Voice Assistants Give Banks a Powerful Digital Channel to Improve Customer Experience

“Alexa, bring banks customers.”

Only five years ago — what seems like a pre-pandemic lifetime — PYMNTS hosted its Alexa Challenge. The event was geared toward bringing teams of developers to reimagine how the virtual assistant could make commerce, and banking, a bit easier.

Read here: ‘Alexa, Who Won The 2016 PYMNTS/Alexa Challenge?’

Fast forward half a decade, and PYMNTS data show that ownership of voice-activated speakers stands at about 31% of the population at large, skewing a bit higher for younger demographics.

In banking, home assistants and voice interactions are becoming a key enabler of new products and services, Doug Brown, president of NCR Digital Banking, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.

Smart speakers are a powerful channel through which we, as consumers, can conduct everyday financial life, Brown said. He added that we are nowhere near leveraging the devices’ full capacity to transform finance, and banks are exploring new ways to use them to capture customer engagement and loyalty.

Brown predicts that along the way, we’ll see the rise of the “telebank,” which will blend digital, visual and spoken cues to help consumers move toward being better informed about their finances. To get there, he said, banks do not need to be digital-first — they need to be digital-everywhere.

“One of the biggest developments has been the emergence of devices that combine screens and speakers,” Brown said. This allows customers easier access to information they’d rather not hear spoken aloud — after all, you might not want every relative within earshot knowing how much money you have in the bank.

In other words, the devices themselves are versatile, and with that versatility will come the opportunity to engage with customers at new touchpoints in their financial journeys.

Brown added that there’s a significant greenfield opportunity to tap new consumers through the digital/voice channels. PYMNTS data show that 61% of consumers aged 18 to 24 want their banks to provide tailored insights to reach their financial goals.

The pandemic has the concept of employing a digital assistant to handle most everyday banking tasks sound less far-fetched — and even pleasant, given the alternatives. Labor shortages and a wave of branch closings, not to mention overwhelmed call centers, have made us all too familiar with verbal prompts and navigating menus by spoken command.

In fact, as Brown and Webster agreed, spoken commerce is becoming so fluid that actually speaking to a real person these days can feel a bit odd.

Brown said that the technologies, underpinned with artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms, are advanced enough that voice channels can pick up on accents and cadence, and perfect grammar is no longer required.

“I don’t have to ‘speak bank’ to talk to the bank,” Brown told Webster. “The AI component can learn from the collective wisdom of all customer interactions, anticipating the next steps on the transactions and giving the voice interactions a bit of context.”

The Rise of the Telebank

Brown continued that banks themselves can also benefit from both the rise of the telebank and the redesign of branches. More efficient operations, and more streamlined staffing needs, can boost margins.

“Consumers definitely want the digital experience delivered by their traditional bank,” Brown said, “and it’s up to the financial institution to bridge that gap and create the service models that are consistent with what consumers see everywhere else.”

That’s not to say that all is perfect in voice-enabled and digitally enhanced banking, he continued. Because banks are still held back by siloed operations and legacy thinking, they’re not managing customers’ experiences holistically, even in an age when an overwhelming percentage of them — 88% — engage with their banks through digital means.

Banks have tremendous reserves of goodwill to use in the encouragement of banking via voice, he said. After all, digital-only banks have captured only a high single-digit percentage of consumers, and they’re not even the primary institution for most.

N26’s withdrawal from the U.S. market in recent weeks speaks volumes to the challenges neobanks face.

Banks, Brown said, can deliver reliable services to their end users and protect data as they deliver those services, across a range of offerings that outpace what the neobanks can give their users — Webster likened the digital upstarts to prepaid cards wrapped in mobile technology.

Brown noted that banks can handle the complexities of omnichannel activities and be true partners with their customers in the pursuit of financial wellness.

For instance, a customer may visit a branch intending to use an ATM, consider calling or consulting a virtual teller, and then ultimately decide that they need the help of onsite staff to get something done.

“All of these things help make people more aware of coaching and advising,” Brown said. “It’s not just ‘tell me what happened,’ but ‘what does it mean?’”