Today, Patrick Brazzale talks to Sophie about process digitization at banks and insurance companies. In this podcast episode, you can find out what role chatbots play as a component of conversational banking and what significance the personality of a chatbot has.

About Patrick Brazzale

Patrick Brazzale is Managing Director and founding member of ubitec AG. ubitec AG is a fintech company that specializes in process digitalization for banks and insurance companies.

Conversational banking and process digitization

Chatbots are one of many components of conversational banking. Another component is the structure that allows chatbots to run. This structure is a chat system or messenger.

ubitec originally comes from process digitization, where frameworks enable the digitization and automation of processes. These are end-to-end solutions that interact with both the end customer and the peripheral systems. In today’s context, such systems are referred to as digitization platforms.

Digitalization platforms rethought

What has long bothered Patrick about existing digitization platforms is that new project ideas always have to be started from scratch. For example, a new user journey is defined with the customer instead of further developing an existing one. This gave rise to the idea of developing a framework at ubitec that can be continuously refined. This achieves a higher cost-benefit ratio and saves time, as the cases and the journey can be adapted more quickly and efficiently with a chatbot.

Ubitec also realized that customers often use Messenger as a tool in their everyday lives. In contrast, most companies do not even offer this form of communication for interaction with their customers. ubitec saw this as an incentive to give companies the opportunity to interact with customers as they would in their private lives. The fact that the dialog in the form of chats is an interaction that the customer is familiar with makes it more engaging than a classic web form. The guiding principle is therefore to pick up customers where they themselves communicate.

Usecase at Baloise Bank

ubitec is working with Baloise Bank on several projects in the area of process digitization. In the bot area, they are currently working on various cases and flows. To do this, we first looked at which cases the bank generally has, which are particularly common and which are easy to implement. As a result, these are cases in the area of sales and back office.

It is important to distinguish between bots that specialize in automation and those that primarily provide knowledge. Baloise relies on automation. The aim is to automate service processes such as mortgage renewals or pillar 3a payments.

Process automation of a mortgage extension

When automating the process of a mortgage extension, several questions arise: Who extends it? How high is the proportion that is extended? When should it be extended?

A process was defined in advance in workshops. The information on the process flow can be found in a csv file. The chatbot is then triggered via a csv file, takes it over and goes to the customer to run through the process.

The technical framework with the chatbot is provided by ubitec, while they define the use case and the journey in collaboration with the customer. In this case, they are pursuing the goal of using the bot to extend the mortgage quickly and easily.

The relevance of the chatbot personality

Too little attention is often paid to the personality of the bot. This is because chatbots are seen as something technical. Consultants are trained in how to talk to customers or write emails. In this context, most of the language used is very formal and conveys a certain image of the bank to the outside world. With bots, these often rigid conventions can be broken. However, it is an issue that is often not the focus from the outset.

Baloise Bank was quick to think about how customers should be addressed by chatbots and how the bank should position itself. The workshops gave rise to lively internal discussions about how the bank’s image should be conveyed to the outside world via a bot. That’s why Patrick advises having bots professionally accompany the implementation.

Learnings

1. a bot cannot be omnipotent and omniscient. It is important to set a focus. This is why ubitec has focused on banks and insurance companies in its framework.

2 In the banking and insurance environment, data is sensitive. For the framework, you therefore have to think carefully about how you want to exploit the full functionality of a bot with sensitive data.

3. ubitec has created a framework that can be continuously developed. This improves the cost-benefit ratio and saves time.

4. ubitec provides the framework with the chatbot while they define the use case and journey with the customer. During implementation, it is important to think about the chatbot personality.

5 Chatbots shape a company’s public image, so it’s worth seeking professional advice and talking to people who are familiar with the topic.

It’s best to listen to the podcast episode with Sophie Hundertmark and Patrick Brazzale for yourself. Have fun!

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