crisis management to recovery and re-opening of economies, the lockdown has impacted the way we live in a profound way. From the way customers shop to the factors governing purchasing decisions, customer demands have multiplied and organisations are reeling under its pressure. Organisations are adapting to match the new buying patterns, re-examining how goods and services are produced, distributed and marketed. Banks are no exception.

Customers are eagerly seeking out answers and advice on how to manage their investments, savings accounts, retirement, funds, debts and more at the time of uncertainty. Banks are competing for increased customer acquisition and the delivery of superior customer service. This has led to an upsurge of call volumes at customer contact centres, increasing expectations for better and quicker first-call resolution. This has led to several new problems, not to mention the mounting pressure in contact centres due to low agent call capacity. Customer contact centre automation has tried to resolve most of the problems but some still linger.

Personalisation becomes a key factor that can set one bank apart from another. Moreover, customers are now aware of personalisation and demand it from their service providers. According to an Accenture study, commercial and individual clients will remember for a long time how they are treated during the next six to 12 months.

Voice AI is leading the way in improving this experience. Voice AI deployed in customer contact centres can create tailored experiences for customers and at the same time help in reducing contact centre operation cost. According to Autonomous Next research, the aggregate potential cost savings for banks from AI applications is estimated at $447 billion by 2023.

Voice AI platforms can be used to create customer profiles during interactions, which can later be used in conversations to modulate the persona, language and attributes of the virtual agent according to the preferences of individual customers. The voice AI platform can make sure that customers receive personalised help for account-related queries, loan queries or investment opportunities based on retrieving customer information from databases and previous interactions and services that the customer had availed. For outbound promotions and offers using voice AI, customers will receive only relevant information and not be left with irrelevant spam.

Using the personalisation features, banking services can use voice AI to
Improve IVR interaction: Instead of navigating through multiple menus and dual-tone multi-frequency signaling, users can simply talk to the voice bot and get their issues resolved quickly

Improving sales: New customer acquisition/ cross-sell or upsell opportunities/ promotions and rewards Receive account-related information like balance enquiries, transaction history, card limit, bill payment date etc. for customers, welcome call and account activation, customer requests and queries like bill copy, statements, branch locator, etc., card/ loan application status, document collection/KYC. Providing personalised service experiences will increase customer satisfaction and allow banks to gain an edge over their competitors. Voice AI will enable banks to not only improve their contact centre operations, but also offer better customer service at reduced operational costs. Delivering an enhanced customer experience is king in the new normal.

The writer is CEO & co-founder of Vernacular.ai