Fintechs are creating next-gen digital bankers

The community banking industry prides itself on a well-earned reputation for having top shelf customer service. Even in an age of completely digital and geographically untethered financial institutions and tools, the demand for face-to-face services persists. Yet this runs parallel to the ever-increasing demand to also provide a modern customer experience, and more and more community banks are turning to next-generation, generative AI chatbots. ."Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) is a type of AI that can create new content and ideas, including conversations, stories, images, videos and music.".-as defined by Amazon Web Services.The test for community banks is finding a balance between being there in person and trusting a chatbot to give a customer a positive experience. This is not exactly a new challenge. Chatbots were technically invented in the 1960s. Many banks have had some form of automated bot on their websites for years. Those bots were not the smartest, and they relied on basic, strict rules. They weren't capable of very much. With the explosion of generative artificial intelligence, the latest chatbots can behave so much like a real person, a customer can easily be deceived that a human is on the line. In a nutshell, that's what's really new about these bots. .Community banks aren't in the business of deceiving their customers, and lucky for them there is suddenly a world of fintechs vying to offer the software and support needed to successfully enter the world of generative AI chatbots. Here is an overview of some tech firms designing chatbots specifically for banks: .Freshworks – www.freshworks.com.Freshworks is a one-stop software company for digital customer interactions, including a number of chatbot and customer response tools. The company boasts more than 60,000 business customers around the world, including all types of financial institutions. While focused on much more than banks, their tools are clearly scalable and flexible to fit any company of any size. One of the bigger fish in a growing pond, Freshworks' website is brimming with useful explainers, demos and up-front pricing proposals. It is, if anything, a great place to gather a lot of information about how chatbots can pull together all avenues of customer outreach and feedback platforms, like Facebook and Instagram. .Boost.ai – www.boost.ai.Boost is developing chatbots more geared toward finance and insurance. Their banking bot can be pared down to the basics: Check account balances without waiting, report lost or stolen cards, navigate loan pre-approvals and manage loan payments. The bots are customizable and can also handle more complex inquiries. The company offers a free demo to tinker with on the way to finding which services a bank is willing to turn over to AI. Boost also underlines its mission to develop AI responsibly, which is important. In the highly competitive world of AI, not every company is outwardly committed to making sure their technology puts security and control first. .Tidio – www.tidio.com.Tidio offers a suite of chatbots very similar in function to others, but one product — Help Desk — stands out. It does exactly what its name suggests but also can be customized to perform complex tasks. It is also a virtual receptionist for a human customer relations team, and it provides an organization with any number of analytics about how well its customer service is performing. .TARS – www.hellotars.com.TARS specializes in chatbots for banks by offering a number of templates programmed for specific tasks. The company asks a series of questions on its demo page designed to direct banks to the best fit. Depending on a bank's answer to these questions, TARS provides templates for tasks as simple as balance inquiry to generative conversational bots offering full financial advice. The company currently offers 322 templates, so a bank of any size is likely to find a bot matching its needs. .Ultimate – www.ultimate.ai .Ultimate is not only marketing generative AI bots, but also approaches this tech as a tool for human customer support rather than a standalone service bot, although Ultimate provides those as well. One of its missions is to maximize the ROI of the tech a bank already has in use and the personnel already in place. With templates designed to act more like a human assistant, Ultimate is software worth exploring if your bank isn't yet quite ready to put generative AI right in front of your customers. .Glia – www.glia.com.Glia markets its suite of generative AI as digital customer service. The company believes consumers increasingly expect robust app and web-based communications from the businesses and organizations they deal with, and many have been slow to respond to these shifting preferences. Glia's model for AI is to offer chatbots designed to get banks and businesses of all types up to speed with a focus on individualized branding and integration with social media.