VTB automated 80% of customer requests on the VTB Business Platform

2024: Closing 80% of customer calls with chatbot

More than 80% of customer requests in the VTB digital ecosystem for business close a chatbot without the participation of a specialist. Over the past year, this figure has increased by 7 percentage points. The average time to communicate with a virtual assistant takes up to 5 minutes, and 9 of 10 issues are resolved at the first time. The bank announced this on May 6, 2024.

The Virtual Assistant service processes an average of about 40 thousand chats with users of the VTB Business Platform every month. It helps with both typical technical issues and offers products and services for solving business problems. Can choose a favorable loan and deposit or a suitable non-financial service. The bot is capable of executing customer orders, including for complex financial transactions. Can make a payment in currency, provide supporting documents for currency control or put an accounting contract. The virtual assistant can also be informed of a scam call to pass the information to the security service and receive instructions on how to proceed.

The average communication time of an entrepreneur with a bot on the VTB Business Platform is about five minutes, and 90% of issues are resolved by him at the first time. VTB is constantly expanding the capabilities and scenarios of the chatbot − in two years since its launch, it has learned to provide more than a thousand different answers and has become more aware of user requests. Developed on the basis of artificial intelligence, the virtual assistant recognizes the tone of messages and adjusts to the client. If the question of interest to the entrepreneur remains relevant, the operator will connect to the conversation within 1-3 seconds.

We strive to reduce the number of actions of the client with his daily operations as much as possible. With a chatbot, entrepreneurs do not spend time on calls or long correspondence with the operator, do not distract from their tasks and receive all answers with solutions in real time. The efficiency of the development of this service channel is evidenced by both the increase in the share of successfully resolved requests in it and the Business Platform user satisfaction index - over the past two years it has increased 1.5 times, − said Spartak Solonin, head of the corporate digital business department − senior vice president of VTB.

2020

Connecting Robots for Customer Case Payments

On August 18, 2020, VTB announced that it was continuing a pilot project to use robots when working with customer requests. Now they not only make decisions on applications, but also make payments on their own. Thanks to this functionality, every VTB client whose question is fully considered by the robot will be able to receive money on the day of appeal if a positive decision is made on his application.

Previously, only VTB employees made payments on clients' appeals, which the robot considered. On average, taking into account weekends and holidays, every third client received a payment on such requests on the day of registration of his application. To reduce the time and exclude the human factor from the process, robots received an upgrade of authority and began to fulfill the decisions they made, the bank said.

In less than one day, robots provide a full review and payout cycle. On their own, they can only make positive decisions on customer requests, in other cases, employees conduct additional analysis. According to VTB estimates, the updated functionality of robots for such requests will increase from 30 to 100% the share of customers who receive payment on the day of appeal.

Even before starting work with the appeal, the robot unloads information, extracts, documents that the employee needs to conduct an investigation and make a decision from source systems. They analyze the available data for their compliance with the prescribed scenarios and, if such compliance is identified, offer the employee a final decision for confirmation or make it on their own.

"We started using robots to deal with customer calls last year. At the first stage, robots could only close some stages of working with applications. Now we can say that in terms of appeals, they have replaced people and provide a full cycle of consideration on their own from beginning to end. As of August 18, robots process from 15 to 20% of all financial appeals of VTB clients, "said Olga Mamedova, head of the department for work with VTB clients.

Implementing Robots into Customer Operations Maintenance Processes

On July 17, 2020, VTB announced the start of a project to create and implement robots in the processes of supporting client operations. Employees themselves will choose which processes can and should be robotized, and then introduce digital assistants into the work. Robots will reduce the share of routine operations, including document processing and data entry, reduce the cost of processes of the corresponding stages by 3-4 times and speed them up.

The introduction of the robot will take about two to three months, by 2021 it is planned to put into operation 60 digital employees, by the end of 2022 - 250.

As a result of the project, department employees will receive the knowledge, methodology and technological environment necessary for the rapid development and implementation of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) robots. As of July 2020, more than 15 employees of the department are trained.

In the future, with the help of this technology of automation of business processes, technologies of optical character recognition and machine learning, it will be possible to robotize more complex stages, for example, reading, understanding and subsequent processing of documents.

{{quote 'Robotization is an important part of VTB's digital transformation strategy. Ultimately, all our projects are aimed at improving the quality of services for customers. The robot factory in the operating function will increase the speed of processes, including, for example, working with credit applications. We will also identify suboptimal processes, improve them, optimize costs and reduce the level of operational risks, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Board. }}

Implementation of a robot for processing and checking data on applications for preferential loans

VTB on July 10, 2020 announced the introduction of a robot for processing and checking data on applications for preferential loans at 2% per annum for small and medium-sized businesses as part of the state support for employment program. The robot made it possible to reduce the processing time of applications by almost five times.

The issuance of preferential loans for the purpose of business recovery is one of the measures of the Russian government to support enterprises in the affected industries during the pandemic. The process of issuing a loan, among other things, involves checking the client's data in the register of the Federal Tax Service. Such a check is carried out using the FTS blockchain platform, to which VTB joined one of the first banks.

Robots take a loan application from the bank's internal system, enter it into the service of the Federal Tax Service to check the client's data on the presence of loan applications in other banks, the size of the organization, etc. After that, the robot returns information from the Federal Tax Service to the internal system of the bank to make a decision on the loan. All this work takes only 40 seconds.

As part of VTB's digital transformation strategy, VTB robots routine operations that are carried out by employees of the Business Operations Support Department. The introduction of this robot in a short time - in three weeks - made it possible to significantly reduce the time for processing applications for loans within the framework of state support, reduce operational risks and remove the routine burden of checking customer data in the Federal Tax Service from almost 3 thousand bank employees. The robot processes from 500 to 1,500 applications per day, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President-Chairman of the VTB Board.

Of the state support measures, the lending program at 2% per annum for the restoration of activities for July 2020 is the most in demand. As of July 10, 2020, we approved 12.7 thousand applications of small and medium-sized businesses for more than 66 billion rubles, of which 9.8 thousand agreements for 48 billion rubles have already been signed. With such high demand, it is extremely important for the bank to quickly process incoming applications. The robot allows you to speed up this process. This directly affects the implementation of the program - the bank will be able to support even more enterprises affected by the pandemic, - said Denis Bortnikov, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Board .