The AI Book

CHAPTER 31The Rise of Conversational AI Platforms

By Anna Maj¹

¹FinTech Leader, , PwC

According to Gartner, conversational AI platforms will be the next big paradigm shift in information technology. They predicted that in 2020 the average person would have more conversations with bots than with their partner. Gartner also anticipates that by 2021, 15% of all customer service interactions will be handled solely by AI.¹ This may also hold true for banking and payment services. Voice agents will change the way consumers interact with brands, no matter whether retail, in the form of an enhanced interactive customer experience, or banking ones. The machine learning-based assistants can be particularly effective in the e-commerce domain, driving and enhancing seamless user’s shopping experience. How does conversational AI transform payments as well as payment experience then? How do banks, payment companies and other financial players deploy bot technologies to grasp the opportunity of entering the area of voice-guided banking and payment services?

No doubt, bots may become irreplaceable in the service of banking and payments. Conversational AI can definitely improve customer experience, being exactly at the place where consumers, particularly younger generations, want to be – the voice-navigated and messaging platforms. There are a couple of the pain points within the financial industry that can be efficiently addressed by the voice assistants: search for information and waiting ...