By Frank J. Diekmann
Credit Union Land, welcome to Creepy Town.
“Omnichannel” got a lot of the focus during the recent BAI Retail Delivery Show in Chicago, but creepy “omnipresence” might have been more fitting. Belief in a supreme being may be slowly ebbing away in the United States, but three days at this trade show proves financial institutions believe they can fill the void.
Take what Atlanta-based SunTrust is up to, for instance. The $180-billion bank is working to beat its customers to the question, any question, about their finances—and that includes knowing what customers are going to ask before customers know themselves.
Greg Holzworth, SVP, Client Analytics Group with SunTrust, said the bank is working behind the scenes to monitor signs in customer behavior that might indicate they are either experiencing or are about to experience “circumstance changes.” Using software and algorithms, SunTrust is looking for certain “clues in people’s live” to determine “in-market” indicators that a person might be making a change.
Indicators it is monitoring include home improvement spend, time spent on the bank’s Resource Center or reviewing mortgage content, and out-of-market T&E spend, a credit inquiry, a large change in direct deposit, and signs of the birth of a new child.
Big Brother, meet Big Banker.
“The problem is a lot of those things don’t happen very frequently,” said Holzworth . “So we look to factor analysis to understand how we might bundle these together and build out one or two attributes that might be more indicative, and then build that into our model.”
That modeling is only going to get better, and it seems only a matter of time before that “marriage” includes data pulled from customers’ social media postings—if it doesn’t already.
As if that weren’t all bordering on the creepy side of invading someone’s space, that “personal” note you got from your financial institution in response to a potential “circumstance change” in your life will likely be coming from another piece of software. That much was clear after I got a demo from a company called Yseop (meant to be pronounced “easy opp,”), which is in the artificial intelligence business and specializes in communications with consumers that sound like “Mary down at the credit union” but is really just Contract Employee #12111109 down at the coding company.
“The future of retail banking is not some sci-fi vision of tomorrow; the future is today with a software that is already being used by dozens of Fortune 1000 companies,” said a company spokesman in something that sounded like it was right out of the movie Minority Report.
Yseop said its unique solution writes like a human being, explains what data means and “dialogs to deepen customer relationships.” Its solutions, the company said, “suggest questions to capture and collect information and then uses both customer data and your company’s comprehensive expertise to offer unprecedented customer service, all while drastically increasing sales productivity.”
In other words, we get rid of the human beings with software that adds the human touch.
Seem Robotic? There's A Reason
Not that in-person visits are remaining any more human. In a development that could eventually extend to U.S.-based financial institutions, Emirates Identity Authority here is partnering with MasterCard to test the use of Google Glass at its service centers across the country.
The aim is to enable employees at the Authority’s customer service centers to verify personal identities of customers in a reliable, innovative and creative manner, according to the EIA.
Augmented as it may be, at least you still get to interact with human beings, you say. Not so fast, my friend. The Emirates Identity Authority has already piloted a robot named Hamad that speaks three languages—English, Arabic and French (and which is capable of adding another six)—that interacts with visitors. The robot helps customers providing the status of an ID card and its application, locating and directing customers to different services centers, and processing applications for Emirates ID card renewal.
“Hamad can sense the presence of a customer and starts to greet the customer when approached,” a spokesperson for the authority stated. “He knows the time of the day and greets customers accordingly. He accepts payments by credit cards and mails a receipt.”
In a somewhat foreboding announcement, the UAE government said the robot has already learned to “clone himself” and will be deployed across multiple customer centers by year-end.
Egad. Makes you wonder what will happen to the people on both ends of the people-helping-people business?
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info, and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info.