Bank of the West
Contact Center AI Technology to Improve Customer Service
Company Profile
The fundamental belief that a bank should have a positive impact on society drives the Bank of the West. At a time when people demand more from companies, we are taking action to ensure our activities help protect the planet, improve people’s lives, and strengthen communities. As the bank for a changing world, Bank of the West is committed to sustainable finance along with its parent company BNP Paribas, which is one of the only financial organizations in the world to adopt the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Through Digital Channels and offices across the U.S., Bank of the West provides financial tools and resources to more than 2 million individuals, families, and businesses.
Business Situation
Bank of the West’s contact center team handles millions of customer support calls annually. They were looking to improve service by automating customer interactions with Machine Learning.
In this project, we used Google Cloud’s Dialogflow technology to implement a chatbot that integrates into existing Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) infrastructure. This allows users who call in for support to converse in natural language and get their questions answered. After the production deployment, approximately 5% of customer call traffic was automatically directed to the chatbot.
Google Cloud Implementation
Bank of the West partnered with Google Cloud Platform and SpringML to implement a chatbot using Dialogflow. The bank identified about seven use cases that form 90% of the call traffic. The SpringML team worked with the bank to design a conversational flow and implemented the various intents in Dialogflow. In addition, the solution had several integrations. The chatbot was designed to integrate into the bank’s existing IVR system so that existing calls from customers can be directed to chatbot seamlessly. The solution also supported integrations with the bank’s Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that further integrates with various backend systems including for authentication, databases, CRM, and other enterprise systems.
