Page 45 - Pay Magazine

institutions, payments networks, brokerage houses and wealth management rms, such as Mastercard, DBS Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Varo Money. Its clients are in various stages of development and deployment.
Oren says KAI was built from the ground up with the deepest array of AI technologies in the industry based on decades of research
and intellectual property from SRI International—where Siri was invented—including speech recog- nition, natural language under- standing, AI reasoning and more. The time from design to launch varies depending on the complexity
of the implementation and the state of the nancial institution’s data, according to Oren. That said, its implementation is typically a few months, and the return on invest- ment is measured by increased customer acquisition, loyalty and retention as well as decreased customer care expenses.
Chatbots slowly have been devel- oping from a crawl to a walk since the introduction of very basic SMS chats of the 1990s, but as compa- nies look to technology to help them engage customers and attract news ones—all while saving money —this could be the year we see chatbots up and running.
volume 10 • spring 2017
Banks also need to roll out these solutions slowly for security rea- sons, Oglesby adds. “For example, fraudsters actively look for vulner- abilities in anything that is new, so if a bank fully rolls out bots to handle all banking capabilities and there’s a vulnerability, then the bank’s customers could be badly exposed.” For these reasons, he expects there to be a gradual approach to rolling out chatbots, limiting how much the bot can do initially and adding to that over time. Consumer adoption also will take time, Oglesby adds.
The Future of Bots
Chatbots have been creating a “pretty big buzz” in the past year, driven in part by large investments in chatbot platforms and AI tech- nology by Facebook and other
big technology companies, accord- ing to Dror Oren, vice president
of product and co-founder of
New York City-based Kasisto, creator of the KAI conversational AI platform.
Kasisto’s clients are in the nancial industry and “we have de nitely seen an increase in the demand for chatbots, evidenced by our customers and healthy pipeline,” Oren says. “Consumers’ demands for better banking experiences are driving banks to adopt chatbots as a way to engage, transact with and support their customers as well as attract new customers.”
Among the companies Kasisto can publicly mention, it has licensed its KAI banking platform to nancial
BaBy stePs
Analysts Keith Bossey, senior vice president, nancial services at GfK,
and Rick Oglesby, president of AZ Payments Group and a partner
at Double Diamond Group, provide several steps for businesses interested in employing chatbots.
• ensure the chatbot works well and provides a consistent experience, regardless of how the user is accessing it: smartphone (android, apple, etc.), Website or app.
• Launch and develop the chatbot slowly, adding capabilities over time.
• consumers should know they’re conversing with a chatbot.
• Be sure the chatbot is secure.
• Provide an easy way for a consumer to switch from a chatbot to a human customer service representative.
paybefore.com 43