Capital One is piloting a natural language SMS chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to respond to customer questions, and even emojis.
The gender-neutral bot, called Eno (One spelled backwards) can answer a host of questions, including on account balances, recent transactions, card bill due dates, credit limits, and bank routing numbers.
Eno's natural language processor lets it understand the different way questions may be asked. For example, it will shares balance information in response to both “What’s my Quicksilver card balance?” and the more abbreviated “Quicksilver bal”.
When the bot cannot answer a question, it will sometimes offer a link to the exact page on Capital One's site that addresses the query.
Customers can also use emojis, including the bag of money one for a quick summary of their accounts or a 'thumbs up' to confirm a payment. And Capital One has also built in some "fun" features, letting customers ask Eno things such as "tell me a joke" and "Are you a boy or girl?"
Meanwhile, India's HDFC Bank has launched its similarly named bot, Eva (Electronic Virtual Assistant). The bank says Eva can answer millions of questions across multiple channels, and within the first few days of launching has already answered over 100,000 queries.
Nitin Chugh, country head, digital banking, HDFC, says: "HDFC Bank has always been ahead of the technology curve and we are the first to embrace Artificial Intelligence Bots to address day-to-day queries from our customers."