With whole economic sectors shut down, including travel, hospitality, and parts of the retail industry, the financial impact on the population was evident. To ease pressure on individuals and protect financially vulnerable segments, the governments passed emergency ordinances forcing banks to allow their customers to defer their credit rate payments. Credit owners positively received the decision, leading to a surge in customer support requests towards banks.
In the last 3 years, the number of calls to Banca Transilvania’s contact center multiplied. This increased volume led to longer handling times and higher costs, negatively impacting the customer experience.
Customers want the convenience and practicality of online and omnichannel banking, but they also expect personalized interactions. Quite simply, they want to be able to speak with their bank. Nowadays, the basic human need for support was never more evident – or more necessary.
Banca Transilvania, the local banking market leader, saw the opportunity to put a stronger emphasis on the bank-customer relationship. It switched its perspective and looked to digitalization to provide the tool that would bring it closer to its customers.
The solution was INO, an AI-powered virtual assistant developed on the DRUID chatbot platform that would solve repetitive requests from the support area in Neo, BT24, and BT Pay through FAQs and live dialogue with call-center agents.
More specifically, INO was trained for FAQ support, and live conversations with call center agents and has self-help sections. It is also an alternative channel for online updating data. The chatbot is available 24/7 on the Banca Transilvania website, Neo and BT24 Login page.