Japanese banks to participate in AI experiment on improvement of customer-orientated operations
FRONTEO’s KIBIT engine will help a number of Japanese banks to check their financial products selling methods.
Productivity and efficiency of customer-orientated operations at several Japanese banks will be at the heart of an artificial intelligence (AI) experiment set to last until the end of June 2018. Data analytics firm FRONTEO Inc (TYO:2158) has gained the support of the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) to conduct the experiment within the “Fintech Hub” initiative undertaken by the Japanese regulator.
The experiment will involve a number of major Japanese banks, including MUFG Bank, Bank of Yokohama, SMBC Nikko Securities and Resona Bank. They will all provide records (including telephone records) of the conversations between their customer support representatives and customers. FRONTEO’s KIBIT engine will then analyze the contents of these records to provide information on parameters like productivity, workload, accuracy, etc. The engine will also compare the results of the work of the AI engine and the human staff that usually check the records.
The aim of the experiment is to enhance the customer-orientated services offered by the banks, especially the selling of financial products like investment trusts.
FRONTEO notes that the problems related to climbing workload and hardships with productivity and efficiency are common for more than 600 financial institutions such as city banks, regional banks and securities companies. Based on the results obtained through the demonstration experiments it would be possible to reduce the burden of work and complex verification procedures conducted by human staff at banks.
This is not the first time FRONTEO partners with big Japanese banks. In June last year, for example, Resona Bank said it will be using KIBIT in its customer service department. The engine was set to help analyze interview transcripts, such as those of exchanges between Resona Bank branch officers and customers. KIBIT would focus on texts that contain recommendations for financial products, customer reactions to the recommendations, and customer service requests, in order to enable Resona Bank to respond to customer needs quickly and efficiently.
