While a lot has been debated on whether chatbots will replace mobile apps in the future, the scenario is yet to take over as people’s love towards mobile apps hasn’t perished. The best way now is to make mobile apps play together with chatbots to improve business RoI. The role of a mobile and web application development company or partnering with digital transformation services is critical in this context.

Be it FinTech or any other industry, combining the power of chatbots and mobile apps will certainly add a significant edge over the competitors. 

What is Chatbot? Why are Chatbots Important?

A simple transactional chatbot can execute a few specialized processes that replace the need to talk to an expert or interact with mobile apps or websites. 

A more advanced chatbot can support multiple processes at the same time and can also help the user make decisions. Essentially, the AI-powered chatbots as virtual assistants trained with large amounts of data produces a response as an expert to improve operational efficiency.

In the last couple of years, chatbots have evolved from sounding robotic to more natural, mimicking human agents. Thanks to Natural Language Processing (NLP), chatbots can speak the language of the customer and help her/him perform a set of operations connected to enterprise systems.

Chatbot Market Size, Share and Global Market Forecast to 2024

As per a Businessinsider report, the chatbot market size is projected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.7%.

Projections show growth over the forecasted period as chatbots reduce operating costs for enterprises. Chatbots can work in segments such as marketing, payments and processing, and service, but when it comes to revenue, chatbot service has a majority of the market share.

Chatbots Changing the Fintech Approach For Ever

A huge amount of money, resources and time are spent by financial institutions in the Know Your Customer (KYC) process, across the world. It is indeed a painful process involving several steps of interaction in the B2B segment. The delayed data collection and retrieval process often leads to dismal customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to customer dropouts. Chatbots for KYC process plays a huge role in improving its operational efficiency. 

SEE ALSO: 5 Enterprise mobile app development trends that will dominate in 2020

Though the FinTech industry has rolled out mobile applications for their customers, including chatbots for FinTech apps significantly improve the KYC process, leading to improved customer experience and retention. 

But, not anymore. Thanks to bot technology. 

The painstaking KYC process can be executed in a matter of minutes with a chatbot in place. Customers can provide required information interacting with a chatbot, which would verify it against the bank’s systems as well as a third-party database through an API. And that’s it!

What makes the chatbot technology attractive to customer interaction intensive industries like Banking & Financial Services is the automated self-service, together with the ability to escalate to a human agent in complex situations.

In a typical banking scenario, the chatbot can virtually manage a set of standard transactions across different operations, eliminating the need of the bank’s staff to deal with every individual customer and rather focus on exceptions. Now imagine the boost in productivity and efficiency for the staff.

How Fintech Companies Can Benefit from a Chatbot?

• Reduced operational pressures
• Low IT operating cost
• Broad applicability across the organization
• Continuous improvement
• Handle complex database
• Provide enhanced security
• Get humongous actionable data 
• End-user driven
• Personality defined
• Quick money transfer
• Reliable assistance
• Automate tasks effectively
• Leverage all-time availability
• Entertain next-gen customers
• Save cost
• Stay ahead in the competition

Top 3 Chatbot Use Cases That Really Work

Well, customer on-boarding is the obvious use of chatbots in banking & financial services. Are there any other use cases?

Of course, there are a few more to add to the list.

How chatbots help achieve omnichannel banking

With new age financial services companies and FinTech companies giving a run for their money, banks are in a race to get in front of and engage with their customers in new ways. While using several channels to engage with the customers is fast becoming the norm, the challenge is in getting the right value out of each channel.

Instead of developing communications solutions for each channel like website, mobile app, Text Messaging service, automated emails, social media messenger, etc., banks can now develop a single chatbot for omnichannel banking experience to customers to communicate across all platforms. Quite simply, the customer can choose the channel that suits them but will get the same experience.

Chatbots can play a major role in data compliance solutions

Beyond the transactional realm of compliance as in the case of KYC, chatbots can also help in making compliance with complex requirements 2X faster and easier. For example, in the UK, the new GDPR regulation entails recording & reporting of specific time and date of receiving consent from the individual for the processing of her/his personal information. Think about this.

Instead of asking an employee to check multiple systems/databases on when the bank received the email communication from the individual customer giving the consent, you can simply ask this question to a bot, which has been trained on this data and querying. Bot technology complemented by distributed computing enables the bank’s staff to meet more complex compliance requirements much faster and reduce the cost of compliance. Simply put, chatbot for GDPR compliance is a boon to FinTech companies. 

How can chatbots improve customer service?

As indicated above, the competition in Banking & Financial Services is red hot. Like Retail, personalization has become a crucial differentiator in banking. Beyond the efficiency of transactions, customers now want the bank to know them and offer them personalized services.

While the systems are sophisticated enough to capture knowledge on each individual customer, the time required to be spent by the customer service representative to understand, interpret and offer personalized service is a deterrent. A dedicated banking chatbot can deliver the same service like cross-selling, personalized advice, and remembering preferences, at a fraction of the cost and in real time. In short, chatbot for customer service improves user engagement to the next level and ensures retention. 

Conclusion

Recognized as one of the “20 most promising digital transformation solution providers 2018” CIOReview (November 2018), Hakuna Matata is focused on helping enterprises across industries explore and adopt emerging technologies for gaining efficiencies, engaging customers better and acquiring a competitive edge.

Looking for expert advice? Let’s talk.