Posts by Keith Armstrong

Virtual Financial Assistants A Virtual Financial Assistant personifies the interactions between a financial institution and their consumers. Choosing the right channel to deploy your virtual financial assistant is one of the most important decisions your financial institution will need to make. For instance, Bank of America launched Erica, which they embedded inside their mobile app, … Continue reading “How to Pick the Right Channel for Your Virtual Financial Assistant”

Accessible Design is Good Design No person should struggle with or be limited by technology to access their financial information or complete their day-to-day banking needs. Yet that isn’t always the case for millions of Americans who live with some form of disability that limits their dexterity or sight. While industry advocacy groups such as … Continue reading “How Voice Assistants Can Benefit People With Disabilities”

3 Lessons from CUNA GAC to Enhance the Member Experience We had the pleasure of attending and exhibiting at CUNA GAC 2018. It’s the annual conference where the credit union industry comes together to advocate for issues that matter, such as tax status, common-sense regulation, security standards, and more. This event brings the entire credit … Continue reading “3 Lessons from CUNA GAC to Enhance the Member Experience”

Voice Banking – How To Get Started Today In 2017, we saw large banks and credit unions on Amazon Alexa engaging consumers through voice devices, empowering them to get fast answers about their finances, receive affordability insights, and pay bills, all via voice. Yet, just because these large institutions made the strategic investment in a voice … Continue reading “Voice Banking – How To Get Started Today”

Designing Secure Voice Banking Experiences Deploying secure voice banking experiences are a new frontier that must balance security, consumer convenience, and situational context. Depending on the desired capabilities of your voice banking skill, you will need to meet a variety of security protocols. We’ve previously discussed banking chatbot security. Here are best practices to consider … Continue reading “How to Ease Consumer Voice Banking Security Concerns on Alexa”

Delivering Financial Insights via Voice and Chat Right now, the benefits of conversational experiences, which I define as any “typing or talking through a device for utility gains”, are centered around convenience. Consumers are able to request and receive fast answers to simple questions, 24/7. This is a good thing, but it’s not everything … … Continue reading “Delivering Financial Insights via Voice and Chat”

Chatbots Aren’t Dead Ethan Bloch, CEO of Digit, a product that helps people automatically save money, has declared “chatbots are dead”, in fact, he questions if they were ever really “alive”. For a long time, chat was the primary interface of Digit, beginning with SMS and expanding into their mobile app. Now, Digit is shifting … Continue reading “Chatbots Aren’t Dead”

3 Keys To A Successful Bank-Fintech Partnership The Abe AI team headed to Chicago last month for the 2017 Next Money conference – a one-day event with over 500 attendees, including 100 CEOs and founders, as well as 20 global banking and fintech leaders. Next Money hosts conferences throughout the year in an effort to … Continue reading “3 Keys To A Successful Bank-Fintech Partnership”

Branches, Bots and Beyond: How AI Changes Customer Engagement This summer we hosted the first ever virtual AI in Banking Summit focused on bringing together the industry’s leading experts in artificial intelligence and banking. One of our many featured speakers was Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and The Digital Banking Report. Jim’s session … Continue reading “Branches, Bots and Beyond: How AI Changes Customer Engagement”

Amazon is one of the most successful companies in history. The tech giant, which generated $100 billion in profits in 2015 alone, is the largest online retailer and fourth most valuable public company in the world. So what makes Amazon such an incredible success? Given the breadth of their offering — over 300 million items … Continue reading “Why Banks Should Start Thinking Like Amazon”