Voice banking is the new way to bank digitally in 2022 and beyond. Here’s why YOUR bank needs voicebots for superior customer experiences.

Voicebots are emerging as a game changer in banking and financial services. As an industry that’s always been a forerunner in adopting innovative technology, Voicebot is helping them meet customer expectations in the best possible way. 

As per a Cognizant survey, customer behaviour is changing from using the eyes to read text and fingers to swipe, to using voice and ears to talk and listen. Voicebots have a clear win here. They surveyed 1400 respondents and 80% of people felt voice AI has a game-changing impact on how the banking sector operates. 

Conversational AI blends voice technology with AI to make human-to-machine communication more natural and human-like. In this article, we’ll see how the banking sector is using voicebots to improve customer experience and drive business growth. 

What can voice banking do today? Here are the top 5 voice bot use cases

Voice banking is the technology powered by AI that allows users to access banking services through their words or voice commands. For example, a customer can either call their bank’s voicebot or talk to the official voice assistant and enquire about their account balance, locate a nearby ATM, block their card, etc. 

There are many use cases of voicebots in the banking sector. We look at the top 5 in this blog.

1. Customer support: resolve frequently asked questions right away

In the banking industry, customers usually across similar types of queries. 

• What is my bank balance?
• Where is the nearest ATM?
• How to change the registered address with my bank account?

These are some of the most commonly asked questions every customer support team in a bank receives. 

A voicebot can smoothly guide your users through these questions from A to Z. A smart voice banking bot can talk to your users like a live representative does, and lead them to apt resolutions. Because the response is quick, it reduces customers’ wait time and resolution time for FAQs. 

This is exactly something a basic IVR lacks, a technology many banking services are still using. While an IVR can merely collect information and transfer it to an agent, a banking voicebot can alone resolve most level 1 questions. This frees up room and time for your agents to focus on more complex questions.

2. Upsell / Cross-sell: suggest intelligently 

Customers are always looking for the best option from the range of services available. Let’s take the example of a credit card. A bank provides different types of credit cards, depending on your spending, the reward expectations, where the credit card can be used, interest rates, international usage, etc. 

A voicebot can ask relevant questions and suggest the best option to the customer. It helps customers make decisions quickly and complete the purchase. And this kind of interaction is very personal, making the customer experience 10x better. 

On the other hand, a traditional IVR system or a website does nothing but delivers generic product suggestions. Voice banking can go a step further and suggest products based on the account information (demographic, account type, etc.) and interaction history too. Intuitive, smart suggestions that are personalised can make all the difference.

3. Detect fraudulent activities right away

As technology advances, so do new ways of cybercrime. People place a lot of trust in banks and it’s important for banks to keep funds protected in every way they can. Fraudulent activities can be detected and flagged by voicebot AI’s state-of-the-art fraud detection algorithms.

A quick-witted voice banking chatbot can pick up on various verbal and behavioural cues in the speaker’s vocal input to detect fraud before it occurs. How can you train your banking voicebot to do this?

• Review and analyse past fraudulent calls 
• Use a dataset of common phrases and keywords scammers use
• Use a performance sheet to flag calls based on these trigger phrases 

A big advantage voicebots have in the banking sector over traditional IVR (or the bank’s website) is their ability to map emotions and urgency in the user’s speech. AI powers voicebots with sentiment analysis to understand the tone and emotion in the user’s speech. It helps identify the right user, and note the urgency in their speech.

You can train a voicebot to identify conventionally fraudulent behaviours. This way you can mitigate risks as and when they come. Talk about keeping customers loyal, keeping their data safe is the first step. 

4. Personalise interactions: stay ahead on customer info with tech integrations

No two customers can be alike. And so, one of the biggest drawbacks IVR systems and banking websites today have is the lack of personalisation. Every user will have different questions to be answered and varying expectations to be fulfilled.

A smart voice banking bot will know your customer’s details (through your CRM) and even your customer’s preferences (through your marketing automation tool) before it can give an educated, well-thought-out response. Your tech integrations will let you gather data as and when needed.

5. Loan and Debt Recovery: Follow up and engage customers better

Customers use banks for getting loans and credit cards. Customers then pay EMIs to settle the debt. Banks involved in such services, have to follow up with customers in loan or debt collection.

Voicebots can be used to send reminders to these customers. And since these are bots, customers are more comfortable talking to them honestly than with humans as they feel it’s less judgemental. 

But is voice banking safe? 

One of the top concerns for the banking industry is safeguarding their clientele’s financial information. Security reigns supreme for financial institutions. 

Voice technology is evolving rapidly and a lot of leading researchers are using AI to improve voice recognition technologies. When a user calls a voicebot, the AI matches the user’s voice with several unique identifiers. 

In addition, if something looks out of the ordinary, AI triggers a whole set of measures to ensure there’s no breach in security. In a nutshell, the future is bright for security in voice banking. 

Refining and getting your voice AI ready for the future

Voicebots are built with simplicity in mind. Using voice is natural to the users. Calling customer service is a familiar action and faster too. Today, customers are looking for convenience and voicebots are delivering on it. 

Inefficient IVR systems have alienated customers from phone banking. But voice banking chatbots will change that with quick, efficient responses that save time, money and a lot of worries. 

A research study by Strategy& at PWC shows that banks can become efficient by up to 35% by deploying voice AI across their front and back-end processes. 

Verloop.io is the leading voicebot technology provider for customer support teams. Our Voice AI is fortified with proprietary NLP and spoken language understanding (SLU), our offering support to people as, when, where, and however they need it.

Learn how you can use a voicebot to improve your customer support experience by talking to our experts!