Humans in the Loop: Chatbots Are More Effective When Customers Know Agents Are Standing By

To respond to a broader variety of customer needs in real time, most big banks have introduced a chatbot. In the past five years, chatbot availability in mobile banking from the 20 largest banks has more than doubled. The appeal of chatbots, from the banks’ perspective, has always been clear: convenient and fast customer service that is highly scalable and delivered at a lower cost than traditional support channels. 

What FIs haven’t yet solved is meeting the customer service expectations that match the 24/7 availability of the app. This disconnect calls for a triage system of chatbots and human agents that more effectively routes customer queries and provides clear lanes for getting the help needed in the best-suited channel. 

The components of such a system set clear expectations for what customers can expect from each channel, provide transparent escalation routes when a chatbot can’t provide the help customers need, deliver clean handoffs from the chatbot to human agents that include context from the previous interaction so customers don’t have to repeat themselves, and an open door so customers can pick up the threads of previous interactions. 

Key questions discussed in this report:

• What are the advantages and shortcomings of chatbots in delivering customer service through digital banking?
• How can banks prioritize customer service needs by channel (human agent, bot, etc.)?
• What are customer expectations of their service experiences in digital banking?

Companies Mentioned:

ChatGPT, Gemini, Navy Federal Credit Union, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo