Voice Banking Is So Much Bigger Than Smart Speakers

A February 2020 CU Times article, “Voice Tech Is Quiet, but Credit Unions Are Ready to Get Loud,” opened with: “It’s taking longer than expected for people to warm up to buying things with their smart speakers, according to new research.” While this may be true (depending on whose expectations you’re measuring), it’s important that credit unions not miss the forest for the trees.

With financial services, voice technology is going to be so much bigger than using a smart speaker to buy something. And its significance is so much greater than the novelty of members being able to use their Amazon Alexa or Google Home to ask, “What’s my account balance?” For credit unions, the magic of voice technology isn’t about the device … the magic is in how it transforms your members’ relationships with their money and you.

Yes, consumers will be empowered to purchase, subscribe, buy and reserve using their voices, but the biggest draw of artificial intelligence-backed voice technology is the ability to engage members like never before. And technology that enables intelligent interactions with members when they’re away from the branch is even more important amid and after the pandemic.

To illustrate, let’s focus on just one use case, that of Personal Financial Management. Credit union members want to understand and track their financial situations, which requires easy access to information and cash-flow analysis. For many years, credit unions have been working hard to get their members to take advantage of PFM tools within online and mobile banking, which deepen a member’s relationship with his or her financial institution. And yes, there are some members who can actually squeeze every bit of value from these tools for each monthly, quarterly and annual reconciled statement. These members categorize, export files, sort, pivot, forecast and play with the numbers to their hearts’ content, all in an effort to deepen their understanding of their finances. But, sadly, for the vast majority of members, this deep understanding feels unattainable. The work is far too tedious, analytical and time-consuming.

Fortunately, for members who aren’t “math people,” there’s a new interface in town. The voice channel can serve as the bridge to cross the chasm of intimidation and engage more deeply. Leveraging something as easy to use as voice, credit unions can maximize accessibility for their members – and as we all know, the more accessible you make something, the more members are going to use it.

People are hungry for analysis of their money behaviors and patterns. Give them a glimpse of this deep insight into their finances, and they’ll want more – it becomes part of their regular routines.

In its simplest form, AI-backed conversational voice technology for credit unions will eliminate the need for members to hunt and peck through menus to find detailed information about their saving and spending. There’s no longer the need to dig into an online portal or create a spreadsheet. Instead of writing a macro Excel function as wide as a computer screen, credit union members would be able to ask a simple question using natural language, such as “How much should I budget for take-out based on my spending on restaurants over the past six months?” (And for those readers visualizing that macro Excel function right now: Good job! You be you, but know that you’re in the minority. As for the rest of the world, this voice-enabled “easy button” is in need, and the trend toward the voice interface is growing.)

Consumers are already programming themselves to find things using their voices. They’re ditching button-pressing in favor of speaking to control their entertainment experiences, for example. From Amazon Fire TV to Apple TV, more and more consumers are saying, “Play ‘Westworld,’ Season Three, Episode One on HBO Go.” These changing consumer habits in non-financial aspects of everyday life are setting the stage for voice tech to take hold in personal finances.

What’s more, in the near future conversational engagement will not be limited to interactions with an individual device. The Amazons, Googles and Apples of the world are right now laying the groundwork for our everyday reality to be controlled by continual voice commands with technologies we have yet to experience. These companies want you to choose them to provide the operating system for your life.

Alexa is already integrated into more than 100,000 smart home products from over 9,500 brands, with hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices in customers’ hands worldwide. And voice-controlled, cloud-computing software will soon be built into nearly every new gadget, vehicle and building. Multi-device triangulation in the Internet of Things – several devices within your environment communicating with one another and working together – will make it possible for you to step into the shoes of Capt. James T. Kirk aboard the USS Enterprise: Nearly wherever you are, information will be available based on the “context of you” – location, content type and historical preferences – and presented to you audibly or visually in a multi-modal experience, just like Star Trek.

Enhancing the security of this new voice-driven reality, multi-factor authentication will take into account a consumer’s behavior, location, devices and other biometrics. Thanks to artificial intelligence and biometric technology, users will not even be required to speak to verify their identities and initiate interaction. Persistent authentication will enable this widespread conversational engagement to work seamlessly across devices so it’s in flow with daily life.

Consumers – especially the 82 million millennials and more than 90 million Gen Zers – will expect their financial information to be securely plugged into their chosen cloud-computing platform so that they can participate in this new world. To attract and retain younger members, credit unions must embrace next-generation technology and compete. Tech-enabled convenience is often the major selling point for challenger banks vying to win the loyalty of customers.

Credit unions adopting smart speaker technology see the bigger picture; they’re not only meeting members’ new needs today, but also laying a foundation for the future. And as KayCee Murray, Numerica Credit Union’s SVP of IT, explained during her interview with CU Times, people may not know what they’re missing, but they immediately understand as soon as they experience it for themselves. AI-powered voice technology unlocks a whole new world of money management … help consumers keep a finger on the pulse of their finances, and they’ll be hooked.

Voice-directed financial technology today is in its adolescence; we’re at the beginning of something that’s much bigger than “buy this” or “what’s that?” In the early days of the internet, people didn’t really get the point of having an online store. It wasn’t until the number of internet users exploded and new ways to drive traffic to a website emerged that people understood. They didn’t see until it was already there.

So, don’t make the common mistake of assuming that lower-than-expected adoption figures at the outset mean that voice will fade away. It’s full steam ahead for conversational engagement, evidenced by new habits formed out of necessity due to the coronavirus threat and major moves in Silicon Valley before the pandemic even started. The good news is that credit unions can get on board now to stay ahead of the curve, rather than risk being left behind.

Michael Boukadakis is the CEO of fintech ENACOMM, a provider of customer authentication and intelligent interactions technologies based in Tulsa, Okla.