PORTSMOUTH, N.H.–A new analysis offers some insights into how financial institution employees use conversational banking technology, including virtual assistants and bots.
The research report, SilverCloud Labs: Conversational Banking Trends, analyzed real-time usage data collected from more than 200 financial institutions and 11.9 million end-user sessions.
Among the key findings:
- Employees Focus 90% More On Service Than Sales. Employees of credit unions and banks primarily use virtual assistants and “tech search-partner” to help service the member or customer, not to sell products and services. This differs from how consumers use conversational banking bots for self-service, where sales-related queries appear much more in the conversation, SilverCloud reported.
- Employees Need Help with Wires and ACH. Sixty-five percent of the top searches conducted internally at financial institutions are employees reaching for help with ACH and Wire Transfers. “This demonstrates that banking employees need help with these more complex tasks, and possibly more proactive training on these topics,” SilverCloud stated. “Search prevalence among employees, again, differs from consumer behavior. For consumers, asking for help with wires ranks towards the bottom of the top 10 most frequently searched terms, with ACH questions ranking even lower on the list, in the mid-30s.”
- Employees Are Supporting Businesses – 2nd Top Search Term. “No surprise, employees are using conversational banking tools internal to the financial institution to search for content that will assist their business customers,” SilverCloud stated. “Business-related search is the second most popular search term for employees asking for help from a virtual assistant and holds two of the top ten top search terms. This is not true for the virtual assistant used by consumers; there are very few – if any bots – focused on business customers. Customer-facing virtual assistants for business customers have yet to emerge.”
- Employee Digital Support Low in Priority. Employees use virtual assistants to help them support members and customers, and the top 10 things consumers need help with, does NOT include digital banking. “That’s right, digital banking must be pretty easy to use, because customers are not asking about it and employees support it without needing the help of a bot,” stated SilverCloud. “When they do ask an employee for help with digital, the top three things they ask about are Zelle, mobile deposit and bill pay.
- COVID Drives 70% Increase in Virtual Assistant Usage. Employees reached out to their virtual assistants much more during the pandemic--70% more, the research found. “Usage has skyrocketed. And this happened in just nine months. Tracking from mid-February to mid-November 2020, employee bot and search usage increased by 70%. The growth is represented both in more employees accessing virtual help, as well as employees using virtual search more often.”
Different Behavior
“Employee bots are new and innovative,” said Robb Gaynor, chief strategy officer for SilverCloud.
“Conversational banking technology has radically changed the way banks and credit unions conduct business, but so far, the focus has been almost exclusively on improving the experience for the consumer. This is quickly changing, however, as it becomes evident virtual assistants and bots have the ability to revolutionize the employee experience. The data clearly indicates employees are leveraging the tools to make their jobs easier. The employee behaves very differently than consumers, with employees turning to bots to more effectively engage consumers, while consumers most often turn to the bot seeking self-service. Beyond customer and member service, virtual assistants will help employees work more efficiently, performing transactions faster with increased accuracy and speed.”