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BAC Credomatic, one of the main banks in Central America, is available in six different countries and uses its chatbot to assist all its clients equally.
In addition to understanding the regionalisms of each country and offering solutions for each one, the bank stands out for providing integrations that turn their bot into a full-on banking assistant
Martín Frascaroli, CEO at Aivo, spoke with José David Rojas Castro (Customer Experience Deputy Manager), Joaquín Vargas Aubert (Digital Experience Manager) and Daniel Rodriguez Quiros (Product Owner) to learn about their post-pandemic CX strategy.
BAC's automated banking assistant
Martín Frascaroli: How important is the virtual assistant for the bank?
Joaquín Vargas: It is very important. In our digital strategy at BAC our goal is to be the first and to be the best. We put a lot of effort into thinking about technology based on the customer experience and seeing technology as part of a comprehensive value proposition. Same with the bot, it works as a fundamental piece of the puzzle to offer an efficient experience for the business and comfortable for the customer.
We come from a fast-paced year, many organizations accelerated their digital transformation and incorporated new channels. Do you think that all the digital acceleration initiatives are here to stay?
José David Rojas: Yes, I think they are here to stay. The pandemic has brought visibility and confidence to many people of the digital options that exist and their proximity. The pandemic helped us to have more barriers to go to the physical store and that pushed them to try digitization.
In the case of the bank, we have taken several steps and thanks to having advanced in a digital strategy we have been able to get closer to the client and be more efficient. And with this push from the pandemic, we took advantage of the situation so that our customers could test digital solutions and we could get more feedback to improve them.
Joaquín Vargas: What I can tell you is that the world has been emerging from the pandemic, and in that step towards normality, the digitization indicators have been maintained and that reinforces the idea that the changes are here to stay. Once customers get into a habit and learn the benefits of being able to do it remotely, they stick with it.
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What channels is the bot available on and what kind of integrations or transactions can it do?
Daniel Rodriguez: The chatbot is available on the BAC Credomatic website of all countries and on Facebook Messenger.
The integrations that we have developed range from consulting the balance of a credit card to consulting the points accumulated by loyalty plans, the status of transactions and movements, and inquiries about the exchange rate of the dollar and the euro.
Of all these integrations that we have implemented during 2021, 38% of customers have used them at some point, which shows us that they like them. Before they were done only through a telephone channel, agency or account, and in some cases they had to queue by IVR, while today it is fully available through the chatbot.
Focus on innovation and digital transformation
Where is BAC going next year? What do you think is going to change in the way customers interact?
Joaquín Vargas: We are focused on innovating and providing a digital experience. What comes next is seeing the chatbot as part of a customer service ecosystem. The client asks where he or she wants, depending on the situation. The challenge is to have this information available in the channel that the client chooses and implement integrations not only from a technology point of view but also from a content point of view.
Another challenge is to reach the customer through a journey of more basic questions towards a scheme where more complex questions can take place. I believe that integrations are a priority and it is a challenge moving forward: how to integrate the different channels and how tp reuse the content so that it is always updated and available where the customer needs it.
Related Article: The challenge developing content for a virtual assistant
If you had to give advice to a bank that is hesitating to integrate everything, what would it be? What learning could you share?
José David Rojas: It is listening to customers, knowing what they need the most. A question like the exchange rate is something that a bot can easily solve, both understanding the intention with natural language and bringing the answer closer to you.
Along the same lines, with these technologies we can give customers much faster answers. Understanding which are the most common needs, we can begin to offer solutions that in the very short term show value to customers.
To take into account everything that can be integrated, which is a huge universe, you have to understand what is the highest priority. In our case, it has helped us to lower the volume of web chat inquiries because we solve with the chatbot many of those queries that were previously solved by a human agent.
My advice to other teams is to understand which of those frequent queries they could start handling with an automatic technology to give a faster response to their clients.
Want to achieve these results?
If you haven't already, you can check out the full list of featured clients in Aivo Awards and discover the story behind their conversational bots.
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