Bankia hired Amelia, renamed Bianka, for IT support and customer-facing services. She recently surpassed 1 million total conversations.
Challenge
Bankia needed technology that would help transform and reposition the bank for innovative digital banking services.
Solution
The bank hired Amelia, renamed her Bianka, and deployed her to handle IT support services and later customer-facing banking tasks.
Results
Bianka averages 150,000 conversations each month with a 90% intent recognition rate.
Bankia, the fourth-largest bank in Spain, wanted to transform its internal and customer-facing technology. The bank’s CEO and CIO both understood that traditional banking was becoming less and less popular in relation to digital and mobile banking, and they needed to transform and reposition the company.
Within an important transformation and digitalization multiyear program, the bank leadership wanted to see whether Conversational AI could help improve both internal and external processes, which would then free employees to focus on more valuable and unique tasks compared to the common FAQs they answered each day and help customers with their more common needs.
In December 2019, Bankia hired Amelia, renamed Bianka, for internal voice-based IT Service Desk support. The bank hoped to improve speed and efficiency for back-office processes. In the first two months providing internal support, Bianka became the first point-of-contact for IT support for more than 16,000 Bankia employees. She handled 5,000 conversations per month with a 60% resolution rate end-to-end.
Bianka’s Conversational AI Banking Skills
But Bianka can do more. She can help both customers and employees by learning about the typical transactions a customer does on a daily basis. Through both voice and chat, Bianka is able to extract information from a single phrase to perform operations and solve customer issues. She can execute the entire money transfer process end-to-end, identifying the necessary data to make the transfer and showing a summary of the order to be signed. If necessary, Bianka will request additional data that is necessary to complete the operation in a conversation with the client. For example, if Bianka doubts which contact to use, she will display a list of the contacts similar to the one indicated. She is available around-the-clock, year-round.
After a brief ramp up with her initial remit, Bianka was assigned additional customer-facing responsibilities, including:
• Account balances
• Money transfers
• P2P orders using Bizum
• Last account movements
• Receipt information
• Accounts inquiries
• PIN unblocks
• Card unblocks
Each interaction allows Bianka to understand and store knowledge, and then apply that knowledge to solve similar situations, so that she constantly evolves and learns.
According to Luis de Mena, Director of Bankia Mobile: "Bianka allows us to optimize the experience of our clients in their interaction with the bank. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, customers can carry out regular banking operations through Bianka, which understands and responds by voice.”
Bianka Creates Positive Digital Banking Outcomes
By May 2020, Bianka was conducting almost 50,000 active conversations per month. Less than one year after Bankia deployed her, she averages more than 150,000 conversations per month in its call center, with resolution and intent recognition rates of 90% each. She recently surpassed 1 million total conversations, far surpassing initial expectations.
1 million
Bianka recently surpassed 1 million conversations since her deployment, far ahead of schedule.
90%
With Conversational AI, Bankia achieves 90% intent recognition in user interactions.
16000 employees
Bianka provides first-line IT support to her 16,000 human colleagues.
The Intelligent Contact Center
Companies have spent decades implementing Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems in their call and customer care centers, but they've proven unable to keep up with customers' expectations.
In this white paper, we examine the benefits of an Intelligent Contact Center, where companies utilize Conversational AI-powered virtual agents to provide first-line resolution and support for customers, and augment human employees through AI and automation.
Download our paper to learn the benefits of this approach and why current IVR systems simply will not cut it in today’s hyper-paced digital landscape.