Crowd Developing Chatbot

The banking industry is the next target to be 'disturbed' by the presence of technology. The unstoppable development of technology, can't help but be resisted, but you have to be friends.

This is what happens when banks are faced with one of the latest technological developments, chatbots. A robot programmed to reply to messages is assisted by artificial intelligence to make conversations feel more natural. From there, Vira (BCA), Cinta (BNI), Mita (Bank Mandiri) and Sabrina (BRI) were born.

In developing chatbots, banks do not have to work hard alone, they can work with startups that are specialists in their fields. There are Kata.ai, Bang Joni, Sprint Asia, Botika, Eva, and others. Just like what BRI did in collaboration with Kata.ai, Bank Mandiri with InMotion, BNI with Bang Joni.

The consideration is that the current trend is to carry out banking activities now that you no longer have to come to the branch but can only use your cellphone without having to download any additional applications. Just use the chat messaging application or social media used to access bank services.

It should be noted that basically chatbot functions are classified into two categories, namely conversational automation and functional requirements. Conversation automation is generally often implemented by online merchants in order to increase continuous interaction with their consumers.

While functional requirements are generally designed specifically by involving other complex features such as special APIs, payment automation and others.

For the initial stage, the chatbot function presented by the four banks is still carrying out the customer service function in the first layer. Tasked with helping answer questions that are general and repetitive.

From this function, the chatbot becomes the bank's maneuver how to make it appropriate when customers contact CS, which can be contacted at any time, speak friendly, and reliable language.

It is possible that other banks will follow the same thing as these four big banks. Why have banks been busy looking at opportunities from chatbots lately?

Sprint Asia Technology CEO Setyo Harsoyo has the answer. According to him, basically all companies including banks want to increase engagement with their customers. Many ways have been done, such as through the site, call center, email, SMS, and more.

Then the birth of chatbot technology that is different from all the channels above. With a chatbot, customers from a bank can easily get in touch with the bank because the chatbot can interactively serve thousands of customers at the same time at a much lower cost than call center.

"For example, to be able to serve 1.000 customers at the same time, one bot is enough, while a call center requires 1.000 agents," said Setyo.

Adding Setyo's statement, Kata.ai CEO Irzan Raditya said chatbots are a strategic choice because they are aware of trends that occur in Indonesian society.

Application messaging has become an important part of everyday life. Therefore, this is an opportunity to more easily reach customers through chatbot accounts on their favorite messaging applications.

"This is what we think is the advantage of chatbots compared to applications. The friction and effort required from customers to access chatbots is much smaller than installing applications, opening websites, or calling CS," he explained.

"Moreover, many of these banks have invested in their social media channels as a marketing tool to attract hundreds of thousands and even millions of audiences. Therefore, chatbots exist as services that provide added value to their customers with various uses," continued Irzan.

Chatbot is a necessity

DailySocial also tried to contact representatives of the four banks to express their opinion. Everyone agrees that chatbots are a necessity that it's time to adapt because they have to follow the trends that are happening.

"The technology chosen and developed is of course based on the needs of customers from the bank. We apply a pattern of customer centric and research sufficient before launching a product. We choose chatbots to answer the needs of the increasingly dynamic community through digital channels," said BRI Director Indra Utoyo.

General Manager of BNI's E-Banking Division Anang Fauzie added, "People spending more time on chat apps and they prefer to receive info and promotions via social media or apps."

Likewise for BCA, Director of BCA Santoso said, "The adoption of a technology must be in line with our focus, which is to provide the best experience for customers."

Therefore, BCA sees that the chatbot is able to convey this goal well. According to him, Vira's information is not only limited to customers, the general public can also enjoy the information that Vira provides.

For Bank Mandiri, chatbots are able to create two-way communication such as contacting customer service. Previously, the company had used social messaging such as Line for promotion and education, but it was only one-way, and the public could not interact further.

"In its development, service contact center Bank Mandiri's digital services via email and social media have reached 10% of total customer interactions with CS," said Lila Noya, Senior VP of Customer Care Group at Bank Mandiri.

Lila continued, "In the early stages, customers can interact through chatbots to obtain information about products, services, promotional programs, and financial information. Because about 70% of customers who interact with CS ask for this."

Investments that worth it

Once it has entered, of course, the bank cannot simply withdraw from this chatbot. Moreover, its implementation is still at an early stage. Likewise for BNI, Anang said the bank's decision to jump into this chatbot worth it with the benefits of chatbots for business development.

He admitted that IT investment will continue to adapt to industry trends. Unfortunately Anang did not explain in more detail about the nominal.

Santoso also supports Anang's statement. "Certainly with shifting In an increasingly digital world, technology has become an inseparable component in all aspects of life and in organizations. Of course this will be in line with the amount of IT investment that will be issued."

"We see it in terms of service effectiveness and efficiency. Through chatbots, customers can more easily interact with Bank Mandiri, thereby strengthening their loyalty which in turn can encourage the bank's business improvement," said Lila Noya.

From the developer's point of view, according to Irzan, the costs of developing and operating chatbots vary greatly, depending on the features that want to be presented as the bank's ambitions are to how far AI technology and machine learning that want to be implemented. Including the influence of how many users you want to target.

"We ourselves charge chatbot operational costs based on usage (how many messages come in, how many users invite to chat, how long the conversation session between the chatbot and the user is)."

Based on his experience, although the nominal amount was not mentioned, the amount of investment in chatbots was not more expensive than the amount of IT investment usually spent by large companies.

Meanwhile, for CEO Bang Joni Diatche Harahap, the cost for creating a chatbot has now been relatively low, but it depends on the system and what use it will do. In fact, on the platform, the cost of making it is very affordable, relatively without having to go through the process coding, except for features customized for banking specifics.

Setyo Harsoyo also said, "Costs are very relative, depending on what they are compared to? When compared to procurement and management costs call center definitely cheaper."

Even though it is considered an investment worth it, there are still shortcomings that are felt by the players. Lila Noya argues, although recording data through Mita is very easy and can be used as evaluation material to improve services to customers and internal control.

However, the development of a bot system to be able to respond to complex customer requests still takes a relatively long time.

In the same vein, Anang Fauzie sees vocabulary enrichment as very challenging because there will be many variations in the way people ask questions and speak. However, this can be tricked by optimizing artificial intelligence for language learning, so that it becomes smarter in language detection.

New technology, new challenges

Irzan Raditya understands that because it is still in the early stages of implementation, the chatbot capabilities implemented by banks in Indonesia are quite limited. There's a lot of development that needs to be done to ensure a chatbot has the functionality of an app or site.

Currently, he continued, the main challenge for chatbots implemented on social media channels is data security. When the chatbot penetrates the transaction feature (core banking), the best option to do this is via the bank's app or website.

"Therefore, the majority of existing chatbots are still focused on complementary functions, such as CS, looking for credit/debit card promos, looking for the nearest ATM, finding out about products, credit card lists, and other marketing gimmicks. In the future, chatbots will be able to achieve better functionality from a technological point of view."

In addition, from a technical point of view regarding data security, banks are not allowed to store customer data on external servers or cloud. All data and technology systems must be stored on their own servers (on premise).

The impact lies in the investment costs they need to incur when trying to implement new technology because they have to build their own technology infrastructure. But on the other hand, banks will only invest in technology that is already guaranteed given the complexities they have to face when implementing new technology.

"With banks in Indonesia competing for chatbot exploration, this shows that chatbots are no longer just a technology experiment. But they have become a strategic technology choice for their business processes."

In addition, another challenge that banks still have to face when implementing new technology is the matter of regulation. According to Diatche Harahap, bank regulations seem too late to follow the development of chatbot technology with AI.

He gave an example, for the regulation of account opening and transactions. Now, after almost a year, there has been no approval from the regulator even though the main need for chatbots is supporting regulations.

"Regulation is the biggest challenge, not just data," said Ache, Diatche's nickname.

Always need a human touch

Although chatbots are robots that resemble humans, banks ensure that they will always need a real human touch in providing services to customers.

"Until now, we have not seen that robots will replace humans 100%. Human touch will always be needed in every technology. Especially for financial businesses such as banks," said Santoso.

For banks, dealing with customers directly is something that is very important. Technology or robots in this case will make things more efficient and faster (responsive), both from the company and customer side.

It is revealed that humans have elements of relationship which cannot be replaced by robots. Anang Fauzie added that chatbots are tools to assist and complete services, not to replace full human labor.

Chatbot, according to him, will help the team to serve things that are simple but very much needed or asked. Thus HR can focus more on more complex work, so it doesn't take up their time.

"Some services that cannot be responded to via chatbots, for example, which are consultative in nature, still require the presence of human services," said Indra Utoyo.

The future of Vira, Mita, Cinta and Sabrina

Not only useful for lightening the workload of the CS team, chatbots can also be maximized for other purposes. Lila Noya said Mita was also used by the company for marketing purposes, exploring customer needs through surveys and corporate representation of Bank Mandiri.

In addition, Anang added, chatbots are used as a tool to increase transactions and acquire new customers. And, data mining to find out customer preferences.

"In the future, customers are free to choose what facilities or channels are in accordance with their wishes or preferences and behavior patterns.behavior) that are suitable for customers," said Santoso.

So far, it can be said that BCA is the pioneer bank that introduced Vira to the public in the middle of last year. Santoso said the impact for the company is an increase in users and interactions with customers every month. Unfortunately, he didn't mention the exact number.

For BCA, this is a positive achievement because the more often Vira is talked to, the more "smart" she will become.

As for Cinta, the impact for BNI is that the company can disseminate information at a low cost because it is through a messaging application.

"Thus, every promo blast that we send can be seen directly by users through their gadgets," explained Anang.

Vira, Mita, Cinta, and Sabrina's journey is still very long. There are still a lot of features that can be developed and will continue to grow. The initiation of the four largest banks by assets in Indonesia by starting first could be a trigger factor for other banks to do the same.