Bank of America Equips Customer Service Reps With Gen AI

Bank of America has added new generative artificial intelligence capabilities to EricaAssist, an AI agent that works alongside the bank’s customer service representatives during calls.

The new AI capabilities enable EricaAssist to deliver relevant insights in under three seconds, without interrupting the flow of the conversation, and help customer service representatives provide clients with more personalized service in real time, Bank of America said in a Tuesday (July 21) press release.

EricaAssist is used by more than 18,000 customer service representatives. It reduces average call times by nearly one minute, according to the release.

Because it surfaces relevant guidance in real time, it enables employees to focus on talking with clients, per the release.

“EricaAssist reflects our high-tech, high-touch approach,” Ashley Ross, head of consumer client experience and business transformation at Bank of America, said in the release. “By combining human judgment with real-time AI guidance, we’re helping employees navigate complex topics more easily and serve clients more effectively in the moments that matter most.”

Tom Ellis, chief information officer and head of consumer technology at Bank of America, said in the release: “This technology helps our teammates deliver relevant insights in seconds, while operating with strong governance, transparency and accountability.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race” found that financial services and insurance firms are going all in on AI, with the most adopted use cases being structured, auditable back-office functions such as revenue recognition, credit risk assessment and sales forecasting.

“Financial services firms appear to have chosen to deploy AI when outcomes are certain and the consequences of error are manageable,” the report said. “The tools for customer growth (retention, acquisition, experimentation and personalization) remain comparatively underdeveloped.”

In another, separate rollout of AI tools, Bank of America’s wealth management businesses, Merrill Wealth Management and Bank of America Private Bank, said in March that they had begun using AI-Powered Meeting Journey, a workflow tool that handles preparation, note-taking and follow-up for financial advisers.

In August, Bank of America said that Erica, the bank’s AI-driven virtual financial assistant that helps clients, was averaging more than 58 million client interactions per month and had surpassed 3 billion interactions since its launch in 2018.