"Okay Google, what's my bank balance?"
Renjan Lookose is the head of the Emerging Tech team at TCS Australia and an integral part of the team imagining and designing the tech solutions for the future of banking. Here, he explains how one of our new products - TCS Conversa - could revolutionise how Australians carry out their banking interactions.
We are on a journey to revolutionise how Australians do banking with the power of chatbots. Just like your virtual assistant can help you order an Uber or find your closest bus stop, so too will it be able to flag a suspicious transaction or transfer funds between accounts at the sound of a "Hey, Google". Working in collaboration with our partners, TCS is on the cusp of deploying the next evolution in banking products, assisted by AI and Machine Learning. Enter TCS Conversa, the smart banking chatbot platform.
The future of banking means... robots can coordinate your bank accounts
The TCS Conversa chatbot platform is a revolutionary assisted banking product that seeks to integrate financial services into one handy interface for customers and employees alike. By creating a single view of your bank accounts regardless of financial institution, TCS Conversa provides a chatbot platform that can be leveraged by emerging technology like personal devices, virtual assistants and yes, even robotics.
TCS Conversa, the nuts and bolts
The TCS Conversa platform is built using the Open Banking API - an open source API and App store for banks that empowers financial institutions and their partners to securely and rapidly test and deploy their digital offerings using an ecosystem of 3rd party applications and services.
Simply put, the Open Banking platform is a test environment that has allowed TCS to experiment with banking services and solutions in a secure sandbox - providing a space for experimental tech solutions to grow and be tested.
All hail the virtual assistant!
A Google Home is capable of performing over a million 'Actions' - the product term for process - including the control of over 1500 smart home devices from over 225 companies. In Australia during December 2017, users of Google Homes nearly tripled*. This when compared to the global sale rate of just over 7 million this shows the appetite Australians have for increased digital integration.
A call centre experience your customers actually enjoy, powered by TCS Conversa
TCS is leveraging the Open Banking API to reimagine elements of the banking experience, developing an AI machine learning-based Chatbot called TCS Conversa. TCS Conversa is a chatbot platform that seeks to aid both end-users in solving their banking queries and enterprises. As an example, business customers could integrate TCS Conversa into their call centre interface. TCS Conversa would listen to the conversation, interpret what a customer is saying, fetch customer history and surface that user data in real time. This approach would allow the agent to be more present in the conversation with the customer, providing a more personal interaction.
We are currently in the test phase, creating a voice assistant that engages the customer in an interactive way with the help of data from the Open Banking Sandbox. Various interactive channels adapters have been built already for seamless integration with Google Home, Echo, Amazon Alexa, and smart watches.
"Okay Google, give me an example"
How can TCS Conversa help? Imagine getting home from work with bags of groceries, ready to start prepping dinner. As you put away the produce you don't need and coordinate the elements you do, you ask your Google Home, Alexa, or Apple Pod to surface a recipe for you. As you go about preheating the oven you begin to chop ingredients. Water boiling, you are in the zone, only for your virtual assistant to interrupt you to ask if you did in fact spend $250 on gift cards in a far away location.
When TCS Conversa is integrated with your bank accounts and your Google Home, you as a customer gain additional oversight into your account transactions in real time. Because all of your bank accounts are connected - regardless of financial institution - you have transparency over all incomings and outgoings.
Why TCS Conversa? What is in it for banks and for their customersFor the past 50 years we have been at the forefront of rapidly digitising sectors, helping to guide our customers as they navigate the digital disruption of their industries. The banking and financial services sector is no different, with our clients driving towards the same universal goals of any business - efficiency, integration, security and better user experience.
For banks and financial institutions, the business case is clear. When your customers have greater transparency and control over their accounts, their customer experience is improved. An improved customer experience results in happier customers who have greater trust in their provider.
At an enterprise level, banks gain faster time-to market with less effort as they also reduce spend on legacy processes. Developers have easy access to data and the freedom to experiment, with the result being efficiency of processes and products that are well placed to move into the future.
How do I join the move towards the future of banking?The possibilities of TCS Conversa are infinite. To learn more contact our emerging tech team at
[email protected]
* Sales figure source - https://ausdroid.net/2018/01/19/google-publishes-local-global-google-home-stats/
