Already under evaluation at several well-known financial institutions, the Teneo banking app allows customers to chat using a natural language conversational style to the automated virtual advisor about their account and carry out tasks such as transferring money or paying bills. Based on the context of the conversation, the virtual assistant can also recommend other services such as savings accounts, insurance or loans. 

Whilst mobile banking apps have been available for some time, they only enable limited interaction, completely controlled by the user. Adding a conversational element not only makes it faster for the customer to carry out transactions, it also provides insight into the account holder's requirements and allows the bank to respond immediately, just if the customer was talking to a teller inside a branch.

"In a world where customers rarely visit a bank, let alone chat to the person behind the counter, virtual assistants offer organizations a way to bring back meaningful conversations that build relationships," says Andy Peart, CMO of Artificial Solutions. "With current banking apps if a customer regularly moves money from their current account to their savings account the bank only sees a transaction, there is no understanding of the customer's requirements. A simple conversational prompt such as 'Saving for something nice?' from the virtual assistant can turn that transaction into a mortgage enquiry, holiday insurance or car loan."

The mobile banking app is built on Artificial Solutions' Teneo platform, a fully integrated, natural language interaction platform that adds speech-enabled intelligence to connected devices. One of Teneo's key components is a powerful analysis tool that is able to take unstructured data such as emails, chat logs, call transcripts and social media and interpret, tag and categorize the information in near real-time, providing further insight into the mind of the customer.