Friend@Bank – Using Messenger Chatbot
In a dinner conversation, a friend made an interesting point on how Google spent millions of dollars to deploy hundreds of thousands of servers running sophisticated algorithms to track users’ behavior and to deduce the users' likes and dislikes. It was then wondered how could any other company even remotely compete. Who could possibly be able to outspend Google to build up a competing platform for such deep behavioral analytics to glean insight about their users. But then came Facebook. Guess what they did. They didn’t try to outdo on the analytics - why bother with all that background analysis and inferences - instead chose to ask the users themselves. They put up a simple “Like" button in their page. In turn, users happily started letting Facebook know about their likes and dislikes.
While this depiction might not be completely accurate, it does provide a witty conversation fodder to debate on the power of “Like” button and on the implication of clicking on it. How can banks with their Facebook presence and those performing social analytics interpret click actions. With users mindlessly clicking on “Like” button participating in a continuing viral trend and potentially resulting in millions of “Likes” for a product or service, how can banks turn this into meaningful input. One could argue that liking something on Facebook might not be a reliable way to measure brand loyalty nor to infer any purchase intentions.
I believe a more effective approach would be to examine the adoption of Facebook Messenger in the business context. Facebook business pages can still be a tool for brand building and communication. However, the real meaningful interactions would happen on Messenger. I suspect this is a possible reason why Facebook recently opened up their Messenger API for business and commerce.
So lets explore this proposition further in the context of a bank wanting to build a richer dialogue with its customers on social media:
Opportunity
In my previous post Contextual Banking in Digital Lifestyle, I highlighted the relevance of contextual services in banking industry. Encapsulating the banks’ services with a high degree of understanding of the customers’ intent would bring forth a differentiation in customer experience beyond the strength of the services by themselves. McKinsey called this as “moment of truth” in customer service. It said whats missing is "the spark between the customer and frontline staff members". What if we create a personalized bank staff member at the disposal of any customer to carry out any such realtime interactions and handle these moments. Not just wealthy customers, but for all customers. I term this concept as Friend@Bank.
Platform
Facebook Messenger allows banks to build chat bots personifying a friendly financial advisor available to their customers. How about a friend, who is already intimately familiar with customers finance, learns about their intentions, guides them to make sound financial decisions, and helps them mold their lifestyle to achieve the financial health that they desire. Instead of relying on the “Like” button, customers would explicitly share a Facebook post with the Friend@Bank on Messenger, or initiate a conversation like in a regular chat session.
The sophistication is built into the virtual financial advisor, an AI-assisted chat bot, to interpret these shared posts and conversations. There is no limit to imagination in what value can be carved out from such interactions between human customers and their virtual assistants. While we won’t soon advance anywhere close to Iron Man’s JARVIS, but we do can begin with small steps in this direction.
Engagement Scenarios
In a setting as this, below are some representative banking engagement scenarios one could conceptualize:
General Inquiry: This is the regular staple of any customer service on balances, payments, interest rates, products, and so on.
Affordability Queries: Share items of interest to check if they can be afforded given the set budget.
Example 1: I share friends’ travel posting. My Friend@Bank responds back whether I’ll be able to make a similar trip with my travel budget for the year.
Example 2: I share about elementary school posting. My Friend@Bank, who knows I have preschool kids, checks and responds if I can afford to live in that neighborhood
Goal Setting: Share items that motivate savings and to be added as goals.
Example 1: I share posts related to high ticket items such as car or home, my Friend@Bank prompts to check if I intend to setup a savings goal and plan.
Example 2: I share post about a post-retirement habit or activity, my Friend@Bank checks if my retirement planning is on track to achieve this or should I bump up my savings.
The IDEO’s Design Thinking recommends, the best solution is at the intersection of desirability, viability, and feasibility. While we should certainly strive to balance all three factors to create an optimal solution, for this exploratory thought experiment, I have only focused on the desirability factor to begin with. As I mentioned earlier, the possibilities are limitless but it is bound to happen.