Talkin’ bout next generation

Chatbots, conveyed through messaging apps or voice interfaces, allow companies to mimic real-human conversations with their customers. Such software is easily scalable, cost-effective, data-driven, continuously learning, and instantly available to end consumer. Being a ‘hot topic’ of high demand, it becomes imperative for organisations to explore the new technology and its respective use cases, and what tangible benefits it provides to both business and customers.

What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a complementary layer on top of your existing customer experience. Accessible via messenger services (such as Facebook or Slack) or human voice (think Google Home or Alexa), they provide instant responses to customer’s questions and queries. Chatbots greatly vary in their complexity, from executing basic rules taken from a decision-tree to being powered by machine learning that is constantly adopting new features and insights.

Examples for a chatbot
There are thousands of chatbots on the market already, fulfilling a large diversity of roles. A consumer can order a taxi through an app, check their flight’s status on the way to the airport, and manage their finances with their bank, all from one single user channel at the same time. Examples include:

• Banking Bot: Check your balance, set financial goals, gain spending insights, transfer money, pay friends and bills.
• Gastronomy: Browse menus, view recommendations and reviews, align with a nutrition diet, order and pay.
• E-Commerce: Get personalised offers and deals, ask about fashion trends, shop a directory, order and pay directly.

How is the financial services market adopting chatbots?
The integration of conversational UX/voice is still at an early stage within financial services, but that is rapidly changing. Start-ups like Cleo (a financial assistant) and Habito (a digital mortgage broker) are successfully shaking up the industry by providing immediate and insightful information to consumers at any time of the day.

Despite their popularity, it isn’t as easy as it seems to create a truly valuable chatbot. Businesses must design an experience that provides value both to the customer and business. Businesses can be easily swept up in the hype to implement chatbots for the sake of them, and miss the realities of how chatbots work and what role they should be playing in customer’s lives.

Creating value, rapidly
Implementing chatbots is a substantial project and one which is hard to go back on. To help financial services firms discover if chatbots are right for their business, Deloitte Digital has created a ‘chatbot blueprint’ and proven four week approach to enable rapid design, test and iteratation of chatbot experiences with customers before the need to committing time and resources to build.

Download the our introductory chatbot guide to learn more about chatbots, the benefits they can provide, the pitfalls to avoid, and how Deloitte Digital can help you add an exciting, value-driven layer to your existing customer experience.

To find out more or request a demonstration, please contact one of the team listed below.