Chatbots are coming your way: Start moving now!
There has been a lot of interesting discussion on how bots, and especially chatbots, could redefine the future of customer service and customer experience. The rise of bots has been exceptionally fast, and Facebook played a significant role in the chatbot revolution when they announced in April 2016 that Facebook Messenger platform supports chatbots – the number of chatbots on Facebook Messenger has been growing fast. We have been living in the world of (chat)bots for a couple of years now, and Facebook’s adoption of chatbots has been a significant landmark in the more general adoption of bots. There has already been some evidence that chatbots are gaining legitimacy amongst consumers. According to Aspect Software Research’s report published last year, “44% said that if a company could get the experience right, they would prefer to use a chatbot or automated experience for CRM.” This discussion has been, of course, promoted mainly by those…
Chatbots for wealth management, trade execution, and portfolio management? Yes, please!
Chatbots are gaining some momentum in the financial services industry in Finland. OP Financial Group has been at the forefront of launching a relatively large amount of experiments. Other Finnish banks and financial institutions have been rather passive but at the moment OP Financial Group is setting the bar quite high. Kotipizza’s collaboration with OP Financial Group is an example of a transactional chatbot for ordering food (simply order through Facebook Messenger and pay with Pivo app), last year OP’s Pivo Penni (a chatbot for students) turned out to be a short-lived test, and in addition OP launched an invite-only financial management chatbot Pivo Alfred (spending analysis) last December. Unfortunately, there has been no further news about S-Bank’s collaborative chatbot project since last year. In the US, many banks and other financial institutions have already deployed chatbots. As many commentators have already pointed out previously, there are various forms of chatbots ranging from customer service,…
Why (chat)bots are so exciting?
In my earlier posts, I barely scratched the surface of chatbot revolution in customer service. There are ultimately various reasons why chatbots have become to dominate the discussion on the future of customer service, and why engaging the revolution of conversational user interfaces is so important. Customer service, per definition, requires one to assume a generalist role in the organizational matrix, i.e. it’s not just about receiving inputs and generating outputs based on logically construed rules but rather it requires one to be able to offer service (not a service). It’s no wonder that customer service roles are often perceived as stressful, and of course, different client-facing service positions require a different set of personal and organizational measures to prevent excess stress (Sidle 2004; St-Vincent, Denis, Imbeau & Trudeau 2006; Julian 2008). As a 2005 study published by British scientists points out, “Of the 26 occupations included in the research, … customer services…
Why banks and insurers innovate so differently?
There are certain things you learn the first day at business school: all firms compete at some level with each other for revenues and to outperform their competitors, companies need to have a competitive advantage (and sure, there are various forms of coopetition). In today’s fluid, dynamic and highly uncertain competitive environment, businesses constantly need to prop up their game to keep up with the sudden changes we are now witnessing. The fundamental question, after all, in strategic management, is not why competitive advantage is so crucial but instead how to gain and sustain competitive advantage over time (Helfat et al. 2007; Teece 2009). Competitive advantage takes various forms, but something that has been stressed over and over again in the academic literature is the paramount importance of continuous innovation to achieve sustainable competitive advantage (Lengnick-Hall 1992; Lord, deBethizy & Wager 2005; Afuah 2009; Betz 2011; Dereli 2011; Weerawardena & Mavondo 2011; Pisano 2015). The wisdom of this maxim…
Chatbots: The future of customer service?
It’s not particularly uncommon to come across organizations, businesses, and people who still implicitly perceive customer support and customer service as something not really worth investing in. Just a couple of days ago, I faced a problem with a Nordic low-cost airline carrier that has almost every year won several prizes and other forms of recognition. My problem was that I was unable to change my password on their website; I followed the instructions to reset my email, and after I couldn’t do this by myself, I decided to give them a call to get it done. I didn’t have to wait a long time to talk with an agent, but then the problems started. The agent was unable to retrieve my information, and I had to spell my name out in various ways. I don’t consider myself as fluent as a native English speaker, but I always get things…
Design thinking – A collection of recommended books, articles and resources
Mikko Leskelä recently asked for some recommendations on books, articles and other (digital) resources that cover design thinking and business anthropology. While I think that it’s actually much more important to get things going rather than just reading and studying them, I have to admit that the complexity of design thinking can be quite overwhelming for most of us. There is no reason to overanalyze design thinking (or business anthropology), but at the same time, things should not be done on the fly, instinctively without giving any rational thought on the things you really want to accomplish. Design thinking, thanks to the fluidity of the design itself, is not a carved in stone by anyone, and therefore it’s important for everyone to expose oneself to a wide variety of perspectives. Design and innovation companies, like Fjord (acquired by Accenture in 2013), Lunar (acquired by McKinsey & Co in 2015), Heat (acquired by…
The new retail deposit marketplaces are here, and they are not messing around
It’s well-known that retail payments, accounting, e-commerce solutions, merchant acquiring and retail lending are the most well-developed and quickly matured segments of the fintech industry, both regarding executed deals, the number of investments, and compound annual growth rate (see Tanaya Macheel’s post on fintech funding). This should not be very surprising as there are still various low-hanging fruits ready to be grabbed by innovative new entrants. It's important to have a plan for #fintechs. Growth is coming from #insurtech & #assetmanagement. Don't forget #regtech #finnishfintechtalks pic.twitter.com/rMDblb82UV — Thomas Brand (@thlbr) May 4, 2017 We are still waiting for similar momentum to gather pace in coming years in multiple other parts of the financial services ecosystem, e.g. corporate finance, corporate payments, SME lending and asset finance, and insurance. It’s true that from the perspective of basic banking products and services, financing and credit have already been hit hard by the fintechs on all fronts by alternative finance…
The world is changing, no doubt about it
All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. – Robin Sharma The world of business has been changing so fast and unpredictable lately that sometimes it is hard to remember when this all started. Things have always started but nowadays no day passes without reading about some exciting new developments and novel approaches. One of the main changes that we have witnessed over the years, for example, stems from the way that clients and customers expect to be treated throughout their journey. This trend has increased with the emergence of social media; just reflect on the recent United Airlines scandal where an unwilling passenger was forcefully dragged off the plane in an overbooking situation. This unfortunate incident went viral thanks to the social media, and it caused significantly reputational damage to the United Airlines. [1] Although the incident was settled in late April, it still leaves a bad…
Social selling is not about the tools – It’s about the mindset
Social selling is becoming a bit paseé as it seems that instead of transforming contemporary sales altogether, the primary focus has been unfortunately put on the different tools, techniques, and methods available. There are, of course, those people who are still trying to convince people that social selling is not really about tweeting or writing blog posts. It’s much more holistic than single interventions here and there. Social selling, as it should be correctly perceived, is all about human interactions, and social media is one of the spheres where a skilled salesperson should be actively present. It’s quite obvious that today social media plays an ever-increasingly important role in almost every kind of interaction between people and different organizations but the most important thing, people interacting with other people, is somewhat missing from the discussion. Almost everyone knows how important social media is today, and the importance of social media is…
Ajatusten hautausmaa?
Torstai on aivan yhtä hyvä päivä uuden tavan aloittamiseksi kuin mikä tahansa muu päivä. Bloggaaminen ei ole minulle aivan uutta, mutta en ole tätä ennen onnistunut kirjoittamaan riittävän säännöllisesti ja kurinalaisesti. Keskityin aiemmin Nordnetin blogissa kirjoittamaan lähinnä vain silloista työtäni lähellä olevista aiheista. Pohdin jo aiemmin huhtikuussa sitä, onko minulla riittävästi sanottavaa kirjoittaakseni riittävän usein. Päädyin pohdoinnoissani siihen, että blogi on lopulta kaksoisvoitto: pohdin minua kiinnostavia asioita ja toivottavasti joku muukin on kiinnostunut samoista aiheista. Tutkiessani ja kirjoittaessani opin toivottavasti myös jotain uutta lukijoiltani. Pääasiassa kirjoitan tajunnanvirtaa minua juuri tällä hetkellä kiinnostavista aiheista ja ilmiöistä, joten varsinaista punaista lankaa on turha tässä vaiheessa yrittää hahmottaa. Ihmisillä on aina paljon kaikenlaista tekemistä. Tehokas ajankäyttö ja epäolennaisen kohinan suodattaminen pois on taito, joka tekee elämästä monin tavoin helpompaa ja yksinkertaisempaa. Minulle kirjoittaminen on sekä tehokasta ajankäyttöä että tapa järjestellä ajatuksiani. Toivottavasti lukemiseen uhraamasi aika on sen arvoista. Kuvalähde: Paul Jacobson via Foter.com /…