Voice Assistants in Financial Services: A Cloud Communication Role

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Voice assistants are becoming commonplace in our daily lives, and this trend is set to continue. In the world of financial services, it can be used to provide customer service support for customers. Assistants can help customers by answering their questions with personalized responses or providing information about products.

It may also complete tasks such as accessing a bank account or routing through long lists of options for payment methods. It can be capable of performing tasks that would otherwise be time-consuming for human agents, such as data entry and running searches across databases of product terminology.

These capabilities allow financial institutions to offer more personalized service while increasing their efficiency and reducing costs.

Voice Assistant Capabilities Result In A Variety Of Benefits To Customers:

They can get answers to their questions faster. They can receive personalized responses from agents, they can easily manage accounts and check balances, and they can be directed through long lists of options for payment methods.

In addition, it enables executive services firms to reduce costs. By automating sequential tasks for agents, they are able to increase efficiency and thus reduce phone lines and labor costs.

Voice agents can also improve the customer experience by notifying customers when it is time to renew their policies or update their payment methods - information that is beneficial for both the firm and its customers. In addition, they can provide useful analytics on customer behavior and engagement metrics, such as how long customers use a device during checkout.

These capabilities, combined with the relatively inexpensive cost of entry for third-party solutions, are set to drive the adoption of AI technology in finance. As innovations continue to emerge and ROI becomes more visible. Assistants are likely to become a feature that is standard across many fintech applications.

A Financial Services Voice Assistant

There are multiple ways that your work can be done with voice assistance, from remote operations to call centers, all while integrating with other technologies like chatbots. The study goes on to break down how a consumer may speak to their voice assistant:

  • Enhanced Customer Experience: It offers a way for financial services customers to interact with the firm more productively and efficiently than with customer service representatives, unlike customer service, which can be time-consuming, passive, and disjointed. It offers a holistic experience. They answer the customer's questions quickly and accurately while also enhancing the experience of interacting with the firm in other ways—such as through data analysis and predictive analytics.
  • Efficient Customer Support: It can also use virtual web assistance to assist customers who call in with specific questions. The conversational assistant queries the customer's account, recommends a course of action, and completes the necessary actions—eliminating the need for human customer service representatives or Web chat service for routine inquiries.
  • Enriching Planning and Analytics: It can also be used to enrich planning and analytics processes by providing information about what is happening now, providing insights into future trends, and assisting with scenario analysis. This ability to answer unexpected questions quickly provides value not only to customers but also to employees who manage current account holders as well as those responsible for collecting consumer financial information. It offers a way for customers to interact with the firm more productively and efficiently than with customer service representatives. Unlike customer service, which can be time-consuming, passive, and disjointed, conversational assistants offer a holistic experience. They answer the customer's questions quickly and accurately while also enhancing the experience of interacting with the firm in other ways—such as through data analysis and predictive analytics.
  • Augmenting Traditional Services: It can play a central role in helping firms deliver traditional services. For example, a customer may ask their voice assistant to check their account balance and then complete an online purchase using account funds. As another example, a customer might ask to set up recurring bill payments, such as for rent or utilities. In this scenario, the assistant would first inquire about each payment due date, the amount due, and any present-day changes to these amounts (e.g., a late fee).

The Role of Cloud Communication:

Cloud communication technologies are fundamental to the successful implementation of voice assistants. 

  1. Scalability: Cloud-based communication solutions are highly scalable. It means that financial services firms can deploy conversational assistants to support thousands of conversations per second with customers.

Cloud-based communication solutions are highly scalable. It means that financial services firms can deploy assistants to support tens, hundreds, or even thousands of conversations per second with customers. Robustness: Cloud-based communication solutions are also highly robust. Cloud vendors take care of underlying infrastructure requirements such as servers, storage, operating systems, and more. The firms need not worry about maintenance or upgrading these infrastructural components—cloud vendors take care of that for them.

  1. Data Storage and Processing: UCaaS solutions offer a data storage capability that is often more cost-effective than on-premise hardware. It provides the ability to store data for future analysis and perform complex data analysis in near real-time.
  2. Backup and Disaster Recovery: Cloud operators provide robust, active availability technology that will continue to function even if the primary site experiences a disaster.
  3. Cost: In general, cloud solutions are usually cheaper than on-premise infrastructure because they have the economies of scale of multiple users. It is because they can be built on a highly scalable, open architecture platform, which mitigates the need for special hardware or software at each customer’s site.

Challenges and Considerations:

While voice assistants and cloud communication offer numerous benefits, there are some challenges and considerations. Let us give it a look.

  • Data Privacy and Security: Protecting and complying with privacy regulations is increasingly important. Cloud providers typically have in-built security capabilities to prevent data loss and ensure compliance with the myriad regulatory requirements facing firms.
  • Business Continuity: Cloud VoIP service providers can offer business continuity plans that include backup sites and disaster recovery facilities, which can be particularly important for financial services firms due to the high costs associated with data outages.
  • Protection of IP: It requires a secure environment to protect their intellectual property, such as trade secrets or proprietary operating systems. It is a key consideration for any provider whose business relies on the intellectual property of its users.
  • Quality of Service: The firms may require high-quality voice solutions and a level of uptime that is different from existing voice technologies. It can be difficult for any communications provider to meet these expectations. However, if a provider can consistently guarantee quality service and uptime levels, this may help to overcome the challenges associated with providing these requirements in the cloud.
  • Innovation: Cloud communications providers must continue to innovate to stay ahead of their competitors. While some financial services firms might be wary of making the switch to new technology, this factor has been one of the major drivers behind such innovations as network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN).
Conclusion:

Voice assistants integrated with cloud communication systems offer significant benefits to financial services firms. These benefits include scalability, data processing, backup and disaster recovery, and cost advantages associated with cloud-based applications. However, switching to cloud-based voice solutions does come with a number of consequences. Scalability is one of the main benefits, but this can be a challenge due to the fluctuating user volumes and the requirements for high uptime levels. Data privacy regulations are also an issue, which means that companies need to ensure that their business continuity plans will be able to cope if there is an emergency or disaster at their primary site.

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