AI Can Help Financial Institutions Combat the Great Resignation

Taking a proactive approach to the Great Resignation may involve tapping into the power of artificial intelligence. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 47 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021 in what is now known as the Great Resignation.

Utilizing AI in financial institutions can help mitigate employee turnover by enhancing both the employee and consumer experience. Automating certain processes within your institution reduces employee workload and improves efficiencies, employee satisfaction surveys and net promoter scores.

AI can take on several roles in the financial space, from chatbots and process automation to internal search. Utilizing smart, automated technology can greatly reduce employee workload, answer common employee and consumer questions, create stronger consumer relationships, and even determine or anticipate fraud.

Custom Employee Knowledge Base Software

Developing an intuitive knowledge base helps employees create, manage, locate and find resources to better serve consumers. With AI, this knowledge base would learn individual employees’ questions and searches to better help them internally and externally assist consumers.

A high-quality knowledge base software helps employees to feel like they have the tools they need to assist consumers to the best of their ability. Without clear access to this information, consumers may have to be put on hold or even asked for a call back, leaving employees scrambling to find answers and feeling a lack of confidence in their role.

It could also help identify employee training needs based on their search queries. For example, if an employee searches “how to open a new account” multiple times within the knowledge database, the system would recommend additional training or confidence coaching. This could then be examined on the organizational level of top searches for larger trainings and learning opportunities.

AI technology for custom knowledge bases aims to capture and learn from human interactions to support decision-making, problem-solving and more – much like a search engine – leaving limitless potential for financial institutions.

AI Can Reduce Employee Workload

With AI technology able to receive and answer repetitive consumer questions and concerns, whether online or over the phone, employees experience relief from stress. Call center employees are taking the brunt of consumer and consumer calls, especially considering how prevalent staffing issues are in current times. What once was the work of a larger team is now being done by few.

Eliminating 30 to 40 calls per day through AI technology can give them mental space to tackle their other projects, relax and feel like they are not constantly behind at work in a state of perpetual panic.

AI tools can also help determine the best fit areas for an employee by automatically analyzing and identifying top talents based on the amount of time they spend in specific systems. With this skills-based routing technology, your system can identify interactions that employees are particularly skilled at and route those future requests to the most appropriate person.

Additionally, AI can search keywords in employee emails and chats to determine sentiment, such as satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their role. Management can then make informed decisions on any new strategies, such as staffing changes or rearrangements.

Common Questions and the Consumer Journey

The five most common questions that consumers contact their financial institutions for are routing number, account number, balance, password resets and account transfers.

These common and basic questions can be answered accurately at any time with AI technology, which clears phone lines and email inboxes. Both employee and consumers benefit; employees can focus attention on more complex consumer relations and consumers are not limited to working hours for basic account inquiries.

Financial institutions can even create triggered campaigns for consumers continually calling in for the same requests. For example, someone calling in five times over one month to find out their routing number may receive a curated email campaign on “how to find your routing number online.”

Along with keeping repetitive questions at bay, AI aids the consumer service journey in multiple ways: Tracking conversations in real time, providing feedback to agents and using intelligence to monitor language, speech patterns and psychographic profiles to predict future consumer needs.

AI Creates Stronger Consumer Relationships

Transaction servers track and stamp important information about financial institution consumers, but what good is the information without using it to inform future strategic decisions?

AI can take the information gathered by these servers, categorize consumer transactions and filter notable statistics to decision makers. Financial institutions can then make informed marketing decisions, for example, offering certain restaurant gift cards as incentives to consumers with high amounts of dining transactions.

Utilizing AI to Determine or Anticipate Fraud

Another crucial way that AI is utilized in the financial space is with fraud detection. AI technology can anticipate and detect fraud, suspicious transactions, default and even calculate the risk of certain transactions.

Once AI determines fraud in a consumer account, the consumer can be automatically contacted and assisted with their claim. Fast, effective, efficient management of fraud cases is imperative to both the financial institution and consumer experience.

What Is Predictive AI?

Predictive AI can be used to automatically schedule future appointments for your consumers. For example, when someone schedules an appointment for a mortgage application, your system could automatically trigger future appointments for appraisals, signings, etc., keeping them engaged and up to speed with the process with little to no manual effort by staff.

Another example of predictive AI for financial institutions is with auto loans. We know the life of an auto loan is generally two-and-a-half years. When that time is up, it is likely that the consumer will inquire about a new loan, possibly with another lender. Your system would schedule an appointment for the consumer to receive a call about a possible new auto loan two-and-a-half years after their first loan.

Automatically scheduling a consumer for an appointment based on their predicted needs keeps them engaged with their financial institutions and less likely to seek out other options when the time comes.

The Growing Impact of AI in Financial Institutions

Employees are taking on mountains of work at financial institutions. Higher call volumes, full email queues and increased projects are causing unnecessary stress while taking time and proactivity away from employees.

The average financial institution employee spends 80% of their time being reactive and 20% being proactive. Studies have shown that employees are happier when they live in the proactive space, which is now possible with AI technology.

AI technology improves financial institution operations from the inside out, starting with reducing employee workload, mitigating risk, increasing consumer satisfaction and lowering employee turnover.

Brett Wooden is SVP of Innovation for FTSI, a Monrovia, Calif.-based provider of custom digital and branch solutions for financial institutions.