Banque Casino Launches a Chatbot, Too

Just like other banking institutions, retailers’ financial arms are drawing inspiration from outstanding technological innovations likely to help their offers move on and assert their legitimacy. Banque Casino now presents their own Messenger-based chatbot. This tool remains quite basic and is intended to save banking advisors time, but it should be enhanced over the months.

Banque Casino describes this choice as a commitment to renew their CRM and customer experience in general. Mostly, the point is to move some customer relation issues to this bot, at least for processes likely to be automated. The conversational agent is now accessible through Facebook Messenger. It may answer two types of questions: provide prospective customers with information regarding a project or product; or, answer basic questions (if they lose their banking IDs, their payment card, etc.). In all cases, customers are directed either to the bank’s website (to carry on with a personal loan simulation, for instance), or to an actual human advisor.

This solution has been designed by the start-up called Botfuel, with technological support from Keyrus. This joint effort allowed Banque Casino to implement a chatbot in just 8 weeks. It has then been designed as a PoC likely to evolve (via other channels than Messenger for instance).

This chatbot has been in place for three months, and dealt with 5% of the customers interactions, while leading to 12% additional product conversions.

Comments – When the chatbot “craze” hits all

Banque Casino’s initiative is yet another illustration as to the increasingly prevailing part played by chatbots in financial services (payment, credit, savings, etc.).

Banque Casino here relies on two technological expert: Keyrus (for integration aspects) and Botfuel (designer of this chatbot). For now, this tool is undergoing a learning phase: only dealing with a few, quite easy questions and soon directs its visitors to an advisor. It does not include the subscription step yet, unlike other bots that have taken one step further, as is the case with Yelloan or ID Finance. Regardless, the goal has been met for Banque Casino: they are first seeking to seize this technology through a rather prompt implementation.

Crédit Mutuel-CIC holds a 50% share in Banque Casino and is progressing well when it comes to integrating innovative technologies in the banking industry. They are also one of the French banking players who have been making the most progress in integrating IBM’s AI Watson.