The AI Chatbot Take Over Has Arrived -- Backed by Research Data

Summary

The video discusses the growing adoption of chatbots in businesses, as highlighted by a CNBC interview with Forrester's VP, David Traug, and Bank of America's tech head, Nikki Katz. They explore chatbots' potential to streamline customer service, with over two-thirds of US companies investing in them. Despite initial teething issues and quality disparities, the future of chatbots, especially with advancements in AI, looks promising. Bank of America's virtual assistant, Erica, exemplifies this shift, amassing billions of interactions and demonstrating the technology's potential to enhance customer experience and reduce service costs.

Takeaways

• 📈 The video discusses the growing adoption of chatbots in businesses, with more than two-thirds of US companies already investing in them according to Forrester research.
• 💡 Chatbots have been around for over a decade, but the development costs have significantly decreased, allowing more businesses to implement them for customer service and efficiency.
• 🛠️ The script highlights the dual use of chatbots: as an internal tool to empower customer service teams and as a direct interface for end customers.
• 🤖 The quality of chatbots varies widely, which can lead to negative user experiences, but as technology improves, the expectation is that user satisfaction will increase.
• 🏦 Bank of America's virtual assistant, Erica, is presented as a successful example of a chatbot, with millions of customer interactions and a focus on making financial tasks easier.
• 📊 Forrester's research indicates that while many companies are investing in chatbots, there is still a significant portion that are either not interested or unsure about implementation.
• 🔑 The importance of intent routing in chatbots is emphasized, allowing for a seamless transition from automated responses to human assistance when needed.
• 📉 Despite the benefits, there are concerns about the accountability of chatbots, especially when they cannot provide the necessary help or become unresponsive.
• 🚀 The video suggests that we are at the beginning of the chatbot evolution, with AI and generative technologies set to improve their capabilities and integration into various business processes.
• 📲 The script touches on the potential of chatbots in different platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, but also notes the preference of some businesses, like Bank of America, to keep interactions in-house for security and data control.
• 💰 Bank of America's significant investment in tech, including chatbots, is highlighted, showing a commitment to improving customer service and reducing costs.

Q & A

Who is Forrester and what do they do?

Forrester is a research and advisory company that provides insights on emerging technologies. They are known for writing reports and blog posts that help businesses understand and navigate the tech landscape.

What is the significance of the CNBC interview with David Traug and Nikki Katz?

The CNBC interview with David Traug, a VP from Forrester, and Nikki Katz, Head of Digital at Bank of America, is significant as it discusses the future of chatbots and their impact on customer service, highlighting insights from a recent Forrester study.

What does the term 'bullish about the future of chatbots' imply?

Being 'bullish about the future of chatbots' suggests a positive outlook on the growth and potential of chatbot technology, indicating that the speaker believes in the increasing adoption and improvement of chatbots in various industries.

Why have more than two-thirds of US companies invested in chatbots?

More than two-thirds of US companies have invested in chatbots due to their ability to offer user assistance, improve customer service, and potentially reduce costs associated with traditional customer support.

What was the historical barrier to entry for building chatbots?

Historically, the barrier to entry for building chatbots was high due to the significant development costs involved. Large corporations like Verizon, Expedia, and AT&T had to invest millions of dollars in building customer service chatbots from scratch, which was not feasible for smaller businesses.

How has the cost of building chatbots changed over time?

The cost of building chatbots has significantly decreased over time, thanks to advancements in large language models (LLMs) and chatbot builders. This has made it more accessible for businesses of all sizes to develop and implement chatbots.

What is the current user sentiment towards chatbots?

The current user sentiment towards chatbots is mixed, with only a small fraction of users regularly turning to chatbots for assistance. However, this number is expected to increase as chatbots continue to improve.

What is the role of Erica, Bank of America's virtual assistant?

Erica is Bank of America's virtual assistant designed to assist customers with their banking needs. She handles common inquiries and tasks, aiming to make the customer's financial life easier and more efficient.

How does the use of chatbots as an internal tool benefit businesses?

Using chatbots as an internal tool can increase efficiency by providing quick access to information and reducing the time employees spend searching for answers. This can empower customer service teams to respond more quickly and effectively to customer inquiries.

What are the potential risks of implementing generative AI in chatbots?

The potential risks of implementing generative AI in chatbots include the possibility of errors or 'hallucinations' where the chatbot provides incorrect or nonsensical information. This can lead to negative user experiences and potential harm to the business, especially in high-stakes industries like e-commerce or banking.

What is the future outlook for chatbots in the business landscape?

The future outlook for chatbots in the business landscape is positive, with Forrester and other industry experts being bullish about their potential. As technology improves, chatbots are expected to become more fluent, efficient, and integral to customer service and business operations.

Outlines

00:00

🤖 Chatbots' Growing Popularity and Their Future

This paragraph introduces the topic of chatbots, highlighting a recent video featuring insights from David Traug of Forrester and Bank of America's tech head. It discusses Forrester's research indicating a significant investment in chatbots by companies and the potential for future growth. The paragraph emphasizes the evolution of chatbots from high-cost, custom-built systems to more accessible and affordable options due to advancements in technology. It also touches on the current challenges, such as varying quality and user dissatisfaction, but maintains an optimistic outlook on the future of chatbots.

05:01

🛠️ Enhancing Customer Service with Chatbots

The second paragraph delves into the use of chatbots as tools to enhance customer service. It contrasts the direct interaction of customers with chatbots with the use of chatbots as internal tools for customer service agents. The discussion includes the benefits of using chatbots to quickly access information and improve efficiency, as well as the importance of quality in chatbot interactions. The paragraph also addresses the potential for chatbots to improve over time and the challenges of ensuring a positive user experience.

10:01

💼 Business Adoption and Investment in Chatbots

This paragraph focuses on the business perspective of chatbot adoption, noting that 67% of US companies have invested in chatbots primarily to cut costs and address customer needs. It discusses the challenges of initial chatbot quality and the importance of improving these technologies to meet customer expectations. The speaker shares personal experiences and insights into the potential of chatbots to offload routine customer service tasks, allowing for a more streamlined and efficient service process.

15:03

🚀 The Future of Chatbots and Generative AI

The fourth paragraph discusses the potential of generative AI to revolutionize chatbots, making them more fluent and capable of understanding human language. It acknowledges the current risks and errors associated with generative AI chatbots but maintains a positive outlook on their future development. The paragraph also presents data on the current state of chatbot adoption among US companies, indicating a significant number of businesses that are experimenting, piloting, or investing in chatbots.

20:07

🏦 Bank of America's Chatbot Strategy

This paragraph examines Bank of America's approach to chatbots, specifically their virtual assistant, Erica. It discusses the bank's strategy to keep interactions within their platform for security and data control reasons. The speaker speculates on the bank's preference for an in-house solution over integrating with external messaging platforms. The paragraph also highlights the significant number of interactions Erica has had with customers and the types of requests it handles, emphasizing the cost-saving and support-reduction benefits for Bank of America.

🌟 The Ongoing Evolution of Chatbots

The final paragraph wraps up the discussion by reiterating the early stages of chatbot development and the potential for future growth. It emphasizes the importance of solving current issues and improving user experience to increase the adoption rate of chatbots. The speaker expresses excitement about the future of chatbots, suggesting that they are here to stay and will become an integral part of customer service and business operations.

Keywords

💡Forrester

Forrester is a research and advisory firm that specializes in providing insights into emerging technologies and trends. In the video, Forrester is mentioned as the source of research that indicates the growing adoption of chatbots by companies. The video references a CNBC interview with David Traug, a VP from Forrester, highlighting the firm's role in shaping the conversation around chatbots and their future.

💡Chatbots

Chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users. They are increasingly being integrated into various platforms to offer customer service, assistance, and information. The video discusses the prevalence of chatbots, their adoption by more than two-thirds of US companies, and their potential to transform customer interactions.

💡ROI (Return on Investment)

ROI refers to the net gain from an investment after deducting the cost of that investment. In the context of the video, it is mentioned that the cost of building chatbots has decreased significantly, allowing for a quicker ROI. This is due to advancements in technology that have lowered the barrier to entry for businesses to implement chatbots.

💡Customer Service

Customer service is the provision of assistance to customers before, during, and after a purchase. The video emphasizes the role of chatbots in enhancing customer service by providing quick responses and assistance, thus potentially reducing the workload on human customer service agents.

💡LLMs (Large Language Models)

LLMs refer to advanced AI models that can process and generate human-like text based on input data. The script mentions LLMs as a driving force behind the reduced cost and increased accessibility of chatbot development, allowing for more natural and fluent interactions with users.

💡Quality Disparities

Quality disparities refer to the variation in the standard or quality of products or services. The video script discusses the potential for wide-ranging quality in chatbots due to the lowered barrier to entry for chatbot builders, which could lead to negative user experiences if not managed properly.

💡Internal Tool

An internal tool is a software or system used within a company to improve efficiency and productivity. The video mentions the use of chatbots as internal tools to assist employees in accessing information quickly, such as product details, which can enhance the overall service provided to customers.

💡Intent Routing

Intent routing is the process of directing a user's query to the most appropriate channel or agent based on their intent or need. The script discusses the importance of intent routing in chatbots to ensure that if a chatbot cannot resolve a user's issue, the user can be seamlessly connected to a human agent for further assistance.

💡Accountability

Accountability in the context of chatbots refers to the ability to follow up on interactions and ensure that customer issues are resolved. The video script points out that some users may find chatbots unaccountable, as they cannot easily follow up with a chatbot if there is a problem, unlike with human customer service representatives.

💡Erica

Erica is Bank of America's virtual assistant, mentioned in the video as an example of a chatbot that is well-liked by users and has been integrated into the bank's digital platform. Erica is used to handle common customer inquiries and tasks, such as finding transactions and managing subscriptions, thereby reducing the load on human customer service.

💡Generative AI

Generative AI refers to AI systems that can create new content, such as text, based on learned patterns. The video script highlights generative AI as a significant advancement in chatbot technology, allowing for more fluent and human-like interactions, although it also notes the potential for errors in these systems.

Highlights

Forrester is a research firm known for their reports and blog posts on emerging technologies.

David Troge, VP from Forrester, and Bank of America's Head of Tech were interviewed by CNBC.

More than two-thirds of US companies have invested in chatbots, according to Forrester's research.

The cost of building chatbots has significantly decreased, making it accessible for more businesses.

Early chatbots required massive investment and resources, unlike modern chatbots enabled by LLMs.

Users' satisfaction with chatbots is currently low, but improvements in technology are expected to increase this.

Chatbots can serve as internal tools for customer service teams to enhance efficiency.

Companies aim to save costs by replacing customer service agents with chatbots.

Quality and effectiveness of chatbots can vary widely depending on the builder's expertise.

Erica, Bank of America's virtual assistant, has had over 2 billion client interactions.

Erica helps with simple tasks like finding account numbers and paying bills, reducing the load on customer service teams.

Erica is part of Bank of America's broader digital strategy and not the sole customer interaction point.

67% of US companies have invested in chatbots, with some expanding their investments.

Generative AI is improving chatbot fluency but comes with risks of errors.

The adoption curve for chatbots is expected to rise as the technology improves.

Bank of America invested $12 billion in tech, including chatbots, showcasing the value seen in this technology.

Generative AI-based chatbots provide more natural interactions but need further refinement to reduce errors.

Customer service efficiency is significantly increased by chatbots like Erica handling routine inquiries.

Bank of America focuses on using chatbots to make financial management easier for clients.

There is a potential trickle-down effect as large companies showcase the benefits of chatbots, encouraging smaller businesses to adopt the technology.

The discussion highlights the initial challenges and future potential of chatbots in various business sectors.

Transcripts

All right, so this video was recently brought to my attention.

Shout out to Joe from the Chatbot Builders Facebook group.

But basically Forrester, if you don't know who Forrester is, they put on

a decent amount of research and, you know, write reports and blog posts

about emerging technologies here.

So feel free to go look at all the stuff that they've got on the Forrester website.

If you're interested, but CNBC recently interviewed David Traug, which is one

of the VPs from Forrester, as well as Bank of America's head of tech.

So I wanted to, to listen to this video with you guys and

kind of provide my thoughts here.

You can see the title bullish about the future of chatbots,

which is music to my ears.

So let's, let's take a listen here.

Welcome back to power lunch.

From online retailers to search engines to your personal banking app.

Chatbots everywhere all the time.

I like that headline.

Chatbots now seem to be everywhere offering users help.

In fact, more than two thirds of us companies have invested in chatbots

already with many interested or planning to do so in the near future.

According to research by Forrester.

But that's really, that's really telling, right.

The adoption, right.

You know, because as this technology becomes more and more available, right.

These chatbot builders have lowered the bar to entry, right.

You know, chatbots have been around for a decade plus, and, you know,

you have your big boys like Verizon and Expedia and AT& T, you know, that

built out these wham a dine customer service chatbots, you know, 10 plus

years ago, but what did it take, right.

It was a huge.

development costs, right?

Costs millions of dollars because you had all of these developers that had

to handle all of this from scratch.

You know, in each one of these employees, you got to pay a salary, you know, pay

benefits and health insurance and 401ks.

So, so the cost of building was really high, but, but they had so

much customer service because that's really the entire business, right?

For a phone company or a travel company, it's basically.

All customer service.

So even though they had to invest millions of dollars to build these

chatbots from scratch, it was worth it.

Right.

But, but now the cost of build has gone down significantly.

Thanks to these LLMs and these chatbot builders, you know, that,

that means that every business can kind of get in the game, right?

Because the ROI, you hit that really, really quick.

The same study found that users.

Actually don't like him with only a small fraction turning to chatbots for

assistance on a regular basis I think this number will go up as Chatbots continue

to get improved upon right because one of the thing that happens with this

this lower barrier of entry, right?

Any anybody and their brother can come and start building chatbots

and start to sell them, right?

So you're going to get a wide disparity On quality, which is going to result in

some negative user interactions, for sure.

Joining us now is David Troge, Vice President and Principal Analyst

at Forrester, who conducted the research, and Nikki Katz is Head

of Digital at Bank of America.

She's in charge of development of its virtual assistant, Erica.

Get it?

Bank of America?

That's actually what it is.

Well liked, allegedly, by users.

David, uh, uh, I I wonder I wonder if we can take a look at Erica.

This depends, doesn't it?

Like, whether a chatbot is good or not, who has to interact with a chatbot?

It seems like a lot lately, it's actually a customer service person,

either in store Or in a call center who's getting smarter off of a chat bot

and the customer never has to interact with them, but sometimes customers do.

What's the, so basically what he is saying here is using the

chat bot as an internal tool.

Right Whi, which I just built one of these for a company, which it's okay, Connor.

I've got a thousand products and I have a post-sales team that's gotta get

on the phone and they gotta call and they gotta talk about these products.

But the, the, they don't have access to the informa, it's not like really

efficient for them to, to pull up a part number and they gotta do search

through large amounts of documents.

Can we build a chat bot tool that they can just kind of talk to and

ping and get information quickly?

Oh, here's a diagram.

of, you know, this particular, you know, product line.

So, so using this as an internal tool to increase efficiency

is, is really powerful.

I think instead of, you know, it's not even just necessarily

like replace your entire customer service team with a chat bot.

It's let's give a tool that empowers our customer service team

to, to get to that answer, you know, in a much quicker timeline.

So I definitely think this is a great idea for businesses.

Difference in outcomes there.

You're right.

Those are two different ways of doing it.

Either the customer service agent using the bot or an actual end

customer using the bot directly.

Uh, it tends to be a little safer if it's an agent using the bot because they

can kind of You know, run interference and if the bot goes stupid or gives a

bad response, like the customer service agent will at least have some baseline

knowledge that way it doesn't, you know, completely go out in left field or, you

know, can attempt to query the chat bot again, um, without a frustrating user

experience from the person directly.

Interacting with it.

If the bot goes in the wrong direction, uh, they can, uh, mitigate that

and speak to the user in terms that the user understands on the other

hand, what companies want to do is save money by taking the agent out

of the picture and have customers interact directly with bots.

And if you can do that successfully.

This is interesting here.

So we've got 67 percent of us companies have invested in chatbots, mostly

deployed to cut costs, but I, what this says is, but address customer needs.

Right.

And.

I think this really ties back into quality, right?

With these first round of chatbots and these first kinds of initial investments,

uh, off the back of these platforms that they don't handle things very well.

And some of the functionality that I'm looking for is that dynamic

kind of back and forth, which a lot of the linear flow builders.

You know, you, you can kind of get lost in some of these mid steps.

The person on the other end is not being serviced in the way that they want to.

So this falls a lot of times.

on the builder and not putting out quality stuff or You know attempting

to solve a problem that you know these llms while they're great at intent

capture You know, they're they're not magic wands by any stretch, but but I

expect You know this to change Shortly because the tech is just getting better.

These chatbots are just getting better at the end of the day Met a bot that I like.

Now, I am a Bank of America customer.

I will say I've seen, you know, Erica, the little thing, Papa, never

used it, but it always feels to me, not so much that it's not going to

be helpful, but it's unaccountable.

I can't follow up.

with a chat bot if there's some kind of problem.

And that's what really annoys me is I want companies to be

in with me for the long haul.

And you'll see this as a, as a common request, right?

Which what, what happens?

And I just, I'm, I'm building a project out for a client right now.

Okay.

And it's okay.

This is a customer service bot.

What happens if it gets stuck or doesn't have the answer and stuff like that?

And that's, you know, an intent redirect.

You've got your, some of these chat bots that have.

You know, the live handoff integration, which we're going to ping somebody

on your customer service team to jump in this conversation and, you

know, kind of save it or routing to some sort of, you know, contact us.

Okay.

You used to just email us straight up, but now we've put this chat

bot as kind of like an interference layer to answer some of these layer

one straightforward questions.

But if you need more help, Here's how to contact us and that's

intent routing in the bot, right?

That's, you know, adding that functionality in.

Paul, if this problem doesn't go away with the first fix.

So how do you address that?

Yeah, I think John, the way we think about it is that Erica is just one piece

of our high tech, high touch strategy.

It's not meant to be your end all be all.

What we're trying to do is when you do need help with your finance.

It's an assistive tool, right?

It's not just, we're going to.

Take every single conversation that bank of America needs to

house and throw it in a chat bot.

That's not the point of this, right?

We want to make it really easy.

You can go in.

Customers are asking Erica really easy questions at times, like what's my

account number or help me pay a bill.

At other times, Erica is coming to our customers proactively and giving them in.

Holy moly.

42 million client.

That's good.

This is from April.

So this is filmed in July.

So we're talking in a span of maybe three months, two billion interactions.

So really, it's about making the client's lives easier.

And for us, it's really growing out.

We have over 2 billion client interactions with Erica since we launched and 42

million of our customers are using Erica.

And I think the thing that, um, when you imagine the amount of data

they're collecting off of 2 billion client interactions and conversations,

I mean, that's absolutely wild.

This is awesome to see.

Think about Erica as part of a continuum.

What's important is if you can't get your answer right there exactly to your

point around accountability, we want to make it really easy to get your help.

So Erica can help actually authenticate our clients and get

them to either a live chat agent or to the right associate via phone.

So making it quicker to channel them to the help that they need.

David, are chatbots the past or the future?

Think about it.

When you call, let's say you call the help desk for like Bank of

America or a large bank, right?

What are you going to do?

You're going to get the automated voicemail.

You know, press 1 for Spanish.

Press two for English, press three to look up your account.

No, like you've got to go through all of these layers to

try to get to the right person.

The chat bot can just boom.

What is your problem?

Okay.

Here's the answer.

Was that helpful?

No.

Now go to this person based off what you've asked me.

It's just, it's, it's just better.

It's a better experience, which is why a company like bank of America wants

to invest in something like this.

How is AI going to alter the experience?

Make it far more widespread, make it better to John's point.

They can remember our previous interactions or

make them obsolete somehow.

Well, a lot of the chat bots out there today that have been rolling out over the

past 10 years do have some AI in them.

The big change right now is that generative AI is making the headlines,

of course, um, and is much, much more fluent in terms of, uh, You

know, interacting with people in language that really makes a lot

more sense than traditional chatbots.

Um, the problem is that they sometimes make errors, these

generative AI based chatbots.

So, this is big, like looking at this pie chart here, implementing, but

no further investments, implemented and expanding investments, 20%.

of U.

S.

companies.

And this is from November of 23.

I'd be surprised if these numbers weren't higher in the, in the percentages here.

I mean, we've got not interested at 17 percent, interested but not

investing, and then don't know.

So you've got about a quarter of companies that are kind of sitting on

the, maybe almost 30 percent, let's just call it a third, that are just

kind of sitting back and waiting.

But that's still, I mean, you talk about two thirds of all companies that are.

experimenting, piloting, implementing, and investing.

The, the adoption curve, we might not be waiting very

long, chatbot builders, right?

And this to me just screams, uh, we're valuable to the marketplace, right?

Regardless of, of where this is headed, these businesses are now ready.

To try and attempt to implement these solutions.

And this is where us as chatbot builders can sit here and build out MVPs.

And, Hey, we want to try to integrate this with a particular business flow.

Hey, I want to try to solve this problem in my business.

Can you help me build this first iteration to see if it's worth investing

more time, effort, and money and energy into building on a product?

This is great.

This is great data.

Uh, we're really at an inflection point where companies are experimenting with

including generative AI in their bots, but it's a risky thing to be doing right

now, but it's absolutely the future.

Uh, you know, we're very bullish about the future.

It just depends on what the interaction is, right?

And the risk point, right?

And, and I'll even throw out like a particular, example, like

an e commerce chatbot, right?

E commerce, the entire revenue of the business is dependent

on the website, right?

And if you throw a chatbot in there with some potential hallucinations

or wrong, you know, products, or it's not built well, the risk to

an e commerce client integrating a chatbot is really, really high, right?

Because if they start messing with the money pot.

You know, that's going to have some really, really negative

ramifications to the business.

But if you're throwing out, let me reduce some customer service, you

know, uh, questions or stuff like that, the risk is much lower, right?

Because your primary service or product is somewhere else chatbot conversation.

So it really just depends on the use case, what this particular risk is.

Chatbots, but we're really at the beginning right now.

Uh, a lot of people are, you hear it, my man, David, we're at the beginning for all

of you that are like, Oh, I don't know if I want to do this or, you know, it seems

to be everybody's building chatbots or like we're dissatisfied with chatbots.

A lot of users, I mean, and it's understandable because a lot of

them are not that great, but we're really just at the first or second

floor of, you know, a hundred story.

Uh, skyscraper and generally I is eventually going to make

that much, much skyscraper.

David just said it.

Chatbots going to the moon.

I like this guy better, but there are risks right now with general via Nikki.

I wonder how you see efforts from the likes of meta.

They've got facebook messenger and whatsapp.

Apple's got I message.

Increasingly, they're trying to get these more general messengers.

Into the stream for businesses, small businesses and large

businesses to have that kind of chat bot interaction with customers.

Is that something that you don't want to do because you want to

really own the customer experience and the data associated with it?

Or do you see it as a way?

I got a feeling I know what Uh, Old Nicky's response is going to be right.

Bank of America is obviously going to keep everything inside

of Bank of America, right?

They have no interest in talking to you through a messaging platform, right?

Because they, they want to keep everything in house in their day.

It's just a, it's an extra lift for them to try to integrate

with those other service.

Maybe at a base level, they would attempt to funnel you back to Bank

of America's site to talk to Erica.

But, but, uh, Think about it from a small business perspective.

You don't really care that much, right?

You just want to have that conversation with where your users are.

So if they're already on Facebook or WhatsApp or whatnot, why not

reach out to them and hit them?

But Bank of America, Has a lot of proprietary data and a lot of security.

And you're talking about banking information and stuff like that.

And why would they introduce another potential headache for themselves?

So I got a feeling she's going to say, yep, we're going

to keep all this in house.

To potentially expand your customer base.

In terms of the, the way that our customers interact with Erica today,

you know, it's, Erica is part of our overall digital platform and like I

said, part of the overall servicing continuum and that's where we're focused.

And I think also in terms of the general nature of the equation,

you know, we are very specific.

Our goal with Erica is to help our clients make their financial lives better.

And so as long as we stick to those rails and those guard guardrails, uh,

essentially we're able to be very.

Oh, look at these numbers.

Okay, 1.

7 million requests for account routing number search.

Finding transactions, 1.

5 million.

Money transfers and bill pay, 900, 000.

Managing recurring subscriptions, 2.

6 million.

Wow, so this is great data from You know, all of the conversations that

these, what are these, two billion interactions with, with Erica.

This is awesome to see.

And think about how much of a support

reduction it is for their customer service team to have Erica just handle

all of these really, really common things for Bank of America's business, right?

Because if Erica was not there, if they did not invest the time and money and

effort into building Erica, each one of these things would have had to be

handled, you know, from a customer, Support perspective is huge, specific

about the kind of answers that Erica is able to provide and really take the time

to focus on using advanced technology to understand what clients are asking

about and map them to specific answers.

And again, I gave the examples of, you know, inquiries around,

uh, routing numbers, et cetera, uh, recurring subscriptions.

That's where our focus is.

So this 12 billion in Bank of America's tech investments and new

initiatives in this year, just 3.

8 billion.

So obviously Bank of America is pulling out some, some, some big cash

here and investing in these, this particular tech, which is awesome to

see because there's, there's going to be a trickle down effect, right?

Because if, you know, Bank of America can showcase these numbers and, and

what, what their spend is allowing, you know, it to do from a, from a cost

reduction perspective, there'll be a trickle down effect to other businesses

that are looking to do something similar.

Now, obviously, where is that 3.

5 billion or 12 billion being allocated?

It's not going into the chat bot, right?

That's a, that's a lot of money.

And I'm sure that You know, Bank of America's solution is much more advanced

and custom and built from scratch compared to say us going through a chatbot builder

or voice flow or bot press, right?

Like we're using these platforms, you know, to, to, to kind of

expand our functionality as well.

And also, uh, a speed boost for us, but, but Bank of America, they

don't need to, to play with us.

Focus is okay.

Sounds like B of A is in an exclusive chat bot relationship with Erica.

Nikki.

Thank you.

David shrug.

Thank you as well.

Well, that's cool.

That's interesting.

That's I'm glad that, um, you know, John sent that out to me.

Turning now to more news on the pharmacy.

Ben.

Sorry.

What do we got?

Um, can we look at Erica, Erica bank?

Oh, I already clicked on this.

Okay.

Erica.

Looks like I've got a down, I probably have to be a Bank of America customer

in order to interact with Erica, but you kind of can see here, you know, this

is a request that she mentioned that, you know, had millions of interactions.

We got replacement card and then, you know, you're kind of typical here.

We got some buttons here.

Uh, scrolling down, let me make myself smaller.

Yeah, this, this is all, you know, stuff that, that makes sense from a, from a

banking perspective, just kind of in an, an app chatbot experience with Erica.

So this is really cool to see.

And um, this was a, it was a good video and I, I agree with Forrester and, and

David's You know, thoughts on this.

This is just the beginning because we're going to continue to build out

functionality and solutions and kind of all of these fringe use case, all these

fringe cases of people running into issues and getting frustrated, we're

going to solve it and the percentages are just going to go up on them.

Users preferring this experience because it gives them direct

responses and answers and you don't have to scroll down to the bottom

of the website and click contact us.

And, you know, I'm not sure, you know, how do I get this problem solved?

I put it in a forum and stuff like that.

These chatbots they're here to stay.

The arrow is pointing up chatbot stocks to the moon.

Let's get it.

Happy building out there, chatbot builders.

Talk to you soon.

Thanks.