February 3, 2023

The complete guide to voice bots with AI for the financial industry

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Voice bots are steadily gaining traction within the financial industry. Banks, brokerages, and other financial institutions are using these bots to offer customer service through voice applications like Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), voice bots can understand natural conversations, provide accurate answers to user queries, and create a more seamless experience for customers.

In this article, we’ll discuss the key benefits of using voice bots with AI in the financial sector, how they work, and how the financial industry can benefit from using this technology.

What are voice bots?

Voice bots, also known as virtual assistants or automated customer service agents, are computer programs designed to recognize and respond to user requests through natural language processing. Voice bots are enabled by speech recognition technology, which allows them to understand voice commands and convert them into text.

This technology has become increasingly popular in finance due to its ability to quickly process large amounts of data and provide customers with accurate information on demand. They also reduce pressure on customer service representatives by handling mundane inquiries that would usually require human intervention.

The use of AI technologies ensures that voice bots offer better accuracy in responding to customer queries than traditional customer service solutions like emails or phone calls do. This helps financial institutions provide a higher level of customer satisfaction for customers who are looking for quick answers about their accounts or services in a timely manner.

The importance of AI behind a voice bot

The success of a finance industry voice bot relies heavily on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) powering it. A voice bot is only as good as the AI that powers it. The AI needs to be able to understand the user's intent, interpret the user's input, and respond accordingly. If the AI is not up to the task, the voice bot will not be able to fulfill its purpose.

By using AI algorithms such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), voice bots can learn how to interpret and respond to user queries in a more conversational tone. This allows customers to have a much more natural experience when engaging with the bot, as they can ask questions in the same way they would interact with a person.

AI-powered voice bots are constantly learning and improving. They are able to learn from their interactions with users and get better over time. This means that they can provide an ever-evolving and personalized user experience.

AI also enables voice bots to provide financial institutions with insights based on customer interactions. By leveraging AI technology, finance companies can gain valuable insights into customer behavior and better understand their needs and preferences. This data can then be used to create more personalized services for customers and improve the overall customer experience.

Related article: A Complete Guide to Conversational AI for Banking Industry

Main benefits and limitations

Voice bots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer finance institutions many advantages over traditional customer service solutions. AI technology enables voice bots to understand most natural conversations, provide accurate answers to user queries and create a frictionless customer experience. Bots can quickly process large amounts of data, giving finance companies accurate answers in a timely manner. 

This helps financial institutions provide a higher level of customer satisfaction as they are able to respond quickly and accurately to customer inquiries. AI also allows voice bots to learn about customer behaviour and store that information to predict their needs and future preferences. This data creates more personalized services for customers, improving their experience with the company. Additionally, using voice bot technology reduces pressure on customer service personnel by handling mundane inquiries that would usually require human intervention.

However, voice bots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) have their own set of limitations. While voice bots have been shown to improve customer service, they are not without their drawbacks.

One of the main limitations of voice bots is that they usually cannot establish open conversations. AI technology enables voice bots to understand what is being said to them but they may not be able to provide a complete answer or solution for complext queries

In addition, finance institutions using AI-powered voice bots need to continuously update and train their models in order to keep up with customer inquiries and ensure accuracy in the responses being provided.

Inbound calls vs outbound calls

Voice bots also have the potential to revolutionize inbound and outbound calls within the financial industry. By automating various customer service tasks, voice bots can significantly reduce operational costs while simultaneously improving customer satisfaction. 

Inbound calls are typically initiated by customers who need assistance with a product or service, and setting up a voice bot for this purpose allows customers to access help quickly and easily. For example, a customer might call in to ask for information about their account balance or to inquire about a particular product offering. The voice bot can respond quickly and accurately to the customer's inquiry, ensuring that they receive the support they need without having to wait on hold or talk with a representative.

On the other hand, outbound calls are often used by financial organizations to promote new products or services, offer promotions, conduct surveys, and gather feedback from customers. 

 A well-designed voice bot can effectively communicate with customers in both scenarios since it can understand natural language input and generate appropriate responses based on programmed rules. For instance, when calling existing customers about a new promotion or marketing campaign, the voice bot can use its natural language processing capabilities combined with deep learning algorithms to analyze customer data and personalize each interaction. This helps to provide a more customized experience tailored specifically for each user. Additionally, using machine learning techniques like sentiment analysis allows the voice bot to identify how customers feel about certain topics so it can better adjust its conversation flow accordingly.

Related article: Customer Experience Trends for 2023

How does the finance industry benefit from voice bots?

The finance industry can significantly benefit from using AI-powered voice bots. Voice bots offer financial institutions a much faster and more efficient way of responding to customer inquiries, as well as helping them to create a detailed profile of each customer according to their preferences.  This helps companies better understand their customers’ needs and create a more personalized experience. Additionally, using voice bots can reduce the need for finance companies to hire extra customer service personnel to handle mundane customer inquiries.

You could leverage this technology in a number of ways, such as:

  • Self-service: the person calls to ask when their new card will arrive.
  • Reminders: the company calls to give reminders about outstanding debts.
  • Customer feedback: the bank calls to conduct a satisfaction survey.
  • Appointment booking: the customer calls to make an appointment with their bank officer.

Implementing voice bots within financial institutions also has implications beyond improved customer service. By automating certain tedious tasks like data entry and document review, companies can save considerable amounts of time and resources that would otherwise be spent on manual labor. Furthermore, because of their scalability and ease of integration into existing systems, voice bots can be used for an array of additional purposes such as fraud detection and providing targeted recommendations for specific products or services based on individual customer needs. 

As technology continues to advance in this area, we will likely see even more applications being developed that make full use of the tremendous potential of today’s AI-driven solutions in driving long-term success within the financial industry.

In conclusion, voice bots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer finance institutions many advantages over traditional customer service solutions. Using voice bots can significantly improve customer service and reduce the need for finance companies to hire extra customer service personnel. While there are some limitations to voice bots, overall they can be an effective tool for companies looking to improve their customer service capabilities.

About Voice, Aivo's AI-powered solution

Voice complements Aivo Suite as the solution you need to incorporate voice-automated conversational tours into your customer service. Let's take a look at some of its key features and how it works. 

Seamless conversations

Voice is a conversational AI solution, so it understands natural language and allows the user to interrupt the bot at any point in the conversation. It is not just structured stream recordings: the bot operates by slot-filling, extracting variables or keywords from the customer's query to understand its meaning and provide an instant response. In addition, it operates with neural voices that provide natural sounds, generating an experience even more similar to that of human telephone interaction.

Resolute experiences 

Today, it is common for companies to offer quick responses on their digital channels, but users still have to spend long minutes waiting to be answered if they prefer to communicate by phone call. With Voice, companies can ensure that they are truly active where their customers are, and provide immediate and responsive service over the phone as well.

Some of Voice's main functionalities include:

  • Answers to frequently asked questions

Most telephone traffic arrives with the intention of asking one of the well-known frequently asked questions. With Voice, companies can optimize the time of their agents, reserving them for more complex queries, and automating frequent answers to improve productivity.

  • Appointment scheduling and booking

This means no more time wasted on phone referrals or busy lines. With the automatic scheduling feature, customers can request appointments, appointments, or bookings that are automatically saved.

  • Automating collections through outbound calling

With outbound calls, companies can contact their database automatically. This option saves a great deal of time when it comes to proactively communicating announcements, giving notices of outstanding debts or payments, and anticipating customer needs. 

Related article: The Importance of Integrations When Implementing a Chatbot

Learning and constant evolution

Voice has an advanced analytics dashboard that allows the bot to be in a constant learning and improvement process. From the dashboard it is not only possible to monitor customer satisfaction: variables such as call duration, most asked and unanswered questions, etc. can also be measured.

Since Voice works with a speech-to-text system that literally transcribes the words of the conversation, it is possible to accurately analyze the intentions behind each sentence to provide increasingly accurate information flows.

Start using voice bots today

It is clear voice bots are the new hot commodity businesses need to integrate into their customer service model. Working alongside the current human-centered support, these technologies can help create a much more efficient and cost-effective customer service route for everyone involved. 

Using voice bots can benefit financial companies by creating a better relationship between the company and the customer. So if you would like to see your business grow, now is the time to start thinking about integrating voice bots into your business model - don’t hesitate to book a demo today!

Are you looking for new ways to improve your CX?

Our customer service solutions powered by conversational AI can help you deliver an efficient, 24/7 experience  to your customers. Get in touch with one of our specialists to further discuss how they can help your business.