A Blueprint for Chatbots in Banking

Nowadays the Financial Services (and Banking in particular) sector is experiencing the first generation of chatbots, which are yet to win the sympathy by majority of the consumers. However, given the unprecedented pace at which new technological advancements are introduced, chatbots will most definitely evolve, and banks as well as payments companies foresee a variety of roles and abilities that these virtual assistants could conduct.

Today chatbots are essentially simple question-and-answer programs. Nevertheless, many experts strongly believe that these will evolve to become sophisticated conversational agents which will help customers not only transact but may even be capable of understanding the emotional cues. In case the latter would become a reality, this would have a very strong potential to replace humans completely in, for example, customer services.

Hence, given the potential in cost savings and better customer experience, banks most definitely have to bare this in mind, so they could leverage it in the very near future. Therefore, I offer you a simplified 6 steps strategy as to how one can utilize this technology in banking.

1. Build a simple chatbot for your bank, or use the technology developed by others (preferably - the best ones in the field).
2. Integrate it within social networks such as Facebook's Messenger, WhatsApp and others. In essence, be where your CUSTOMER is.
3. Continuously develop your technology so that it would be as similar to human interaction as possible. If necessary, pass difficult queries to the human-led support.
4. Focus on the customer experience and added value -- help your customers to take control of their financials, provide savings/investment advice, give insights, rewards etc. 
5. Collect data and use it to provide personalized, tailor-made offers to each and every of your customer. 
6. Enjoy.

Bringing it all together

Today, chatbots as a technology are still in their infancy. Yet, having their future potential in mind, financial services should already start exploring and implementing it. The steps provided above are very simplified, but they are good for the start.

---

Have I missed something? Feel free to add your points/steps in the comments below.