2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

With more than 500 new people becoming Liv. Bank customers every day and new features added to the app every few weeks, the number of people reaching out to understand more about Liv.’s services and products was increasing exponentially. All this was affecting the bank's ability to respond to customers as quickly as Liv. would have liked to. As a digital-only app, the only way customers could get in touch was via email or the in-app chat feature. The bank’s human agents were receiving over 200,000 queries a day, and it took approx. 8 hours for a query to be closed. So the solution was to launch a bot, a software that behaves understands and learns like a human, but can handle a workload no human can. Our challenge was to introduce yet another “virtual” solution in a memorable way that would immediately build affinity towards the new feature.

Describe the strategy

Liv.’s customer base is 300,000 people-strong, and consists of millennials aged 18-35. They are tech-savvy and enjoy the flexibility a digital banking app gives them, but they also require a quick resolution to their banking issues, and can often get worried and vocal when they think their hard-earned money is at stake. We had to tread with caution to make sure our newest service would be accepted and adopted by customers immediately: 1) we knew that introducing a Bot that came with a name and a personality would help make the whole experience a lot more personal for users. So we started by defining the character, personality and name of our bot from the get-go. 2) We knew that giving our customers a stake in “hiring” and training the Bot would help bring early buy-in and adoption of the new technology, and patience, as the bot went through its training.

Describe the execution

We started off by having a call out on our social media platforms, letting people know that Liv. was looking to hire a hardworking chatbot that would be willing to work 24 hours, 7 days a week. We then introduced 5 shortlisted chatbots – all with distinct and unique personalities: Sylvie, our ‘selfie queen’, Matchio the ‘born charmer’, Spacey the ‘space junkie’, Gizmi our ‘geeky cheeky' and of course Olivia the ‘fast ‘n curious’. After getting them to select their favourite 3, we got our customers further involved by running a live interview session, hosted on Facebook and Instagram for them to vote for whoever they thought was the best candidate for the job. And so, Olivia was hired! As a last step, we signed up 3,000 volunteers to become mentors to help train the newly hired bot, and get them ready to assume their responsibilities.

List the results

Our live interview session alone garnered 693,000 impressions, 60,000 views and 7,600 votes. But the real measure of success was the reduction of the strain on our human customer service agents, and the reduction of the response time by half. Since her launch in April 2019, Olivia has responded to over 70,000 unique customers and responds in a record-breaking 0.3 seconds! There has also been a 60% drop in chats and messages to human agents, helping them respond to customers 3 times faster. The launch of Olivia got noticed internationally too with strong PR coverage in leading fintech publications worldwide. The Financial Times even ran a dedicated article on the marketing approach to launch Olivia as a special case study. The audience’s response to Olivia was impressive, with people warming up to her, rooting for her during her training and asking to see more of her on our social channels.