Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) yesterday revealed “Alpha,” a customer service chatbot using artificial intelligence (AI) that it hopes will free up service agents to handle more complicated issues.
Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) and Cathay United Bank Co (國泰世華銀行) in September began a trial of the chatbot on their Web sites and Line community groups, which have respectively helped an average of 3,000 and 10,000 users every day.
Cathay Financial said it has invested about NT$10 million (US$325,680) to improve Alpha’s understanding of natural language.
If a customer types “I want to pay my credit card bill,” other chatbots can only focus on “payment” or “credit card” to provide related information, but this cannot help consumers pay their bill, project manager Howard Wu (吳明陽) told a media briefing in Taipei.
However, Alpha could understand that the customer means to pay the bill now, and after their identity is authenticated, it would ask them if they want to transfer money online or apply for an installment plan, Wu said.
If the customer wants to pay their bill at a convenience store, the chatbot would show nearby stores on a map, Wu added.
The insurance firm has four staff responsible for labeling words such as “policies” or “loan” in conversations, helping Alpha better understand human language, Cathay Life Insurance executive vice president Winnie Fan (范千惠) said.
The chatbot can sometimes answer a question that it could not understand three days ago, Fan said, adding that JD.com Inc (京東) has more labelers to improve the efficiency of its chatbot.
“There is still limit to Alpha’s understanding and knowledge, and human agents will take over when Alpha determines that the question is out of its league,” Wu said.
Cathay Financial said that 91.4 percent of users felt satisfied with Alpha’s service, while 92.6 percent are content with human agents.
The conglomerate said that the chatbot is meant to help human agents rather than replace them.
“Right now, we do not plan to cut staffers who handle customer service and will not do so in the future. Human customer service can focus on more complicated complaints or more difficult problems, while Alpha saves their time on routine questions,” Fan said.
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