By Sriram Chakravarthy, Founder and CTO, Avaamo
Banks and financial institutions are embracing technology, from facial recognition at ATMs to virtual assistants that can help you replace a stolen bank card via phone. But the need for technology at financial companies is multifaceted and not just related to consumers: the technology must also serve and support employees of banks and financial services firms. That’s why it’s important to consider employee self-service, the “holy grail” of service desk automation.
Like many 21st century businesses, banks and financial institutions that have a large number of employees have long been reliant on the standard service desk to help employees find information and technical support. When a new bank employee needs to be onboarded and get set up in the system they contact a service desk employee and often wait days for access. Even after they are in the system, resetting a password or requesting more storage still means raising a ticket and waiting for help.
In the 1990’s the IT service desk evolved as an innovative service to help employees be productive. Almost two decades into the new century it’s grown redundant. This recent report found that service desks and costs are actually climbing despite all these cost savings maneuvers. Here’s why conversational AI - a system that allows computers to talk to employees and consumers in a lifelike way - can help reinvent the service desk for financial service companies.
Routine Requests Will Become Fast And Painless
Gartner estimates that 40% of all service desk requests are password resets for various devices, applications and IT services. Adding AI-driven virtual assistants can free up resources, both human and capital. Virtual assistants can be built to handle repetitive service requests: unlocking accounts, resetting passwords, even complex tasks like troubleshooting email or increasing storage. This frees service agents to higher-level tasks.
Virtual Assistants Can “Learn” and Provide Better Answers
If you arrive to work and have a computer issues chances are it won’t be fixed until the next day. A typical service order takes 10 hours to resolve. This includes multiple conversations with a desktop support analyst, sometimes re- routing to a subject matter expert in your Incident area. Second generation conversational AI solutions can use the abundant history available from existing enterprise interactions, including chat, voice transcripts, transactions and other enterprise data to “learn.” As a result, more complex tasks like trouble shooting your Skype and upgrading your software becomes easier.
Better Service Will Mean Happier Fintek Employees
The information technology industry spends hundreds of millions trying to make employee self- service easier. With advances in AI, a virtual assistant can initiate and engage in a multi-turn meaningful conversation to solve the problem. Conversational AI technologies have initiated a new turn in human-computer interaction and it’s helping financial firms reimagine how they work from the ground up.
Sriram Chakravarthy/CTO and co-founder of Avaamo brings over 15 years of engineering experience in designing massively scalable distributed software. Previously, he was vice president of products for the social computing division at TIBCO. He successfully scaled engineering, support and services to serve customers in 121 countries. He has worked as a software engineer and architect in messaging, e-commerce and cloud software and holds a dozen patents. www.avaamo.com