BFSI cos embrace AI-powered voicebots for enhanced customer experience

MUMBAI, INDIA: Kotak Mahindra Bank has launched an AI-powered voicebot- 'Keya' perhaps the first one in the banking sector. The bilingual voicebot available in English and Hindi, comes integrated with Kotak’s phone-banking helpline and will augment the traditional interactive voice response (IVR) system.

Keya uses automatic speech recognition, natural language understanding and text-to-speech technology. Kotak has developed Keya in partnership with the US-based company, Nuance.

Designed to help customers navigate smoothly and quickly through the IVR, Keya understands the caller’s intent, verifies it and then offers relevant solutions resulting in greater call routing accuracy, reduced call duration, and improved customer satisfaction.

Keya also helps in efficient agent utilization and better deployment at the Kotak contact centre as simpler calls get automated and complex calls get routed for human assistance.

Puneet Kapoor, Senior Executive Vice President, Kotak Mahindra Bank said, “Voice commands form a significant share of search online. Keya is an intelligent voicebot developed keeping in mind customers’ changing preference for voice over text. Further, this technology will also enable us to derive real customer insights and thereby, identify new automation opportunities.”

Similarly, the general insurance company, HDFC ERGO also launched its AI-enabled chatbot ‘DIA’ on Amazon’s voice service, Alexa. This new platform will allow customers of HDFC ERGO to interact and get easy access to information about their insurance policies, simply with the use of voice commands.

Customers with existing Amazon Echo device can get voice control access to enable services from HDFC ERGO.

Through this customers can now easily locate the nearest network hospital, network garage or HDFC ERGO branches, understand the products offered by HDFC ERGO and get answers to various queries related to General Insurance; simply through a voice-enabled conversation.

It will also guide the customers for queries like “How long does it take to process claims?” or “How can I renew my policy?" or even get answers to complex questions like “What is Salvage?" and so on. Also, apart from answering FAQs, the new service is also enabled to email the copy of their HDFC ERGO insurance policy to their registered email address.

Ritesh Kumar, MD & CEO, HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company said, “We envisage a paradigm shift in the way we humans interact with technology. This integration of our AI Chatbot ‘DIA’ with Alexa has been programmed to provide customers with a seamless experience to reach out to HDFC ERGO for insurance related services, simply by using the voice interface.”