SBI launches chatbot to assist customers

State Bank of India (SBI) has enabled a chatbot to field queries on the bank’s retail products from visitors to its website. Named SBI Intelligent Assistant (SIA), the bot responds to customer inquiries on home loans, education loans, car loans, personal loans, recurring deposits and term deposits. Chatbots are digital robots that can carry on a conversation through audio or text. Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, deputy MD and chief information officer at SBI, told FE that the decision to introduce a chatbot was taken as it was felt that navigating the website could be a bit of a task for a customer.

“Most of the time, customer touchpoints with the bank are for three things — sales, service and enquiry,” Mahapatra said, adding, “We found that for enquiry and navigation, a customer has to navigate quite a bit or go to call centres, where the agent may not be fully knowledgeable.” The chatbot was developed by Allincall, a start-up backed by IIT Bombay, and uses machine learning and bot experience to respond to customer queries.

State Bank of India