– PKO Bank Polski is the undisputed leader of Polish banking in the field of understanding and processing natural language. We are constantly developing language skills of the IKO Voice Assistant and we will consistently expand it with new elements and functions. It is a tool in the IKO application that our customers appreciate and willingly use. The bank responds to their growing requirements and new needs, and supports them with new solutions using artificial intelligence so that they can use banking services quickly, conveniently and safely – emphasizes Katarzyna Dziwulska, Director of Strategy and Digital Transformation Division at PKO Bank Polski.
The bot responsible for directing incoming calls to the hotline is the busiest in contacting the bank’s clients – it replaces the interactive voice menu (“if you are an individual client press 1”). It greets the customer and asks what kind of issue he or she is calling about, then directs him or her to the appropriate consultant, provides an answer or helps to perform a banking operation from start to finish. The caller doesn’t have to waste time for another “press 2, press 5” but goes straight to where he receives support. This voicebot understands 280 different topics and has already conducted a total of 5 million conversations, currently conducting about 500 thousand conversations every month.
– When two years ago we implemented the first conversational solutions using artificial intelligence, many people treated them only as a curiosity. Today, we see that the ongoing digital transformation is associated with an increase in demand for automated, but also friendly customer service. Our customers are supported by voicebots that allow them to communicate freely in natural language – that is the way they talk to their friends and family, and the numbers show that they like such contacts – describes Dawid Kin, Director of Artificial Intelligence Development Office.
Among IKO application users the popularity of the Voice Assistant, i.e. a bot enabling banking with the help of spoken (and written) commands, is growing. It is the most advanced voicebot on the Polish financial market. Since its launch, it has already conducted more than 1.4 million conversations with customers, currently it is about 90 thousand dialogues per month. At the beginning it understood more than 70 topics of conversations, now there are more than 300 and they will gradually increase. The Assistant already has more than 500 thousand unique users.
Apart from answering many questions the IKO Voice Assistant can, among others, make a transfer, change the card operation limits, check the balance and search the account history, top up the phone, pay with BLIK. It also enables analysis of expenses and savings in the indicated period. IKO users can check how much they spend on: credit obligations, card payments, outgoing transfers, ATM withdrawals and other payments. Since recently he can also see the total amount of card payments in a particular store. The second option is to check the balance of savings on your account. Both options allow you to select the currency, account and period (current month, previous month, last 3 months, last 6 months and last year), for which the analysis is to be performed. The amounts of expenses and savings are presented graphically – in the form of charts (bars) and a summary, which the Voice Assistant provides in spoken and text form. All IKO users, using both smartphones with Android and iOS operating systems, may use the Assistant from the beginning of August 2020 – they do not have to install it, just click on the animated dialogue cloud icon in the top right corner of the application main screen.
There are 10 other voicebots operating in PKO Bank Polski, which, among other things, remind customers of overdue payments, conduct surveys, study the propensity to purchase a product or protect the customer’s finances. More solutions using conversational bots and development of current ones are in progress – this shows that artificial intelligence is helping the bank’s customers and employees and has become one of the technological pillars of its digital transformation.
