Often, their personal interaction involves a less-personalized conversation via a call center. Full-service investors, on the other hand, find their firms’ recent focus on technological development has increased their satisfaction with the digital channels now available to them.

Until virtual assistants can meet all of a customer’s servicing needs, waiting will be inevitable when contacting an agent via call center or live chat. FIs can set that expectation by displaying an approximate wait time in minutes, a queue position, or a time that the FI might call back. No FI offered this feature. Global search can be a value proposition for virtual assistants.

Authentication for customer service calls. By verifying customers from the app, this feature eliminates time-consuming steps such as entering a debit card or Social Security number. Search bar. This capability saves customers time and energy by instantly locating relevant tools or information. It was the most in-demand feature that is entirely self-service. Checking call center wait times.

Displaying the real-time call center wait sets customers’ expectations. It’s frustrating to wait on hold without knowing how long it will take to reach a representative. This feature lets callers decide if they want to wait and could make them less likely to abandon customer service in frustration. Requesting a call from a banker can ease wait times.

Conversational AI technologies were originally developed for call center optimization, and this space remains a major area of growth. For example, Zurich Insurance Group acquired conversational AI startup AlphaChat in late 2021 with the aim of improving customer service through virtual agents and chatbots.

Why it’s worth watching: A series of technological breakthroughs over the past several years continues to expand the number of use cases for conversational AI beyond the most well-known call center and chatbot applications. Innovation around speech data and voice synthesis is transforming the way voice assistants and chatbots behave, according to Nvidia’s recent developments.

This feature provides users with flexible human assistance and allows them to avoid the tedium of waiting in call center queues. This feature was rated “extremely valuable” by 26.9% of all respondents. Authenticating through the mobile banking app when contacting customer service via phone can remove a potential point of friction in the customer journey.

During the pandemic, some UK bank customers reported waiting as long as several hours to speak to a call center agent. Text capabilities let customers bypass that line, while also enabling service representatives to address multiple inquiries at once.

In-app PIN changes simplify a delicate request and allow customers to avoid traveling to a branch or waiting in a call center queue. This feature is rare among the seven Canadian FIs, and 21.1% of all respondents deemed it “extremely valuable.”. Allowing customers to customize their interface increases personalization and engagement.

Enabling users to request a PIN change saves an unnecessary trip to a branch or a wait in a call center line. Only one of the seven FIs support this capability, and 21.1% of respondents ranked it as “extremely valuable.”. No. 4: Alerts. TD’s lack of alerts features calls for rolling out in-demand tools.