Chatbot for Financial Services Organizations

VR Bank Südpfalz is a cooperative bank based out of Landau in the Palatinate, Germany. The roots of this credit union goes back to 1865, but after many mergers it’s in 1995 that they began operating under the name we know today. They now have 450 employees and serve more than 100 000 clients across 38 locations.

While some organizations are only following the moves of others, there are organizations like VR Bank that are taking lead. They know that to continue to strive in today’s world they need to adapt and take advantage of the technologies available.

Every industry is under constant pressure of major and rapid changes. The financial services sector is facing challenges of their own with more regulations being put in place. They also need to adapt, just like other industries, to customers having higher expectations and the need to optimize processes and costs.

VR Bank has identified a process that they thought was a great candidate for optimization because it is time consuming, cost intensive and inefficient. The process of a customer requesting a loan to buy or build a house is one that demands a lot of information and it has some regulatory requirements as well.

VR Bank Südpfalz receives more than 3000 requests for a real estate loan each year. The processing costs of such a request is more than 240 €. With AVA, VR Bank is able to save 150 € per process and thus can save up to 450 000 € in costs each year.

The solution called AVA is a system that combines an avatar, the digital reflection of a human and a chatbot. AVA is used whenever the bank needs to gather information from a customer. It is a much more interactive way to gather information than the usual web form we all know.

The customer receives an invitation to join the avatar and start a conversation. The chatbot will ask questions and the customer can answer them by touch, text or voice. The customer is guided through the conversation by the chatbot to make sure that only the relevant questions are asked based on the need of the customer and their previous answers.

An additional benefit and a very important nowadays is that AVA is available on mobile and at any moment of the day. Therefore, the customers can really provide the information needed at the best moment for them therefore reducing the friction.

A team of people coming from different disciplines has been put together in order to create AVA. This is really an important factor of success for every chatbot project we’ve seen in enterprise. From there, the subject matter experts are providing the knowledge of the processes and everything that is specific to banking while a team of software developers and UX designers are working on creating a great experience for the customers.

This team has chosen Botpress to create their chatbot because it allowed them to start building quickly and to customize for their needs and vision. They also loved the fact that they could deploy the solution on their own servers as well as the very good support provided by Botpress.