Episode 51: Chatbot head-to-head (Lloyds vs NatWest)

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to New Era FinTech Podcast. Today I would like to encourage you to watch as well as listen, and the way you do that is on Spotify. So if you do have a Spotify

[00:00:11] account, please, and you're not following us there because many of you use different men, if you are Apple or other podcast players, Spotify will show you the video on this one. And why that is important is because I'm going to show you, I'm going to

[00:00:30] share my screen them in, I'm going to show you some screenshots of conversational AI in action. So if you do have access to Spotify, go and find this episode, just type New Era FinTech and conversational AI, you should hopefully find this, and you'll be able

[00:00:45] to watch the video. Otherwise, I'll find a way of publishing this somewhere else so you can actually see it because the screenshots are rather valuable. So from now on, you know, if you're following along in the car or if you are walking the dog, as many of

[00:01:02] you are, I am surprised by how many of you listen whilst you're walking the dog. Thank you for your anecdotal feedback on that. Let us begin. Now this presentation I'm about to give you is one that I've done twice now. I did it physically for Futurist,

[00:01:20] the digital agency, they do a lot of financial services. They had invited me two weeks ago to their Future FinTech event in London and I presented this overview of conversational AI in banking there. And then last week, I did my first ever

[00:01:37] Fin... No, LinkedIn live and I was just playing and it worked in that you can see the video on LinkedIn, you can see me talking through it. But the recording didn't work, only two minutes of the 20 minutes happened. So that's why I'm

[00:01:54] doing this again properly. Right, let's share a screen. Here we go. Share screen, window, bang, conversational AI. Okay, now I should point out that I presented this to a room full of seasoned bankers who I think it's fair to say were not

[00:02:12] that impressed at the prospect of conversational AI as a topic. Simply, I think that's because when I was talking to them beforehand, some of the audience, someone asked what you're talking about. I said conversational AI and I could see this group of individuals going,

[00:02:34] yeah, okay, fine. But we've seen that. And in many cases, we all have seen this and it was rubbish if I speak bluntly. Okay, speaking bluntly, it was rubbish the last time you looked at it. The last time you tried these

[00:02:48] frequently asked question bought things. A couple of years ago, the technology was pretty poor, very limited. It could probably get away with being able to answer, you know, when are you open? You know, what times are

[00:03:00] you open and these kind of things very limited. But the technology has come on leaps and bounds. So what was interesting with this physical audience that I met off of FinTech and banking individuals, so people who are seasoned, they were sitting back not that impressed as I began.

[00:03:17] And as I continued to speak, they began to lean forward and get very interested. So really, really quite interesting. So I'll quote some made up figures. I say made up because I need to obfuscate. I don't want to give away any of the various different NDAs I've signed.

[00:03:30] That's confidentiality is important. But I'll give you some figures to give you an indication of just how this is working for many many banks. But why do we care in financial services about conversationally? Well, the first one is the obvious one, reduced

[00:03:48] cost, right? It is incredibly expensive to serve lots and lots of customers or even a small amount of customers. You're running a call center is very, very expensive. If you can cut that down, if you can redirect and redeploy people to other tasks to higher value

[00:04:03] activities, then that can be really beneficial. Of course, increasing efficiency goes hand in hand with cost and profitability. But really making sure that in many cases, the chat bot or this conversationally, I is able to orchestrate a lot of the

[00:04:18] lower level basic capability so that the customer can just serve themselves. And then speaking of the customer, customer delight. So here's a chat GPT image of a bank customer who is very happy. There you go. Right now, just more about cost and volumes.

[00:04:34] Let me make up some figures. So these figures are genuinely accurate. What I mean is there are institutions that are doing traffic around about this volume. Okay, but I don't want to identify them. So I've changed the figures slightly, but they're

[00:04:51] off this level of magnitude. Okay. So 22 million customers. Okay, 22 million retail customers. The institution does about 18 to 18 to 19 million conversations a year. Using their conversational AI. Accuracy. That's very much depending on what your definition of accuracy is. There are some institutions as

[00:05:18] one I know in particular, actually two who are upwards of 97, 97 ish percent accurate meaning that they are able to answer almost 98% of all incoming inquiries. And that that is so well, for example, if I say, Hey, look, hello, hi there.

[00:05:38] And I asked my question. And that question maybe may have a requirement for you to do something. But the, you know, that is done and orchestrated by the chatbot to 90, so maybe two or 3% need to be handed over. Now, at that level, at that

[00:05:55] level of accuracy, you are seeing a huge amount of redeployment possible in terms of staff staffing. So that same same instance, you know, 800, 800 FTE, 800 individuals redeployed. I say redeployed because in some cases they were made redundant. In other cases, they are redeployed and redeployment

[00:06:16] actually, I see that being a lot more popular. So using using those individuals to not maybe all of them, but you can allow some degree of what's the phrase where there's one institution I know they just they began to to allow

[00:06:30] their redundancy, right? So naturally, and then they're able to remove positions. But actually what they were doing was redeploying for high value, right? So a high value conversation, meaning money for the bank or higher value for the bank and vice versa for the customer, right? So higher

[00:06:48] value conversations are mortgages, higher value conversations are investments savings, higher value conversations are where someone with a disability needs to be able to speak to someone immediately and straight through, right? They can't use digital. They can't easily use mobile technology and so on. Those individuals are

[00:07:08] often left. And it's very difficult to be served because everyone else is phoning. So there's a lot of higher value capability offered. Of course, there is a lot of money and efficiency if you're using conversationally incorrectly. So how should it work? My

[00:07:26] own view is this we should be we the industry should be wherever, wherever the customer is. And in many cases, they're on WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, right? So I would like to see those kind of conversational AI interfaces taking place where the customer is at the moment at

[00:07:44] the moment, I think from a maturity standpoint, from a feeling safe and definitions of safe vary, right? But many institutions you'll see most banks will have conversationally, I within within their authenticated app or web page. Now, let's have some example. Now,

[00:08:04] Lloyd's, let's just do a little comparison here. And I'll do the other banks in the UK where I've got accounts as well. So my Lloyd's customer, so I'm able to log in and see their app working in an authenticated environment. Lloyd's call their

[00:08:18] conversationally, they call it the virtual assistant or our virtual assistant rather anonymous, but that's perfectly fine. Here I am in in the app, I'm in the mobile app and I've clicked on help as in chat, right? I do find it a little bit

[00:08:34] frustrating that the second point here, it says, keep your query to 15 words or less. I know why they're saying that because that can make the help the system be a lot more efficient. But 15 words or less, you can imagine phoning up the Lloyd's call center. Hello, welcome to

[00:08:51] Lloyd's, please keep your query to 15 words or less. Right? That feels a little strange. So I don't like the fact that they're having to say this. I wonder if there's a way of obfuscating this, I mean, hiding this, right? Or maybe saying please keep your questions or your

[00:09:09] comments or your your conversation short, right for efficiency for speed. Fair enough. Okay. Oh, I should say ask one question at one time. Okay? Yes, well, fair enough. I think that's valid, right? Because the technology isn't quite able to deal with, you know, five

[00:09:29] different questions at once. Here I am. We're now in. Okay, so I've said yes, let's go. Right? Hello, I'm the Lloyd's bank virtual assistant says a message. Let me know how can help. Okay, fine. Now, I have asked very simple,

[00:09:45] how do I get a replacement card? I didn't say debit card or credit card. I just said replacement card. Okay, I've used the same for it from that West. Let's see how the chat bot responds. First off, it's saying hello, you're good. It's pulling that from the

[00:09:57] authenticated environment. Excellent. It sounds like you're talking about ordering a card. Yes. No, let me just stop for a minute, because that that popped up as a message, right? Then it's saying is that right? Okay. But then underneath, I've got this drivel where it Lloyd's they

[00:10:15] have felt they need to say you're not connected to virtual assistant. Remember, don't give it your pin fair enough password and so on. But then they're telling me on Saturday 15th of June, we'll be working in our internet banking mobile app. We're sorry, but you won't really

[00:10:27] you. Why? Why is that there? Because what was happening? I'm reading it and they go, oh, my attention is completely diverting because I thought the chat bot speaking to me. No, someone at Lloyd's someone at Lloyd's thought it was a good idea to stick that

[00:10:39] nonsense here. Yes, you have to tell customers, but that's deeply, deeply ineffective. I think very annoying to have that right there when I'm trying to do something else. Okay. Anyway, let's carry on. So I'm going to is that right? I'm gonna say yes, I am talking about

[00:10:56] ordering a card, right? This is the level of technology is having to is having to check but fair enough, right? I say yes. Why do you need a replacement? Now there's a various different reasons why they have to ask because if you if your card is

[00:11:10] lost or stolen, that's a slightly different path, right? Then then a replacement, you know, because it's damaged or something. That damage is quite easy. We can just send it to you lost or stolen. We've got to get into the whole hold on a minute. You need to

[00:11:21] notify us to look at fraud issues. Right? Okay, so for simplicity here, I'm going to say damaged cards. So I find the damage got pressed damage card. Okay, right? Okay, it says you can order replacement card using the managed card link below and your card

[00:11:36] will still work. It's very good. Yeah, while you're waiting for replacement, you can also now view new card details in the app after the day of ordering. So that's really cool, right? So once you've ordered the card, you can see the new details

[00:11:48] in the app. Great. So now it's asking me to tap on manage card. Fine. Okay. So I'm going to tap on that. Oh, right. Now what's happened there? So just go back here. Right. I tap on manage card. I'm in app. I'm

[00:12:02] in app. I mean I'm chatting with the chat but at the minute. Okay. I press tap to manage card and then it takes me to the card management screen. Now when I was doing this taking these screenshots, I was momentary flustered. I just tapped on

[00:12:16] view card details. Then I came back and thought, wait, how am I? And then I had card freeze. I thought, where is the replaced card? Where is that? Then of course I realized it's it's item number five on the menu. Why didn't you deep link? You

[00:12:29] deep linked me already, right? You sent me to card card management. Couldn't you send me to the replace card screen? Right. So I had to actually hunt around for this. Deeply annoying. Now look, it's fine. It's fine and it's good. It's good that it's

[00:12:43] capability exists. It's good that lawyers are offering this, but you know I'm picking you know hair splitting as the phrase goes because look if you're going to send me here why don't us do one more stage? Okay. Here is the one more stage. So I've tapped

[00:12:58] on replace card. Okay. So this is where I would like to be sent. But actually I wouldn't even like this. I want something even better. Get to that. So on this page, this is where you have a choice of you can confirm the card ending the

[00:13:12] name of the card, replace card pin. You don't pin reminder as well. And there's a few few bits of details they put here. And they're also reminding you that you can view your pin instantly on the app, which is really good. You don't have to get a replacement

[00:13:25] pin by post because that can be really quite annoying having to wait. And then once you I presume I didn't do this. I presume press continue and the next screen is thank you. I don't know because my lawyers card is working fine. Right.

[00:13:40] Maybe I should actually test it and see what happens just to order replacement. But my my assumption is you press next and then all the various different digital sell a tape, all the process in the back end will then happen. That's my assumption. Okay. So I actually

[00:13:55] came out of this. And then what I found really interesting so I came back to chatbot. Do you see here? There's a question. There's a question from the chatbot. Right. It's got the managed card link then underneath it says were you able to order a

[00:14:08] replacement card? Now what I'm showing you here is. Well, let me ask the following question. Why are you asking Lloyd's? I've just done it. Why are you asking me? The reason you're asking me is because your tech isn't connected. Right. Deeply, deeply, deeply

[00:14:26] annoying. Right. Come on. So I think it's really good. You've got this. It's really impressive because this is next gen. Right. And let's be clear. Lloyd's is one of the largest institutions in the United Kingdom. This ladies and gentlemen is best in class as far as lawyers are

[00:14:43] concerned. Right. I don't think it is best in class at all. Okay. I think they should have been straight through. Okay. What I would like to have seen is you need a replacement card. I don't see any other requirement. Why do you need for replacement? A damaged

[00:15:00] card? Why can't the bot simply go direct into your into your core, into your middleware or whatever you're doing it? Right. Using some digital sellotape, RPA, whatever. Right. Why can't it just go thank you? Your new card is on its way. Why not? Why wasn't

[00:15:19] it straight through? So and then Lloyd's why are you asking if your service works? Right. That that that I found quite irritating. Okay. So there we go. That's how Lloyd's are doing it. Now let me just be clear. I am hair splitting because I am really pleased

[00:15:36] really pleased that one of the largest institutions in United Kingdom is offering this capability. Right. I think it's important to be experimenting and playing and testing. And actually let me say I am to be clear, I am here. I'm splitting hairs here, right? Because it's very,

[00:15:53] very good. This experience. Now let's just go through another look. So yeah, I started at three. I'm just looking at the time 314. Yeah. Okay. I asked my question at 313. Okay. 314, 314 replacement card 314 PM. It was able to say this is the link you need. Okay. And then I

[00:16:18] tapped I had to route around finding it by 315. I was in a position to press continue. Now. Okay. So that that was only a minute maybe let's let's say 60 seconds in total for me right because I was taking screenshots and I was a little bit flustered looking for

[00:16:34] the function. That's really good. This is really effective and really good. I'm pleased with this. I just could it could be even better. That's my point. Okay. Right now. Let's have a look at Nat West. Here we are logging in. Now there's they don't have a virtual assistant.

[00:16:54] No, no, no. They have a digital assistant called Cora. So they've given it a name. I think that's I like to see this. I think it's useful to have a name right because we can all refer to it right even if you

[00:17:05] just call it as Nat West has on Cora great right because at least there's a name right. There's a name we can all say oh yeah, do you mean Cora? Right rather than do you mean of a virtual assistant or of the digital assistant? I think a

[00:17:16] name is nice. Don't think it's business critical but it's nice to have so now let me chat to Cora. So I've gone into help in the Nat West app. I've clicked on chat and here we are connecting to Cora. Privacy notice. So that's nice. Nice

[00:17:34] right at the top just reminding me please be sensitive. Don't give your password details and so on right. Hi, I'm Cora, your digital assistant. I can help you around. Okay, now let's have a look and see where is I don't see that please do not you must

[00:17:48] only use 15 words. We haven't seen that. Okay, what what Nat West have done is they've put all that into this simple first opening question or opening point point says ask me a short simple question such as how do I order a new card and

[00:18:05] I'll be able to help. So they very different perspective, right? Same fundamental message but they've done that differently. I like that. So same question. Okay, how do I get replacement card? Understand your answer this query right? Are you asking for a new card? Is

[00:18:20] that right? Please select an option. I say yes. Why would you like to request the same as Lloyd's? Okay, this is generally industry standard. What's the problem? Right? So again, I'm going to say card is broken or damaged in this case. Right? There we go. I'm sorry

[00:18:36] to hear that says Cora. A damaged or broken card can be easily replaced. Is it a please select an option debit card? Now, here is a failure point in my mind. I have a debit card and a credit card. So that's not good. Okay.

[00:18:56] Great that they've said is that a debit card and I say yes, because actually in this case it is a debit card. I would like to say hold on a minute. You've got two or three or four because I also my daughter has a rooster card.

[00:19:10] Okay, so I could be calling about that as well. Anyway, okay, so it's a debit card. So I'm not sure what's going on there. Either it's limited to debit only or it's just dumb luck. It happens to say debit card because that's all

[00:19:24] it can cope with. It doesn't handle credit. Unknown. Unknown. Fine. Okay, so debit card. A whole lot of text. Right? Please complete the form below. Okay, fill your point to Nat West. Please complete the form below. Where is the form below? And why am I

[00:19:43] completing a form? We'll get to that Nat West. I am deeply unimpressed here. You'll need your date of birth and the last four digits of your debit card to complete the form. Why? We will issue a new one, new card to your address. We

[00:19:58] have a file. Yeah, but you're fine. Your current car will be active. Okay, so now I'm going to press replace my debit card. All right, let's go. Ah, no, what's happened here? I press replace my debit card. And what it's doing is opening up Safari on

[00:20:15] my iPhone. And it's chucked me straight out of the app. Okay, why is it not in app? Again, I'm splitting hairs splitting hairs, but I'm showing you this is best practice as far as Nat West is concerned. I think there's room for improvement here, ladies and gentlemen. Okay,

[00:20:32] why is it opening up another window? You and I know, you and I know incumbent banks. It's very, very difficult. And this is the next best thing that they can do, right? Bring up a customer form. Okay, and then connect that into the various different user flows

[00:20:52] or back office, middle office flows for ordering card replacement. Right. So here we go. I took my screenshot just to show you this is a window opening. Now it's now it's open or the menu card. Okay, so actually I'm happy here. Let's just go

[00:21:09] back and look at timings. Okay, so I started I came into Cora at 317. Okay, 318 the timing's moving. Maybe this is maybe 60 seconds. It would define what I want. Okay, still at 318. And then it's popped me out still at 318pm into the form. Right. So very quick, very effective.

[00:21:33] So this is good. This is good experience. The ultra failure though is what are you doing now? What are you doing asking for my date of birth and the last four digits of my debit card? Right. Why? Why? Okay, now I know I know there'll be some compliance

[00:21:55] team somewhere that have said no, it's mandate, it's mandate. You don't understand. You don't understand. Right. That's what you'll be telling me in the meeting. I know this. Okay. But why? Evidence to me why this is anywhere near a good experience, anywhere near a

[00:22:13] good experience. Again, I am splitting hairs were still at 318. I'm about 60 seconds in. This is fundamentally very impressive. Okay, it is not that difficult for me to type in my date of birth. The last four digits is annoying. That is annoying because I'm going to have to

[00:22:30] go and look up, find the details of the debit card. Maybe it's in the app. Maybe it can go fine or I have the debit card with me. Right. That's annoying but reasonable. Okay. Now I presume that when I press done, or I think it says something, I

[00:22:46] hadn't scrolled down here. When I press done, I presume that it will then just send me the card. Right. I didn't do this again because I'm quite happy my Nat West debit card is functioning fine. Okay. But goodness me Nat West, I'm dragging you over the

[00:23:04] virtual hot coals because I think this is poor. The fundamental service offering is excellent. Right. This is really good. Really effective. It's very similar to what we saw with Lloyd's. Right. This is in UK so far as far as I'm concerned. As far as I'm

[00:23:21] looking at the minute because I haven't looked to the other banks yet. This is best practice. Right. Really effective. The bot was quick. It identified what I needed and you took me to the thing to do the work. That's the problem though. Why am I doing the work?

[00:23:36] Okay. I've created a conversational maturity framework for governing these kind of things. I've been doing a lot of work conversational I from with many institutions. And number four, stage four, stage three is you've got some kind of crappy automation that doesn't really do much. Okay. Frequently

[00:24:00] asked questions. Stage four is you have some automation moving. Right. Either chatbot can respond can help like what we're seeing here. So this is stage four. Stage five is where you're doing straight through right where the chatbot the conversation line is orchestrating orchestrating the experience meaning it is

[00:24:19] going right. You're in once a new card. Pull pull the API right. So some institutions I've been looking at they've got 65 70 80 integrations. Their chatbots integrated across any different systems. Right. So it can start to do stuff. This is really poor in the context of maturity.

[00:24:39] Right that you're first of all why are you even thinking why not West? Do you need to ask my date of birth and Lloyd's doesn't right. Okay. Why are you asking for the last four digits on my debit card and Lloyd's doesn't. Right. Now

[00:24:53] you may have some excuses like oh well hold on a minute you know is it your card is currently fix it fix it because I'm in the app. Okay I'm in the app I can transfer money I'm fully authenticated. Right. You shouldn't have to be asking

[00:25:06] this. Okay there's a better route here. So I would like to see that moved and changed okay to straight through I would really like to see replace my debit card. Okay I tap and it simply says thank you your debit card will be with you

[00:25:19] in three days. Right or something like that that would be ultra smooth and now we're moving into stage four or five in terms of maturity conversationally I maturity so they're there there we go. I was going to show you nor dare in the Nordic because they are

[00:25:38] very advanced very advanced but I've got a query about their chat but I wasn't able to test I did the same process but then when I came to request a card it asked someone expat so I'm not don't live in Denmark anymore

[00:25:55] it threw me it said all you need to speak to a customer services advisor. I think that's because I'm an expat I think they have straight through but I don't want to show you that unnecessarily I'm wanting to make sure I'm right before I show

[00:26:08] that so there we go thank you for playing the game that was that was me walking through Lloyd's and Nat West now I haven't looked yet at the other banks I saw Santander have got this I saw HSBC have got this capability so

[00:26:22] Barthes have got this I'm a customer of each so I'll go and check this shortly. This was just a simple head to head showing you one use case I picked this one because I was hoping it was really effective and simple right simple one and it's one

[00:26:37] of those ones that I don't want to have to phone you right and you bank don't want to have to listen to my call right it's such a boring boring thing a replacement debit card right it's already costing you money Mr. and Mrs. Bank right it's

[00:26:53] already costing you money so when I phone about it it's even more expense right because we've got to go through the various different processes to to qualify me I've got to go through your your menu prompts very annoying so the fact you've got chatbots I think is

[00:27:07] excellent I am really pleased I know I was splitting hairs okay I was doing so in an effort to encourage and help right I am delighted and very impressed that both of these institutions have invested so much time and effort to have done this

[00:27:24] and I think it's really good and you saw from just from the the timestamps there how quick and effective this was so you know I still got I didn't go through with every every function there but I still got where I needed to go really

[00:27:39] effectively so that's really good is now just how do you make it even better guys so well done Lloyds and that West okay that's the end of this particular podcast I shall do some more soon I'll try and look at let's maybe do HSBC Sunday there or I'll

[00:27:56] pick a few and just do the same again and I'll be really interesting to show side by side how how their technology is is moving thank you for watching if you've got any questions or queries just just get me the usual way which probably linked in as a

[00:28:10] most effective and we'll go from there thank you speak to you soon