Author(s): Kiran Nair, Suhaib Anagreh, Ambili Sunil, Ruchi Gupta
The purpose of this study was to determine how AI-enabled chat bots could stimulate marketing automation for financial services. Secondary data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was utilized to identify the most frequent issues customers cited in accessing financial services, products, and information. This information was then contextualized with both the identified challenges from the literature as well as the innate benefits of chat bots. From this, it was identified that chat bots not only offers a potential to enhance sales and marketing operations by enhancing both customer understanding and personalization of customer service and service delivery, but it is also the future of service delivery. Specifically, the study identified that chat bots are instrumental in sales and marketing automation, promotion of self-service type of customer support, and ensuring digital financial inclusion and financial sustainability. Therefore, in line with the prevalent knowledge economy, which is characterized by problem solving and critical thinking, chat bots serve the need of not only addressing present-day customer centrism requirements, but also aligning the delivery of financial services, products, and information with emergent trends and pattern. They do so by ingraining proactivity in banking and other financial institutions’ operations, and strategic outlook as they relate to customer experience, and product innovation.