AI allows banking institutions to better meet their customers’ demands and provide the personalized service they expect. In a dynamic economy, banking consumers need clear counsel and familiarity  – and wouldn’t think twice about switching to a competitor if they are dissatisfied. Improved customer service should be your priority for banking institutions, as customers have come to expect faster digital services and personalized service from their banks. AI can help you come good with those expectations, anytime from anywhere, on the channel your customers prefer. 

According to a Salesforce study, 25% of customers will transfer banks in 2023, with poor customer service accounting for 39% of the reasons. Customers want to know that their needs are a priority for banks, and banks that can come good with that expectation will win. 

How can banks add a more personalized touch? Here’s where artificial intelligence can help. Predictive AI can be used to predict customer churn, routing service cases, credit scoring, and fraud detection. Generative AI may help you create new content that significantly enhances service interactions. 

Banking use cases for generative AI

You can ask generative AI to help you draft emails, chat support responses, and knowledge articles, making it easier to provide more relevant and personalized assistance. AI understands natural language, allowing clients to communicate with chatbots that appear to be human. 

Because generative AI can understand text, video, and audio, it can help service reps by identifying and summarizing action items and insights from conversations, transcripts, and recordings.

Generative AI can help you evolve your customer service experiences, from no-touch interactions with self-service chatbots to high-touch scenarios like working through complex issues that require a visit to a branch.

When using AI technology, your primary objective should be better serving your customers’ requirements in order to achieve your fiduciary responsibilities. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recommended amending rules and regulations mandating asset management firms to monitor AI technologies, such as automatic responses generated by generative AI. Future proposed legislation may affect all financial services, thus banking institutions should plan ahead of time how to manage the risks involved with employing this technology. 

By merging your trusted customer data with AI, you can redefine banking customer service to increase the customer experience and loyalty.

AI can help banks deliver personalized customer service

According to Salesforce research, 63% of service workers believe generative AI would help them serve their clients faster, saving them more than four hours per week (that’s almost one month per year).

Generative AI can automatically develop relevant content based on your trusted customer data, such as action summaries and service responses. It assists agents in finding answers to commonly asked questions and issues by retrieving content from your knowledge base articles and giving them a heads-up before each call. This increases your agents’ efficiency, allowing them to focus on more complex tickets.

And it’s not only useful for service inquiries. AI can analyze client data, preferences, transaction history, and customer service records to serve up new offers, identify next steps, or provide proactive assistance for specific problems or difficulties, independent of how customers communicate. 

For example, if a customer inquires about opening a shared account, generative AI can generate a suggested response for an agent that contains financial facts personal to the consumer, as well as send a follow-up email to the client with appropriate offers. These highly personalized recommendations are made possible by AI, which uses consumer data to generate content that is better suited to real-time customer demands, hence increasing customer engagement and loyalty.

Make self-service tools user-friendly 

Salesforce research revealed that 81% of customers prefer using self-service solutions such as chatbots or how-to guides before seeking help. Self-service solutions save time and effort for both customers and banks by allowing for short, in-and-out interactions; yet, bots can be quite impersonal if not set up correctly. 

Self-service solutions should be user-friendly and seamlessly integrated with your platform. When customers utilize these tools to complete routine banking transactions, you can leverage the usage information to better serve them in the future. While you should prioritize making these tools simple and effective, you should also ensure that these services are personalized with an empathetic feel, helping to develop trust with your clients. 

Unfortunately, 59% of consumers say they frequently feel as if they are dealing with different departments rather than the same organization. Furthermore, 52% of customers describe most service interactions as disconnected. Customers want their banks to have a comprehensive view of their relationship, allowing them to avoid repeating their tale or beginning from scratch when switching between support teams, channels, and departments. 

And by combining AI with your CRM data, you can quickly establish customer behavior trends to predict what they’ll need next. For example, if a customer transfers funds across accounts regularly, the system may provide shortcuts. Alternatively, at the start of a session, it might automatically provide a short list of the customer’s most often performed tasks. 

AI can greatly improve and scale customer service in banking by providing better self-service capabilities that address more of your customers’ questions. AI-powered self-service helps banks handle large quantities of questions more efficiently, increasing customer satisfaction while lowering operational expenses. 

This enables banking customers to address issues more quickly by giving them full access to tailored services, serving up savings opportunities, and proactively recommending services that promote their financial well-being. 

Leverage data to offer proactive recommendations

Banking customers want to feel valued. But according to Salesforce research, only 37% of them say their bank anticipates their needs. That’s troubling because 50% of surveyed customers indicated they’d move to another bank if the service felt impersonal. AI algorithms can help you predict client needs and automate outreach – even before they contact you.

Predictive AI, for example, can detect patterns and notify bank employees of potential consumer needs. It can detect a customer who is building up their savings account and regularly checking their credit score. This could imply that they intend to make a purchase that may require lending services. A banking rep can then utilize generative AI to contact the customer and offer a bespoke loan based on their financial situation.

Similarly, predictive AI can alert your staff to event triggers, such as when a customer’s fixed deposit matures. Then, using generative AI, you can meet that consumer at the perfect time by creating a package of reinvestment alternatives tailored to their specific circumstances. That is what bank customers expect from their customer care.

Eventually, AI will make customized financial planning more available to all banking customers, regardless of wealth. By analyzing the massive amounts of data you already have, the AI algorithms can provide personalized recommendations based on each customer’s financial goals. This will transform the way financial advice is offered, making it more accessible and relevant to the widest possible spectrum of banking consumers.

Use AI to supercharge customer service in banking 

Despite improvements in digital offerings and capabilities, many banks struggle to retain their customers. Customer service can be the key differentiator, making them feel valued by providing individualized attention.

Still, you must consider how you will supervise AI usage. Choosing the correct technology platform is critical, and you should seek solutions that provide built-in compliance and transparency capabilities for security and control. These could include audit trails for record-keeping, data usage transparency, and automatic handover to humans. 

To build trust with their customers, banks must get to know them. To achieve this at scale, AI can assist you in connecting with customers, solving their needs, and demonstrating that you care about them now and in the future.

How can banks improve customer service and build customer confidence?

You may enhance risk management in banking by responding quickly to issues while also ensuring that customers remain happy during times of financial uncertainty.

Better banking technology can assist you: 

• Provide a welcoming environment for customers to learn. Understand what’s going on in the market and prevent consumers from making impulsive decisions about their accounts and portfolios.
• Proactively address clients’ demands. Build trust with your current customer base by providing transparency and personalized experiences. Create strong personalized relationships instead of templatized ones.
• Leverage technology to automate operations at scale. Having a consistent view of your customer data can help you generate actionable dashboards, track customer segments, and manage risk in banking. 
• Improve onboarding processes. Speed is important, especially when it comes to gaining customer confidence. A smooth onboarding procedure can make all the difference for customers seeking a more trustworthy banking experience. 
• Exceed your customers’ digital expectations with Girikon

Customers want seamless digital banking experiences. When you work with a trusted Salesforce Implementation partner, you get best-in-class technology for banking, enabling you to effectively navigate banking challenges and meet and exceed customer expectations. To learn more about how to leverage customer data to build customer confidence, connect with one of our certified Salesforce consultants today to schedule a free demo.