75% of the 400 decision makers interviewed by Opus Research in collaboration with Deepgram expect to increase spending on speech technology solutions in the next 12 months.
From their 2022 report on the State of Voice Technology, it appears that rather than diffusing homogeneously across different sectors, voice tech adoption is really pronounced in some verticals, like Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI).
Firms in BFSI appear to be strong adopters of voice interfaces. As Tarun Dagar correctly observes, many of them benefit from voice assistants not only to cultivate external relationships with customers, but also to facilitate internal operations for their employees.
There are evident benefits to introducing voice assistants that BFSI firms have encountered. Let’s start considering some of the most common challenges that banks, financial institutions and insurance companies encounter, to see how voice can provide solutions.
Key Challenges for Banks, Financial Services and Insurance
Banks, Financial institutions and insurance companies offer services that are particularly touchy for consumers, as they offer services surrounding sensitive topics and can often find themselves involved in highly emotional interactions.
When a client buys an insurance product from an insurance provider or they’re filing a claim, the company needs to be able to correctly tactfully manage that occasion of contact, perhaps even taking advantage of it to create a more lasting relationship. While voice will never be able to replace the human-to-human relationship, voice and chat can certainly help to fill in some of the gaps, reassuring customers when a human insurer is not available.
Key challenges that some of these firms commonly have to face are:
- Having to deal with a fierce competition, while struggling to find significant differentiating characteristics;
- Offering competent 24/7 customer service to deal with the high load of questions and complaints customers have;
- Finding truly competitive personalizing features to give off the perception of a higher value of service offered.
Looking at these issues that BFSI firms are confronted with, it becomes apparent why so many of them are turning to voice technology.
For example, think about training an artificial agent with data sets on risk profiling or insurance policies. This could help an insurance company stand out from the competition with a truly personalized experience that makes its value more apparent to the customer, while approaching customer care in a more efficient and empathetic manner.
How can voice assistants support BFSI firms?
Many banks, financial services companies and insurances have implemented enterprise voice assistants. But how exactly can voice support BFSI firms?
One recurrent use is to create a voice interface to educate customers on their financial choices, allowing them to better understand the value of the firm and services they have chosen. This can certainly help strengthen the relationship with the provider, while also correctly managing customer expectations.
The insurance company GEICO is working to step up its voice tech game, creating a Skill for Alexa and Action for Google assistant to allows customers to find the nearest or cheapest gas station nearby, ask for roadside assistance, be reminded of where they have parked. Checking claim status, on the other hand, can already be done via voice.
Another way to better customer service is to create a voice bot that is able to respond to common questions about, e.g., insurance policies or investment plans. These FAQs could be accessed both by current and prospective clients, helping to establish the company’s authoritative voice in its field and improve the voice SEO ranking. These automatic responses could be further extended with an annex “claim filing” service, to allow users that have not found a satisfactory answer to drop their questions or claims, without having to face a long call queue.
Finally, some banks and, most notably, Bank of America have been taking conversational assistance up a notch. Erica, BoA’s long-standing assistant, can do a lot more than your average chatbot. Looking at data the bank has accumulated on the customer, e.g., cash flow, upcoming bills and history, it can support clients in managing their finances, even going as far as giving them financial advice.
Curious to know how voice technology can help your firm?
Check out our guides to voice tech for digital brands, healthcare, automotive and industrial sectors.
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