Last week, the White House released a new proposal entitled “Time is Money” to crack down on excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation towards public consumers. The initiative calls on a variety of industries to streamline, simplify, and clarify online and phone experiences. Ultimately, the White House is calling on corporations to make it easy to accomplish tasks, provide human customer service easily, and eliminate manipulative practices online.

Importantly to financial institutions (FIs), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has two new initiatives that directly impact financial services organizations: eliminating customer service “doom loops” and tackling the shortcomings of customer service chatbots. While these initiatives will only directly impact large FIs to start, regulations tend to trickle down and smaller banks may soon have to adapt. But even before regulations impact them, smaller institutions will need to adapt to stay competitive against big banks. Embracing AI will secure FIs' position at the forefront of personalized customer experiences online and over the phone.

Eliminating Customer Service Doom Loops

Today, it’s very common in the financial industry for callers to experience multiple different menu options and automated recordings that make it challenging or impossible to get to a human customer service agent. In fact, this process is listed as a top customer service complaint. The CFPB intends to initiate rules that would require financial institutions to let customers talk to a human by pressing a single button, instead of waiting through a long message or finding the right combination of voice commands.

While a menu option or automated recording may be fine for answering basic questions, credit unions and community banks have long understood that complex problems or questions need a human expert. Unfortunately, consumers understand all too well that calling with a complex or unique financial situation often requires getting through an automated gatekeeper, and it’s easy to get stuck in a loop or waiting several minutes to finally get to the right option. These new initiatives aim to eliminate these experiences, allowing callers to get to an agent faster.

Getting Smarter (and Better) at Using Automated and AI Bots

Similarly, the White House calls upon financial institutions to improve their use of automated chatbots and AI voice recordings, even asking the CFPB to identify when certain instances may be unlawful. The fact sheet indicates that chatbots may be useful for answering basic questions, but that they “frequently provide inaccurate information and give the run-around to customers seeking a real person.” In the coming months, the CFPB will be tasked with providing guidelines, rules, or regulations on lawful and unlawful usages of AI voice and chatbots to service customers.

In many ways, this call to action is a follow-up to the White House’s executive order on AI risks and regulations from last December. That executive order called upon agencies to put forth guidelines and best practices for financial services in regard to AI-specific security risks. Now that many of these security risks are coming into place, it’s important for the public’s experiences with AI to be not only accurate and lawful, but smooth and seamless.

How FIs Should React to “Time is Money”

Both calls to the CFPB reflect the need for a smarter, efficient, and balanced approach to using either human agents or automated recordings, chatbots, and AI agents. In both cases, the White House and the CFPB agree that it should be fast and easy to get to a human agent if the caller wants.

The majority of the banks that will fall under this jurisdiction include larger financial institutions. While this won’t directly impact the majority of community banks and credit unions, they should be aware that larger banks’ customer service is going to significantly change—and soon. To ensure that these smaller institutions stay competitive against larger institutions, they need to prepare for the upcoming customer service improvements that larger banks will enact in the coming months.

First, you should analyze the experience of your own chatbot and voice agent processes. How long is your voice menu? Can your bots respond to a customers’ intents well? How hard is it to get to a human agent? Ultimately, you should be able to provide high-quality interactions with AI bots while also removing the friction for customers to speak to a representative when they want. Not only does this create an easy, seamless experience for callers, but it ensures your customer service representatives are set up for success. Start having conversations with your voice, digital, and chatbot providers about how they’re responding to the fact sheet and their plans for helping smaller institutions stay competitive with the big banks.

AI To Foster Customer Satisfaction

The right vendor partners ensure you enable employees to solve unique problems and spend more time helping people, while automating the tedious, less rewarding aspects of their job. Not only that, but they keep up with regulations and navigate the future with you. Purpose-built AI solutions for the financial industry are the catalyst for FIs to provide excellent, personalized customer service experiences. Unlike older chatbots that answer questions with fixed, long paragraphs or walking through an entire menu of options, AI bots create a specific and direct response based on a customer’s intent that looks and feels like a human. 

Posh builds our AI solutions with the end-user experience in mind, whether that’s for your call center agents or your customers. Our solutions foster both customer and agent satisfaction by freeing up agents to work directly with customers who need tailored guidance, while ensuring accurate and plain-spoken responses directly from the source of truth. We make the transition from a “doom loop” to reaching a customer service representative seamless. Our AI bots:

• Provide 24/7 service, eliminating the need for a third-party overnight provider
• Contain a majority of conversations, highlighting their ability to accurately address a majority of client questions without needing a human agent 
• Reduce speed to answer by 92 percent
• Reduce abandonment rate by 93 percent, meaning more customers don’t drop off because they’re getting their questions answered 

Posh will continue to watch for releases on best practices, guidelines, and regulations from federal agencies and provide insights and takeaways for the financial services industry. If you have specific questions about the new fact sheet and what it means for you and your business, reach out to Posh.