While chatbots are slowly been accepted into the fold by many industries, there is one field that will have to deal with this new relationship with quite a lot of savvy. There will come a time when users can check their bank balance via Twitter or Facebook, what with banks too trialling chatbots. But this poses the question of how secure this whole transaction is, considering that quite a large number of people/organisations see their bank accounts hacked or illegally entered every year.
In fact, businesses were at the receiving end of four-tenths of security breaches in 2015 and 2016, which shows that security is of a prime concern as we enter the dawn of humanised technology.
At the same time, there is also research that shows that people are willing to exchange security for comfort, but this trend quickly changes when the user even remotely feels that his/her security is being compromised.
So how does one find the balance? It helps if the chatbot is made to have a trait where it makes the user feel secure about his/her transactions, and if there is a certain level of trust that can be built between the service provider and the customer. And to help facilitate this, a well-designed chatbot with pre-empted roles and duties will go a long way.
QUT researchers have proved that a certain unsafe feeling is what has kept customers away from social media interactions with financial institutions. And that these feelings have risen with the boom of the social media age, specifically between 2010 and 2014.
When it comes to finance, people are understandably keen on making transactions on a face-to- face level. In fact, more than half the consumers (51 per cent) still prefer this mode of transaction and communication. And it is up to the financial institutions to foster a certain atmosphere where customers are able to see the advantages of going through certain processes with the help of chatbots, and hence they are slowly conditioned to trust the technology, and as an extension the company.
What can be done to help this cause is trying to make the bot as human as possible. Customers can be very demanding and choosy when it comes to how they want their transactions to be done, and being able to provide a technology that can listen to their grievances and doubts, while also coming up with the best solutions, can come a long way building trust and nurturing feelings of comfort in the consumer.
After all, a little more than one-fifth (21 per cent) of customers feel that the easiest way to get through to a business is through chatbots, and even if this perceived minority can be convinced that there is a balance that has been struck between convenience and security, then it is half the battle won.
LSI Keywords: bank balances, businesses, humanised technology, exchange security, level of trust, pre-empted roles, social media interactions, financial institutions, face-to- face level, transactions, feelings of comfort
