Commonwealth Bank to trial AI chatbot in rollout of expanded AI-driven customer service

Commonwealth Bank is trialling an artificial intelligence-based chatbot that could replace its call centre staff as the company focuses on expanding AI-driven customer service.

Called Hey Commbank, the Chat-GPT style system is being tested on employees who are also customers, the Australian Financial Review reports.

The initiative forms part of its broader AI strategy in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, in which CBA has become the first Australian company to use a so-called AI factory.

The AI factory, a cluster of computer chips that support AI processing and an Amazon machine-learning managed service, will enable CBA employees to test and develop AI solutions to “provide hyper-personalised and contextualised experiences for customers and communities, more quickly and at scale”.

Under this, the bank will trial its Hey Commbank chatbot to answer customer questions in a conversational manner based on data held by the bank.

CBA chief data and analytics officer Andrew McMullan said advances in AI were focused on improving customer experience and simplifying core banking operation processes.

“By leveraging AWS’s cloud infrastructure and latest AI capabilities, the AI Factory is set to accelerate the bank’s development time for AI-powered initiatives by around four times compared to our current rate,” he said.

“With this new compute capability, we are unlocking CommBank to deliver more personalised experiences for all our customers, reducing our time to deliver across all our channels and operations, while supporting the responsible growth of (Generative) AI across the bank.”

One example of this would be for the chatbot to tell customers how much they needed to save to buy a house in a certain postcode, and what prices would be like, McMullan told the AFR.

“The AI Factory is the latest example of our collaborative efforts to leverage AI, (machine learning), and generative AI across the bank, to more rapidly identify customer insights that can be used to tailor more personalised experiences, streamline and improve customer interactions, and increase operational efficiency, creating a competitive edge,” AWS Australia and New Zealand financial services director Jamie Simon said.

The collaboration with Amazon has already shifted how CBA operates.

Calls that were previously recorded so staff could listen and offer training are now monitored by AI, according to the AFR.

Using AI, a call could now be converted into a transcript in 1.2 seconds, and AI judged the customer’s sentiment and whether they had a good experience, McMullan said.

According to the banking giant, more than 2,400 call centre staff speak with 50,000 customers a day.

It remains unclear how many roles could be impacted by the shift to AI, but the bank says the initiative will free up existing staff for other issues.

“We are using AI as a complementary technology to assist with time-consuming, manual tasks to free up our people to help our customers with more complex needs,” a spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

7NEWS.com.au has contacted Commonwealth Bank for further comment.