7 Ways to Increase Revenue (and Time) With Chatbots.

One of the biggest challenges for SME financial institutions today is managing and improving customer service, collections, support, and sales with limited resources. Fortunately, chatbots can help. Chatbots are AI programs that can simulate conversations with humans through messaging interfaces. The best part is that they are scalable, customizable, can adapt, and be integrated with existing applications, systems, and processes.

Implementing omnichannel communication with chatbots like those from Bankingly helps reach and serve customers on their preferred platforms like social media (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram), website, phone, SMS, and email and increases revenue. Chatbots are estimated to save billions of dollars globally for financial institutions in customer support costs alone.

Here are seven amazing ways chatbots can help increase revenue, improve efficiency, and save time - for customers and employees.

1. Provide 24/7 Customer Service

A significant benefit is that they can provide round-the-clock customer service outside working hours. Most customer queries tend to be routine or standard. Chatbots can be customized and automated to answer frequent questions (FAQs), handle complaints, show balance inquiries, generate account statements in seconds. No more waiting, filling up tickets, calling and being on hold, or bank queues. By freeing up the customer service staff to focus on complex issues, the bank can improve response times, and provide better service. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Better loan origination

Bankingly's chatbot feature allows customers to easily complete the full onboarding process, which includes KYC verification, biometric authentication, proof of funds, and AML checks when they register for the service. It can automatically pre-screen loan applicants by gathering basic information like credit score, income, and employment history in minutes, verify documentation and validate information quickly, reducing the time it takes for loan officers to evaluate applications. This can qualify applicants and streamline the process by flagging applicants who may be ineligible or require additional documentation.

Chatbots can answer questions, help with onboarding, provide guidance on documentation requirements, and ensure applicants complete all the necessary fields accurately – this reduces errors and speeds up the application process. The workflow can be adapted for new products or services. Chatbots can also reduce costs for lenders since chatbots can manage a large volume of applications simultaneously, this reduces the need and cost of human intervention and enables loan origination. More can be done faster using fewer resources, thereby increasing their profitability.

3. Personalized Recommendations

Chatbots can use the data they gather during pre-screening to provide personalized recommendations to applicants. For example, based on the applicant's creditworthiness and loan requirements, the chatbot can recommend the best loans, useful tips, payment plans, and suggest relevant products and customize them based on the user's qualifications and inputs.

4. Streamline Collections

Collecting past-due accounts can be a time-consuming and challenging task. Automated debt collection notifications with Bankingly´s chatbots and improve collection rates and save time. They can send automated SMS, email reminders, and in-app messages, enable bill payments, and even negotiate payment plans. This makes collections more efficient, reduces bad debts (and late payment fines for customers), reduces payment delays by providing a more convenient and personalized collection experience.

5. Assist with Sales

Chatbots can assist in pre-sales by answering questions related to a product or service. Providing a seamless experience can increase sales and improve conversions. It can help with lead generation, and manage inquiries that can be synchronized or integrated with CRM or ERP. Chatbots can be configured to upsell and cross-sell products or services, run promotions, exclusive offers, discounts, sales, and more based on their location, customer profile, and responses thereby increasing revenue and customer lifetime value.

6. Improve Support Ticket Management

Chatbots can manage support tickets more efficiently by automating ticket creation, providing status updates, and resolving simple issues automatically. This can free up your support staff, call centre volume or help desk to focus on more important and complex issues while decreasing response times. As required, they can escalate any complex queries to the team. This way customers get the best of both services – automated and human guidance.

7. Conduct Surveys and Collect Feedback

Finally, chatbots can collect customer feedback by conducting surveys and providing personalized recommendations based on the results. This can be used for new (presales) and existing customers (post-sales) and when they apply for new products to identify any issues, bottlenecks, increase the quality of service, and take user feedback, suggestions to improve user experience.

In conclusion, chatbots from Bankingly are a powerful tool to improve customer service, collections, support, sales, increase revenue, and save time. If you have not already, now is the time to start thinking about using chatbots that can help your business grow. Contact us!