7 fintech tactics for combining CX and AI for agile scaling

Fintech companies are expanding their reach into more market segments than ever–healthcare and insurance, banking and investing, venture fundraising, and many others. As a result of this proliferation, the fintech industry has been incredibly innovative in meeting the needs of its widely divergent customer segments. In fact, 32% of fintechs have already applied AI to chatbots, biometrics, transcript analysis, and more.

Fintech customer success teams and internal leaders have been taking advantage of massive strides in AI to boost their CX performance. Between 2018 and 2028, the use of AI tools among fintechs has a projected CAGR of 25.3%, clearly demonstrating the attractiveness of these new technologies. Among other customer success and retention benefits, AI is now being used to:

For fintech companies seeking to maximize their market share, careful planning around CX, AI, and customer satisfaction is a necessity. Let’s look more closely at why that’s the case, and how you can enhance your customers’ trust and loyalty by taking the time to invest in these areas.

Fintechs often handle extremely sensitive customer data, encompassing everything from healthcare information to banking and investment data. This makes CX even more critical for these firms as well as firms in similar markets. Because of the sensitivity of the data customers entrust to these companies, they become much less tolerant of anything they perceive as a lackluster consumer experience.

And that’s only natural–if a company to whom you’ve entrusted sensitive data can’t even manage CX, can they be trusted to safeguard your financial information? Besides earning customer trust, fintechs reap many other benefits from investing substantially in CX.

The turbulent market conditions of recent years have clearly revealed that companies can’t afford to skimp on CX. High-quality CX is critical because it’s a frontline way to communicate to your customers that they sit at the top of your value hierarchy–something that modern consumers not only expect but demand from companies. Especially when combined with AI, a strong investment in CX can help you and your employees: 

1. Increase customer loyalty: When you go the extra mile to show your customers you put them first, they’ll often return the favor by being more loyal to your brand. Over time, this increases your upsell and cross-sell opportunities, lowers your customer acquisition costs and raises your consumer lifetime value.

2. Identify problems and conduct outreach: AI software can monitor users’ interactions with your product, identifying specific problems that users might have. The system then prompts a customer success rep to reach out to that user, or the system reaches out automatically with solutions.

3. Enhanced user engagement: When customers can quickly get their questions answered and their problems solved, a rise in engagement tends to follow. After all, if customers can get fast, top-tier service, they’ll go right back to using your product instead of waiting to be less frustrated.

AI is rapidly changing the CX environment. It’s helping fintechs maximize their employees’ effectiveness, eliminating manual errors and workflow snags, and much more. As we mentioned, customers are really not tolerant of lackluster CX when their sensitive data is involved. AI can help you step up your CX performance to make a lasting positive impression on your users.

There’s hardly a corner of the business world that AI isn’t disrupting, and fintech CX is no exception. As more time has passed and AI and CX have grown more intertwined, something interesting has happened. Rather than completely ousting CX staff and customer success teams, AI has made them much more effective–and, in some ways, more essential.

Because of the complex and private nature of much of the data that fintechs deal with–and the high expectations of consumers–a human touchpoint will always be valuable. Consider two quick examples.

AI software more efficiently screens incoming calls to see what each caller’s issue is and whether the conversation needs to be passed off to a human agent. If not, the agent is free to continue working on a more pressing request that requires a human touch.

Alternatively, AI software might detect usage problems or frustration among a specific customer subset by monitoring “usage” and “sentiment.” The AI will notify a sales rep or customer success team member, who will reach out to those customers for a swift resolution.

In no way is AI taking humans out of the CX equation. On the contrary, it’s allowing fintechs to scale faster than ever by multiplying their employees’ productivity. Below are seven ways fintechs can fuse AI and CX to scale faster and earn more in 2023 and beyond.

Whether you have a dedicated customer success team or your sales staff does double duty for CX, you can’t go wrong by embracing AI. These seven strategies can help you scale more seamlessly and profitably. They combine the best of CX and AI to perform “triage” for your employees by ensuring they’re not bothered by menial or easily solved issues.

Tactic #1: Chatbots & customer recommender systems

Chatbots have allowed fintechs to provide 24/7 customer service and support, often appearing prominently on the homepages of companies’ websites. Remember, if someone has a financial question involving sensitive data from their insurance or investment accounts, they won’t feel particularly patient.

Customers with simple problems can resolve them in moments, any time of the day or night. An automatic support ticket can be created for customers with more complex needs, and a call or email with a human agent will be scheduled. More individualized chatbots often appear within company apps. Again, these offer users customized cross-sell or upsell opportunities based on their prior behavior.

Tactic #2: Optimized sales and marketing journeys

Especially when customers are just getting to know your brand, providing a highly personalized experience is essential. Sales and marketing journeys are one of the most crucial aspects of CX for fintechs. This is because there are so many potential directions that any one customer could take and many unique CX journeys. An insurance fintech company might also offer auto coverage, home and health, short-term international travel, extended international travel, and countless other plans.

AI can create smooth and straightforward customer journeys that guide prospects exactly where they need to go. Typically, these are based on easily answerable questions. Callers or website users are prioritized and routed according to need, and all this happens more efficiently and accurately with AI, whether they are routed to account information, self-service resources, or a live agent.

Tactic #3: Biometrics for identity verification

Biometric algorithms have been a huge step forward in the challenge to keep customers’ financial and personal data secure. In biometric fraud prevention, AI software runs various operations to check that someone is actually who they claim to be. Their features are scanned and matched against a form of photographic identification they’ve previously provided.

Companies can always provide customers the freedom to opt out of biometrics. While the majority of users would likely see the added security as a significant benefit, there might be some customers who would rather you not have their biometric data on file. Two quick notes about biometric data storage. First, make sure you opt for a solution that has high-quality compression algorithms. These algorithms take your stored biometric data and shrink it down so it doesn’t take up so much space. And secondly, make sure all your biometric data is securely encrypted in the cloud–your customers will expect nothing less.

Tactic #4: Automated self-service portals

Automated self-service portals are a tremendously effective CX tool for fintech companies. Because they tend to operate in complex industries, fintechs often have well-developed “knowledge centers” with large volumes of content.

Customers identified as having an easily solvable problem are automatically routed to the self-service portal. In its simplest form, this takes them straight to the company’s knowledge center and the most likely solutions, or guide them in their search.

However, AI software can also craft custom “query paths,” in which customers are asked to identify their problems and are recommended relevant blogs and articles. The conversation ends if the customer indicates that their question has been answered. If not, they’re transferred to a live agent for more personalized assistance.

Tactic #5: Churn prediction, corrective outreach, and dunning

A significant number of fintechs operate on a subscription revenue model. For these companies, AI and CX combine beautifully to help cut down on churn.

The two types of churn are:

Fintech companies can’t afford to ignore subscription optimization principles, and automated churn management is a big piece of that.

Tactic #6: Urgency-based call routing

Thanks to advances in AI and machine learning, fintechs can now “train” software to interpret the relative urgency of various calls. This facilitates far more effective call prioritization. It also enables you to program specific support tickets to be sent to employees with the appropriate expertise.

Urgency-based call routing sets call centers up for optimal effectiveness and efficiency–whether they’re centralized or remotely distributed. But more importantly, the end result of that increase in efficiency is that your CX will dramatically improve and your customers will instinctively trust you more. No one wants to be kept on hold for half an hour–especially if it’s an urgent need.

Tactic #7: Algorithmic fraud prevention

A recurring theme of this article has been that fintech customers are touchy about their data, and rightfully so. While technologies like biometrics are important for verifying customers’ identities, the need for foolproof data security goes even deeper than that. Algorithmic fraud detection supplies that extra layer of defense. Remember, a single data security breach can permanently wreck a firm’s reputation.

Fraud detection and prevention algorithms work by scanning past data on your website or app to learn users’ typical behavior. Risk rules are formulated surrounding sources of risk. If a login does not match those specific criteria or rules, it will be flagged as suspicious and rejected. During the initial startup and algorithmic learning phase, double-check that you’ve gone back and confirmed all past instances of fraud in your system, giving the software an even better grasp of what to look out for.

Far and away, CX and AI combine to form one of the most explosively potent cocktails in the business world. It’s a match that allows fintechs to fully maximize their employees’ potential and performance while providing top-shelf customer service.