Case Studies
Conversational AI for banking: RBS creates a mobile experience that enables more connected consumers
RBS serves over 18 million customers globally
In the banking industry, much like in other traditional businesses, customers are under increasing time restraints and are turning to digital solutions rather than traditional face-to-face contact to address their banking needs. In response to this, RBS has been at the forefront of providing digital touchpoints for its customers, creating an environment that allows for customers to be more connected than ever before, without losing the personal touch. And there is one specific place where RBS is seeing the biggest growth — mobile.
In 2017, RBS first reported a higher number of active mobile than online users, a clear indication of the direction of customers’ banking preferences. RBS’s ambition is to be the number one bank for customer service, trust, and advocacy by 2020. This objective is carried forward into its digital partnership with LivePerson, which started in 2006 with a small chat team of 5 agents helping customers open accounts, and has grown to 1000 agents supporting Conversational AI for banking across mobile and digital touchpoints, divisions, and brands.
Today RBS has over 6.1 million mobile app users, growing steadily while continuously improving the service and functionality offered to its customers. Since introducing messaging and automation to RBS’s core operations, it has scaled to more than 63K weekly messaging conversations, with an efficiency of 1.8 over voice, whilst maintaining a personal connection with every customer. Additionally, its service team handles more than 35K chats across all lines of business per week.
Automation
In January 2017, RBS’s team introduced automation into the program, creating the bot Cora, built on IBM Watson. Cora speaks to over 40K customers per day, and is the front door to all conversations on mobile and secure online pages. She currently correctly retains and successfully answers on average 27% of conversations, and hands off those customers who need more specialised help than she is currently trained on.
“To successfully serve your customers well, you have to be there when they want you, in a channel that the customer wants to use. Our long-term relationship with LivePerson allows us to do that, through every type of messaging, integration of our bot, and many other digital solutions.”
~ Alice Fryatt, Head of Digital Customer Support Delivery
Future plans
RBS continuously looks at giving its customers every opportunity to move to digital contact as an alternative to voice — adapting, changing and upgrading its app and website, adding new endpoints including Apple Business Chat in the near future, and exploring how to deflect customers to messaging whilst calling. Developing Conversational AI for banking to its full potential across multiple operations, all with different opening hours and processes is high on RBS’s agenda, as is outbound messaging — proactively reaching out to customers while allowing them to respond at a time convenient to them.