Introduction of a Chatbot at a Swiss Cantonal Bank

The brief

The Be STF was tasked by a Swiss Cantonal Bank to implement a chatbot, which was launched on their public website during the summer of 2022. The chatbot is available 24/7, providing interactive assistance to existing customers and prospects even outside the regular opening hours of the customer service center. The goal of the implementation was to enhance the customer experience and reduce inquiries to the customer service center.

Our approach

Our approach to implementing the chatbot comprised two key aspects:

Scope Definition: We began by identifying frequently asked questions by customers to the customer service center. These formed the basis for the initial chatbot stories, focusing on topics such as E-Banking, Key App Login, FAQ, and later, Twint. This ensured maximum relief for the customer service center.

Interactive Dialogue Creation: Subsequently, we not only developed responses to customer inquiries but also formulated the dialogues to be intuitive and user-friendly. A chatbot with a predefined dialogue framework was created in the background, allowing users to choose from the provided responses. This ensures a structured and easily understandable interaction. In addition, the bank’s core values were anchored in the language of the chatbot.

The solution and key benefits

The chatbot achieved impressive results in its first year:

• Nearly 25,000 interactions between users and the chatbot.
• Approximately 50% occurred outside of the the customer service center’s opening hours.
• The peak handling of inquiries during the Twint migration, with around 10,000 inquiries in the first seven weeks after the introduction.
• Conclusion: The automated chatbot successfully avoided numerous resource-intensive inquiries in the customer service center.

To ensure the long-term success of the chatbot within the bank, a TOM was also designed and has been in place since go-live.

The rule-based chatbot also laid the foundation for future extensions that incorporate AI.

Next Evolutionary Stage

Currently, users are limited to predefined sequences. To further enhance the user experience, the chatbot will be expanded both functionally and content-wise by the first quarter of 2024:

Content-wise, the chatbot will gradually be able to provide information on the bank’s entire website.

Functionally, the chatbot will recognize the user’s freely formulated inquiry through free-text input, artificial intelligence, and intent recognition. This allows users to receive direct answers to their questions much faster, aligned with the formulation of the inquiry, without having to navigate through predefined dialogues.