Chatbots in customer service within banking and finance: Do chatbots herald the start of an AI revolution in the corporate world?

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to identify whether chatbots are useful for customer service, how they are impacting customer service in banking, and how professionals feel about the future impact of chatbots. Employing a largely qualitative approach, the study found that chatbots are a useful tool for customer service automation, with significant potential for providing good quality service. In general, sentiments towards chatbots were positive for simple tasks, with users and experts citing convenience, 24/7 availability, and speed as primary factors driving customer satisfaction levels. However, the limitations of chatbots in answer accuracy and reliability mean that they still require significant learning and development to be a sufficient solution for complex customer service problems. Chatbots are significantly limited in their capabilities and ability to parse customer queries. Therefore, they cannot be expected to handle all customer queries without some assistance from a human. On the other hand, chatbots have huge potential for learning, and artificial intelligence as a field presents a largely untapped universe of opportunity. This study thus highlights how chatbots are currently being used and how they are likely to be used in the future. Based on these findings, we develop an experimental framework that explains how to assess chatbots for dynamic customer service capabilities.