Transforming Customer Service in Financial Services with AI Chatbots

The customer is a leading US financial services company and one of the largest credit card providers in the world, enabling over 57 million cardholders to manage their finances better. They have a strong emphasis on customer service and have built a reputation for outstanding customer service over the years, winning highly acclaimed awards in the finance space. They employ over 8000 customer service agents located across the continental US and available 24x7 to handle customer queries on phone and digital channels. Their core values and customer obsession drive them to constantly discover new ways to provide effortless experiences.

The customer, a leading US financial services company and one of the largest credit card providers in the world, was facing challenges with their existing customer service model. They had over 8000 customer service agents handling queries on phone and digital channels, but their first foray into digital customer service in 2006, which involved live chat support on their website, was not as effective as they had hoped. Customers had to wait in a chat queue and could not switch tabs or leave the page without missing their turn and having to start over. The company wanted to improve this experience by adopting a more intuitive and familiar flow, similar to popular messaging applications like iMessage and WhatsApp. They also wanted to maintain the context of past issues the customer has faced to provide a more personalized experience.

The company partnered with Freshchat to transform their customer service experience. They upgraded from live chat to modern messaging not only on their website but also on their mobile app using Freshchat's robust mobile SDK. They also extended their customer service on iMessage using Freshchat's native integration with Apple Business Chat. This allowed customers to shift from web support to mobile support seamlessly without having to restart their conversations. The company also focused on improving the agent experience by providing them with a familiar and intuitive interface, reducing agent training time by as much as 60%. They also unified all their teams under a single Freshchat instance using Freshchat’s advanced roles and permissions feature. To scale their operations, the company built their own customer-facing chatbot using Freshchat’s open APIs, which allowed them to fetch information from other internal systems and provide instant responses to customers without human intervention.

• The implementation of Freshchat resulted in a significant improvement in the company's customer service. The continuous messaging style of Freshchat allowed agents to maintain the context of past issues the customer has faced and provide a more personalized experience. The intuitive interface reduced agent stress and allowed them to focus more on the customer. The company was also able to unify all their teams under a single Freshchat instance, improving the flow of customer context while maintaining data confidentiality. The use of bots and AI allowed the company to handle a wide range of customer queries more efficiently, saving valuable agent time. The company is now recognized as the first major credit card company to provide a seamless customer experience across the web and mobile.

• Saved 10,000 hours with AI chatbots

• Handled 1.4 million conversations per quarter

• Reduced agent training time by 60%