Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is delving into the world of generative AI (GenAI) chatbots to enhance customer experiences and accelerate product development. Dan Jermyn, CBA's Chief Decision Scientist, revealed the bank's pioneering experiment at the South by Southwest Sydney 2023 event.
GenAI empowers machines to process, interpret, and create new outputs based on patterns. CBA is leveraging this technology to create synthetic customer personas using GenAI chatbots. These digital entities serve as an early experimentation tool, simulating customer behavior in a controlled environment.
CBA aims to gain qualitative and quantitative insights into how customers react to various situations, from changing circumstances to financial challenges and new products. Importantly, CBA is not replacing human input or traditional customer research; GenAI is intended to supplement and enhance the understanding of customer behavior, facilitating the more efficient introduction of improved products and services.
The experimentation goes beyond routine scenarios; CBA is exploring how GenAI can simulate customer behavior during challenging events, such as natural disasters, to tailor products and services to provide better support during crises. Additionally, GenAI can be used to create more effective messaging for customers in vulnerable situations, like potential scams or bereavement.
CBA's AI and behavioral science teams are collaborating to replicate global behavioral insights within the Australian context using GenAI. They are creating customer personas to replicate human concerns, questions, and issue identification. These AI-generated personas serve as a means to rapidly test new ideas, safely experiment, and gain a nuanced understanding of customer behavior in response to novel products and messaging.
While it is still in its early stages, CBA's exploration of GenAI offers exciting potential for revolutionizing how they develop and deliver products and services to their customers. The bank is enthusiastic about the prospects GenAI presents for improving customer outcomes through innovative experimentation and analysis.
