At first, they
doubted her. Then
she overdelivered.

It was 2020, and a lot was going on. Few noticed that a regional bank in the northeast United States was about to onboard a new customer service employee, and that her new colleagues (there’s no other way to say it) were skeptical about her. Still, they needed the extra support and were willing to give her a chance. They pitched in to get her oriented, starting with the script that helped them help customers efficiently. Looking back now, she never thanked them for that. But it was OK: She wasn’t human.

She was a digital employee—a conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) bot, to be specific—so lifelike and responsive over the phone that it seemed she could think, interpret, and respond like her human counterparts. (She could, in fact, respond accurately despite the very diverse accents many of the bank’s customers had). Bank leadership had been exploring digital transformation with Deloitte for some time and brought her on to kick-start their “Everything Digital” vision, wherein clients could connect on any device, anywhere, anytime. CAI technology had proven it could help reduce mundane, repetitive tasks for retail call center employees, increase customer satisfaction, and shrink overall cost; a pilot program at the bank made good business sense.

(A side note about business value and call center customer satisfaction: For the business, time is money—the longer a customer is on the phone one-to-one with a support representative, the higher the cost. Time is also money for customers—they want their issues addressed as quickly as possible. But they also need to feel heard and not be rushed, or they’ll take their money elsewhere. A digital assistant helps in both directions; it’s able to work one-to-many, with no downside to customers lingering on calls as long as they leave happy. It can also work 24/7. This changes the calculus.)