Today, Eric Pfannmöller talks to Sophie about the use of chatbots from his company Solvemate at the Sparkasse Group. In this podcast episode, you can find out the benefits of the chatbot, what exactly the Internet branch is and why time is the new gold in our society.
Eric Pfannmöller
Eric Pfannmöller is not only a former canoeing world champion (2007), but also the founder and CEO of Solvemate, a customer service automation platform that operates in the B2B sector. With Solvemate, they are aiming for personalized communication between companies and end customers as well as increased process efficiency.
The modular principle of the Internet branch
The Sparkassen Group is made up of many individual entities that are ultimately all under one roof, says Eric, describing the concept of the Sparkassen Group. This model is comparable to the Raiffeisen banks in Switzerland. The Solvemate chatbot has been integrated into the Sparkasse’s online branch. The Internet branch can be thought of as a large content management system that is regularly maintained by Sparkassen-Finanz-Informatik.
Similar to a homepage construction kit, you can activate various modules in the Internet branch with a corresponding license key without having any programming knowledge yourself. So if a savings bank employee wants to create a new landing page for the customers of the relevant savings bank branch, the first step is to go to the Internet branch, where they can then activate the Solvemate module and thus implement a chatbot comparatively easily .
People know each other
The advantage of implementing Solvemate’s chatbot is that the company has already gained a lot of experience with other Sparkasse branches. Of course, each bot must ultimately be tailored to the individual needs of each store, but many questions are of course very similar. Eric reports that customers at Sparkasse Bochum or Berlin also ask what to do if they lose their EC card.
Customer service makes the difference
Today we have a real-time society in which people expect excellent communication with companies 24 hours a day. On the one hand, the savings bank tries to meet these requirements to a large extent with a personal customer advisor for each customer. On the other hand, some of them are also overwhelmed by the flood of inquiries. If this is the case, the call is forwarded to a central Sparkasse call center. However, the respective savings bank also pays for each call and per minute.
In the end, you are always faced with the dilemma between top customer service on the one hand and increasing cost pressure on the other. Customer service is the key differentiator for very similar products, reports Eric. He therefore recommends making customer service part of a bank’s core strategy – N26 is a good example of this, he says.
What the bot can do
The bot can support the customer with various services or problems. Whether it’s login problems, the nearest ATM, applying for a new debit card, an account statement or, of course, the latest coronavirus information – with the chatbot, a competent digital assistant is always just a click away.
Of course, entire processes can already be automated today with the Solvemate chatbot. However, two questions are particularly important before a chatbot is used, says Eric Pfannmöller. Firstly, what exactly the problem is for the customer and secondly, what options are available to automate the corresponding problem. Companies need to understand that in many cases they have the choice of automating the process, transferring it to a live chat or having the customer call the branch directly. The challenge here is to find a balance between cost reduction on the one hand and good customer service on the other.
The value-irritant matrix
The value-irritant matrix can help answer the question of which processes should all be automated. The matrix helps companies to find out which processes a customer would like to automate, for example because a telephone call does not offer them any added value, and where they would prefer personal contact with an employee. It is conceivable, for example, that ordering a new debit card can be solved in a time-saving manner via a chatbot. However, if you have a complaint or feel that the wrong amount has been debited from your account, you may not want to tell a bot about the problem.
Learnings
1. whether it is a bank, an insurance company or an online store – customer service must be part of the core strategy. Time is the new gold these days.
2. a chatbot must be used with care. It’ s not worth trying to squeeze every process into the chatbot. The decisive factor is that there is added value.
3. approach the search for a use case from the customer’s perspective – in which processes and situations could acceptance be high and where customers might prefer to speak to an employee in person.
4 Once the first use case has been found, think carefully about what the chatbot should and should not be able to do. There‘ s nothing more annoying than a chatbot that doesn’t understand every other sentence.
It’s best to listen to the podcast episode with Sophie Hundertmark and Eric Pfannmöller for yourself. Have fun!
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