The financial services industry, specifically the field of collections, has started to use voice assistants to automate customer service tasks and increase the ease with which collections can be done.

These assistants are able to carry out an increasingly complex array of tasks for the consumer, often by employing in-home technology like Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices.

The first voice assistant was created for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. It could recognize digits 0 through 16 and perform math equations using the spoken digits. We’ve come a long way since then, with enterprise-level voice assistants enabling huge finserv companies to provide voice-accessible banking and financial products to consumers, wherever they are. Voice assistants are fueling an expansion of financial services touchpoints with customers.

Is a voice assistant right for your company? 

While the idea of implementing the most cutting-edge technology may be exciting, the reality is, not all problems require the newest, shiniest tech. Using a problem-based approach is the key to determining whether the latest and greatest solution is right for your company. Ask yourself, what problem are we trying to solve? From there, map out potential solutions. Start with the simplest available option. As much as possible, use empirical evidence to help find the solution that will be most effective to justify the new purchase.

If a text-based assistant will do the job better than a voice assistant, there’s no need to implement a voice assistant. Voice chatbots can do a lot of good when utilized in the right way.

Voice assistants in financial services

Voice assistants can be extremely useful for financial services institutions looking to upgrade a customer’s journey. The shape of the journey depends on the desired outcome. A customer may be looking to check their account balance, make a credit card payment, or make a peer-to-peer payment, all of which they can do through a voice assistant. Fintechs are providing the link between financial services institutions and consumer-facing voice hubs (Google Home, Amazon Alexa, etc.) that enable customers to carry out voice-authorized tasks. Finservs are catching on to the idea that customers want to take care of more advanced banking without logging on to their mobile devices. 

Basic voice assistant use in financial services

There are several common use cases for voice assistants in conjunction with financial services software. These are the basic applications that banks starting to leverage voice assistants have begun to apply. 

Personal finance

Customers can ask for their account balance and have it spoken to them. This is one of the more basic uses of voice chatbots in banking.

Payment

P2P payments: Peer-to-peer payments can be handled using voice commands. There may be a dollar limit to prevent accidental payments over a certain amount, and to mitigate damage done by mistakenly saying a wrong amount.

Credit card payments: Voice assistants can easily handle standard issue bill payments for both credit cards and utilities. This might involve setting up an automatic bill payment and having the voice assistant ask for authorization at an appointed time.

Wealth management

Voice assistants can be paired with a bank’s investment portfolio management software. Users can ask about the state of their portfolio and options for optimizing their returns based on their acceptable level of risk. They can complete financial research via voice assistant, which can then relay financial news and market data to inform investment decisions. One day, users might be able to order directly via voice assistant.

Lending

Businesses and individuals can inquire about available loans and how to access them, current interest rates and how to refinance, and options for small-business loans. The voice assistant may have a certain amount of access to the loan providers' loan origination software.

Advanced voice assistant uses

Identity validation (biometrics): Voice assistants can also be used in financial services for biometric validation. This is an adjacent use case, as biometric validation is used to provide customers with access to more sensitive and effective interactions with AI.

Conversational AI: This can fuel any interaction or outcome a company comes up with — lead generation funnels, product recommendations, product purchases, account balance shifting among others. If the AI is good enough and the paths are well designed, the sky is the limit. Conversational AI benefits a number of industries, and financial services is no exception.

Voice analytics: With voice chatbots comes massive amounts of data. This data, in the form of audio captured during customer interactions, will be extremely useful to companies able to leverage it. Deep analysis of conversations captured during customer conversations will both improve the AI having these conversations and empower designers and developers to really listen to the voice of the customer to determine potential product improvements and offerings.

Voice assistant industry uses 

Collections: One of the most interesting use cases for voice assistants is in collections. The collections industry, a field with a reputation of being populated with unsavory individuals, is rebranding. The new voice of the industry is an artificial one: robots imbued with just the right amount of empathy and toughness to accomplish the goal at hand.

Convincing or reminding someone to pay a debt is tough, time-consuming work. Human collections agents have to have tough skin and be able to work through difficulties presented by unwilling debtors. The beauty of an AI-powered chatbot is the AI cannot engage with the debtor in any way other than how it was designed. This eliminates the possibility of a conversation turning sour, at least from the agency’s perspective, and improves the chances of collection. The company can also use data analytics to determine the likelihood of payment and focus its energy on cases that have the best chance of yielding payment. This can be coupled with the use of credit and collections software to facilitate a streamlined process. 

Lending: Voice assistants can lend a huge hand to the lending industry by allowing customers to apply for loans, make payments on a loan, check application statuses and more. All of a customer’s information gathering can be done prior to making a decision by using a voice assistant, limiting the amount of resources the lending company needs on hand to deal with customer requests.

Voice assistants empowering financial institutions 

Voice assistants have started and will likely continue to shape consumer and business interactions with financial services institutions. Finservs that implement these assistants must ensure they are the best possible option for solving problems at hand. These businesses also need to leverage voice analytics to ensure full use of the treasure trove of customer data captured by voice assistants. As the uses expand and the quality of the voice assistants improve in the next 10 years, voice assistants will be the primary touchpoint for customer interactions with financial institutions.