The old era of neighborhood branch gathering places no longer looks tenable as a new era dawns of self- and curbside-service, constant online connectivity, and conversation in virtual spaces.
Digital transformation is here with a vengeance, whether we like it or not. The global COVID-19 pandemic has people paying with mobile apps instead of cash, applying for and receiving assistance online, and coping with anxieties around housing, employment, debt, and even bankruptcy. The cascading consequences of the pandemic means that credit unions must urgently engage with business reinvention in order to continue their mission of service to their members’ financial well-being. How can this mission be sustained even as online becomes the dominant way they deliver products, offer support, and work with members to solve problems?
We have been researching the implications for credit unions of emerging technologies that use so-called artificial intelligence techniques to support “natural” conversations, though text, voice, and/or graphics, between people and artificial agents that more or less pose as people in enacting a service. Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are well-known examples, through financial service-specific versions like Bank of America’s Erica have also launched.
As social scientists, we start from a broad set of questions about how people experience and expect these systems to behave, both positively and negatively. And for these “conversational agent” technologies, we start in particular with questions of intimacy and empathy.
Intimacy of AI
In 2018 the popular parenting website BabyCenter released results of a survey it conducted on new parents and their use of AI assistants like Alexa and Siri. The results were striking—seven in ten parents own a smart device; and a third of those said that having one made them a better parent. 22% percent said their virtual assistants are “like another part of the family,” and 42% of device owners say that they speak to their virtual assistants like an actual person. The “intimacy of AI,” as AdWeek calls it, seems inevitable.
Voice and AI aside, intimacy is already central to smartphones themselves. These personal and personalized devices are our constant, daily, bodily companions. Add an always-available virtual assistant to chat with, and our relationship with our phones—especially in a time of social distancing—becomes even closer.
“Intimacy” from virtual assistants being rolled out by the big banks is threatening to credit unions precisely because credit unions have historically prided themselves on the quality of their customer service and their knowledge of their members. Take Bank of America’s Erica. Via your smartphone, she can help you plan a spending path, manage your expenses, alert you to when bills or other recurrent payments are coming due, give your FICO score, and even provide rudimentary credit counseling.
If interactions with financial digital assistants are to replace person-to-person conversations with customer service agents, is the credit union system back in a familiar position of trying to play catch-up with the big banks and their big pockets? Not entirely – to employ new technologies that put people first, credit unions have advantageous positions as member cooperatives that place well-being over profits.
Continue reading about intimacy, empathy, and opportunities for credit unions in the age of COVID-19, full post on the Filene Research Institute blog available here: https://filene.org/blog/digital-transformation-in-the-age-of-covid-19-what-should-credit-unions-deliver
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