The Digital Boom in Financial Services: Three Opportunities for AI in the Contact Center

By Dan Burkland , President at Five9

The global digital transformation market in banking and financial services is projected to reach $164.08 billion by 2025 .?The latest big push, first initiated by consumers with a need to manage finances online and via apps during COVID, has evolved to digital banking being the preferred method for everything from peer-to-peer banking, financial management, loan applications, and online?stocks trading to name a few. With this explosion, consumers and financial institutions alike and looking for ways to streamline and expedite actions. Convenience, reliability, security, and speed are quickly becoming the pillars of success for digital financial management but as with all things, sometimes things don’t work as intended. With 85% of adults in North America use digital banking, the signal for a massive digital transformation of the space is strong.

Several years ago, while usage of digital financial services skyrocketed, banks clamored to keep pace. Not only for putting technology in place that could meet the rising consumer demand, but also for prioritizing service solutions that could be the safety net for customer concerns or issues. We’ve seen a tremendous rise in adoption for Five9’s FinServ customers, and many of my conversations orbit around the emergence of AI and if it has a place in the banking.??

Is it safe? What can it help us do? What’s the best way to use it to keep our customers happy??

First off, tools like Generative AI are relatively new, and certainly have come at a pivotal point for an industry that is highly regulated, monitored, and stringent in its practices. That said, there are important ways we are seeing Five9 customers utilize AI to their end customers’ benefit. AI can be an effective tool, and the growing appetite for it within the contact center is the catalyst for product innovations like Five9 Agent Assist 2.0 with AI Summary, a OpenAI-powered solution that helps summarize and guide customer call transcripts in mere seconds. The level of immediacy is especially important for our FinServ clients.??

Here are three ways we’re seeing AI make an impact within the call center, regardless of industry:??

Before the Call

So much can happen before a customer even talks to an agent, and what transpires during this phase of the service request can determine whether a customer is satisfied or irate. Where we’re seeing the best use of AI during this phase is two-fold: the use of intelligent virtual agents?(IVAs) and with service automation – helping steer the customer through self-triage and managing information that flows during call steering. It is here where we can leverage AI to handle the more simple or routine tasks, and with emerging technologies like GenAI, even more complex tasks are viable targets to be AI-managed. It helps determine whether or not there’s a high rate of success or failure for customers asking similar questions, and make determinations on how best to direct the customer.

Applying LLM models that capture voice-driven prompting, web chat, and SMS trends give a lot of power to Generative AI solutions like ChatGPT. Marrying the data behind success rates or failures, and customer choice monitoring can illuminate the path for customer service agent before they even pick up the phone.??

During the Call

At this point in the process, consumers using traditional touch tone IVR might be frustrated at this point. They clearly haven’t found the answer to their question and/or they’ve made their way through a phone tree - pressing ‘0’ repeatedly - so they can talk to an actual service agent. From the agent’s perspective, going in blind with little to no information on the part of the customer journey that preceded them can make them the unfortunate landing pad of customer frustration.

Here's where AI can really shine by providing real-time insights and recommendations designed to guide the agent and customer to a satisfactory solution. The agent has answers at their fingertips using AI and the customer quickly gets to a point of resolution. Additionally, AI can help them move to the next customer quickly by taking over again, summarizing the call and recording that for future use, all without agent intervention.?The agent can move on to the next customer knowing they will provide a level of on-point service that customers expect, because they are armed with accurate call summarization and insights that help determine next best actions. AI has the power to merge the best of what the agent doesn’t know with what they do based on the added context from the customer so they can deliver tailored, personalized experiences.???

After the Call

Data is king. As volumes of service requests are resolved, applying AI to surface insights and consumer trends will highlight the areas that need improvement. Enterprises aren’t faced with trying to keep customers happy through trial-and-error. Instead, they have a roadmap of the precise problem areas throughout the customer experience that need attention, and this data will help prioritize how to best optimize the customer experience and make improvements that will impact the largest business drivers.?

In many industries, but perhaps most in financial services and banking where decades-long customer longevity is the goal, using AI to dissect data and customer trends can lead to improved customer joy and stronger customer service performance at scale, and a more resilient company positioned for long-term success.??

AI can change the game for the contact center, and we’re at the dawn of a new horizon that’s bright with opportunity. Regardless of industry, there’s a place for AI in customer engagement. When harnessed appropriately--while keeping customers at the heart of innovation—we’re going to see the future of customer experiences evolve to be more personal, more valuable, and more powerful. Here at Five9, we know AI doesn’t have to be scary. We can help you create your cloud-based contact center that is poised for new innovation, today.