AI in fintech: How AI is shaping customer experience

Fintech companies are under constant pressure to deliver fast, personalized, and trustworthy experiences at scale. And with innovation at the heart of the industry, customers expect them to use the latest tools and technologies to meet these high expectations. As an industry that relies on constant innovation, fintech requires the most advanced tools and technology to deliver top-tier customer experiences.

With advanced AI at the ready, many fintech companies are already delivering high-quality experiences that foster lasting customer relationships. Those that fail to adopt these innovations risk falling behind quickly. In this guide, we’ll explore the importance of AI for CX in fintech, as well as the top benefits and use cases to show you why every fintech business should invest in AI-powered customer service tools.

More in this guide:

• Why is AI in fintech important?
• Top benefits of leveraging AI in fintech
• 8 use cases for AI in fintech
• What does the future of AI in fintech hold?
• Frequently asked questions
• Improve your fintech CX with Zendesk AI

Why is AI in fintech important?

With customer interactions set to increase fivefold and two-thirds of CX leaders predicting leaner teams, AI is essential for fintech companies to meet growing demands. It plays a pivotal role in scaling seamless experiences, providing customers with 24/7 support, equipping teams with insights to hyper-personalize every interaction, and streamlining intricate workflows for greater efficiency. Fintech companies must act now to capitalize on AI’s immediate benefits and the long-term competitive edge it will continue to provide.

Top benefits of leveraging AI in fintech

Fintech companies can boost key customer service metrics with CX-focused AI technology. Here are some of the top benefits that AI in fintech can deliver.

Be there for your customers 24/7

The importance of speedy fintech customer service can’t be overstated: fintech customers expect seamless support whenever they need it, especially in urgent cases like lost credit cards. AI agents can provide nonstop support regardless of time zone, ensuring customers can always access assistance. This also cuts ticket queues down to size so agents don’t get swamped with simple requests.

Plus, self-service options make this 24/7 support even more robust. Customers can help themselves with features like an AI-driven knowledge base that can assist your team in creating helpful articles quickly so your help center is always up-to-date and accurate. It keeps knowledge organized and ensures customers can easily access it whenever needed—deflecting support calls from your bank in the process, for example.

Solve issues more efficiently

AI plays an important role in increasing customer satisfaction (CSAT). One of the ways it facilitates this satisfaction boost is by helping companies deliver more efficient service to decrease the time to first response and resolution.

AI tools like agent copilot can help fintech support teams double up on brain power by learning business guidelines and using those to provide response suggestions or actions to agents. This helps human support teams work more efficiently by acting as an intelligent assistant, suggesting personalized responses and actions based on customer interactions, needs, and sentiments.

Provide higher-quality support

With quality assurance (QA) tools, AI can evaluate all customer service interactions to flag problems like common support rep errors and identify opportunities to improve support. AI in QA helps fintech companies fine-tune their CX operations to maintain high-quality support, regardless of the number of interactions they handle.

Lower operational costs

In addition to helping human agents deliver more efficient support, AI can help cut costs for financial services. It can automate CX operations like updating customer profile information or managing actions like fund transfers or card activations. AI agents can automate responses to over 80 percent of customer issues, saving agents even more time and helping companies address more support inquiries.

8 use cases for AI in fintech

Fintech customers encounter AI technology in many different ways—let’s explore them.

1. Managing and canceling fund transfers

Prioritizing CX in banking and fintech requires making everyday tasks easier for customers. Fund transfers sometimes need quick action from support teams to enact an edit or cancellation. To avoid potential frustration from a customer waiting for human support, AI can step in and edit or cancel a transfer quickly after the customer makes a request.

2. Activating new cards

When customers receive a new card, they’ll likely want to use it soon after. Rather than requiring them to call a support line and speak to an agent to activate the card, AI can handle this process automatically. Once it verifies the customer’s information and card number, it pushes the ticket through and activates it, avoiding a lengthy waiting period.

3. Updating billing information

To reduce errors and improve CX during tedious processes like updating billing information, fintech businesses can introduce AI to automate the process. AI data analysis scours customer information to ensure it’s accurate and up to date, and it can automatically populate billing fields based on information from customer profiles, so manual input isn’t required.

4. Gathering information to assist agents

One of the prime reasons fintech companies use AI in the workplace is to make it easier for human agents to deliver good customer service. The more customer information support teams can access, the better they can tailor their support for personalization and efficiency. AI can summarize long tickets so agents can get the context they need quickly, like a customer’s intent and sentiment. For example, AI can detect a frustrated customer who wants to replace their card and suggest tailored responses to resolve the issue.

5. Verifying account details

By automating data validation and fraud detection, AI can ensure that customer data privacy is top of mind. It improves the accuracy and efficiency of verifying account details to reduce the risk of fraud or errors. It can also use real-time verification for account sign-in, so there’s no lag in support while a customer is chatting with an AI agent. The AI agent then gets notice of that verification and starts personalizing support based on the customer’s account details and history.

6. Requesting and delivering invoices

AI can save companies time and cut down on errors by automating invoicing. It can request, deliver, and even generate invoices for more efficient billing. It simply analyzes customer purchase history, and when you make a new entry, it performs one of those invoicing actions based on the nature of the transaction.

For example, if an existing customer opts to purchase a new add-on, they’ll receive an automatic update that their next invoice will reflect the change. This way, businesses can keep customers and agents in the know with the most relevant account information, reducing frustration and facilitating smoother support.

7. Merging duplicate tickets

Duplicate support tickets are headaches that slow down support and take up valuable time from agents. AI can scan tickets, analyze them, and flag repetitive ones that you can combine based on subject lines, keywords, or customer info. Then, it automatically consolidates them into a single ticket to avoid any confusion or duplicate action.

8. Language detection and sentiment analysis

AI empowers support teams to resolve interactions in multiple languages, providing better support for customers from diverse backgrounds. By detecting the language of inquiries and analyzing customer sentiment to comprehend the customer’s emotions, businesses can offer personalized multilingual support to understand customer needs better. That sentiment analysis also helps identify areas for improvement if it suspects dissatisfaction or frustration from a given customer touchpoint. Then, managers can create a solution to fix the pain point.

What does the future of AI in fintech hold?

AI is already transforming fintech to give more personalized, effective customer service. As AI serves even more customers, it will continue to learn and get smarter with each interaction.

According to the Zendesk AI-powered CX Report 2024, 100 percent of customer service interactions will soon involve AI, and AI will resolve 80 percent of those interactions independently of any human support. When every interaction is more efficient with the addition of AI, customers will be more satisfied with the service they receive across the board.

Frequently asked questions

Improve your fintech CX with Zendesk AI

AI offers fintech companies a powerful solution to drive faster, more accurate customer interactions. AI is the key to standing out in a fast-paced, tech-driven industry. And there’s no better way to do that than by opting for an AI-driven tool that puts CX at the forefront of every interaction.

CX-focused AI tools help build customer satisfaction and trust. Zendesk is purpose-built for CX, pre-trained on over 18 billion real interactions. By leveraging advanced, AI-powered tools like Zendesk for financial services, fintech businesses can provide more informed, seamless, and personalized support to their customers, solidifying their position in the market and positioning themselves for long-term success.