Front-line service teams at financial institutions are continuously looking for new ways to help ease the many pressures that their support staff is facing. Call volumes are still higher than they’ve ever been, hiring and maintaining staff is continuing to be a challenge, and teams are often being expected to be able to do more with less resources available. Automation is a frequently turned-to tool to help alleviate these concerns, but issues stem from the availability and quality of AI tools for dial-in phone calls.
Many banks and credit unions do utilize virtual assistants, but quite often this automation has come in the form of text-based virtual assistants that automatically help users over live chat. Online, text-based chat is a communication channel that has a wide appeal across all generations, and many consumers are very satisfied using intelligent, AI-powered chatbots. However, phones are still a popular service channel for many, and adding that same 24/7 self-service convenience to your dial-in phone system would bring those same appealing features to the entire customer service experience, rather than just a single facet of it.
Unfortunately, automation solutions for voice banking have traditionally been legacy, aging IVR systems that lack many of the modern conveniences found with digital-based virtual banking assistants. Many consumers dread hearing an automated voice on the other end of the phone, and often just try to make their way to a human rep as soon as possible. This is because of how unintuitive navigating these solutions can be: making your way through a web of menus solely by a number pad is a tedious and confusing experience. Additionally, these IVR systems are often stuck in their own silos, disconnected from other channels and creating inefficient, broken experiences for consumers to navigate between.
To remedy this issue, financial institutions are looking towards new AI-powered intelligent virtual agent (IVA) solutions that bring their phone automation into the fold of a more holistic customer service experience. In doing so, they are finding a way to bring the same kind of experience that you’d get from talking to a voice assistant over the phone, one which can perform all the same tasks that a chatbot connected to their financial institution could.
This week, at our 3rd annual DCS Summit event, Glia announced an exciting new voice banking functionality for the already popular Glia Virtual Assistant (GVA). Now, the GVA can use a conversational voice interface to support interactions via dial-in phone or through online voice. Voice GVAs can assist users at all hours of the day, just like their text-based counterparts, and can route callers to live service reps when needed with all conversational context remaining intact. All implementations of GVAs are managed from the same interaction platform, leading to a much simpler management and operational experience compared to managing various different solutions. Voice GVAs proactively answer user questions in an intuitive conversational manner: This means no more ‘Press 1 for account information, Press 2 for branch information…’, or similar IVR solutions that many users loathe interacting with.
Self-service over the phone can now be as simple as asking a question and getting an instant response, while avoiding getting lost within endless menus and submenus to get where you need. It’s the same conversational AI tool that consumers find on Glia’s live chat functionality, now as easy to use as talking to any other virtual assistant. Dial-in phone calls can now have access to the same modernized, high-tech experience that many consumers are already used to receiving in other channels.
Want to find out more about Voice GVAs? Read the press release or check out our new white paper to learn about how to empower your consumers with voice banking capabilities.
