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Chatbots in customer service within banking and finance: do chatbots herald the start of an AI revolution in the corporate world?

Chatbots in customer service within banking and finance: do chatbots herald the start of an AI revolution in the corporate world?
Chatbots in customer service within banking and finance: do chatbots herald the start of an AI revolution in the corporate world?

The main aim of this paper is to identify whether chatbots are useful for customer service, how they are impacting customer service in banking, and how professionals feel about the future impact of chatbots. Employing a largely qualitative approach, the study found that chatbots are a useful tool for customer service automation, with significant potential for providing good quality service. In general, sentiments towards chatbots were positive for simple tasks, with users and experts citing convenience, 24/7 availability, and speed as primary factors driving customer satisfaction levels. However, the limitations of chatbots in answer accuracy and reliability mean that they still require significant learning and development to be a sufficient solution for complex customer service problems. Chatbots are significantly limited in their capabilities and ability to parse customer queries. Therefore, they cannot be expected to handle all customer queries without some assistance from a human. On the other hand, chatbots have huge potential for learning, and artificial intelligence as a field presents a largely untapped universe of opportunity. This study thus highlights how chatbots are currently being used and how they are likely to be used in the future. Based on these findings, we develop an experimental framework that explains how to assess chatbots for dynamic customer service capabilities.

Artificial intelligence, Banking & finance, Chatbots, Convenience, Customer satisfaction, Dynamic capabilities, Learning & development, Value creation
0747-5632
Graham, Gary
1d9a3227-c168-46d8-b811-f60021686ef9
Nisar, Tahir M.
6b1513b5-23d1-4151-8dd2-9f6eaa6ea3a6
Prabhakar, Guru
5b50483d-63f8-4891-beb0-3fd73a98a033
Meriton, Royston
4f519dc9-1787-4004-b016-083c29e7ff8d
Malik, Sadir
6e915630-b654-42c2-ac8f-da68707413c4
Graham, Gary
1d9a3227-c168-46d8-b811-f60021686ef9
Nisar, Tahir M.
6b1513b5-23d1-4151-8dd2-9f6eaa6ea3a6
Prabhakar, Guru
5b50483d-63f8-4891-beb0-3fd73a98a033
Meriton, Royston
4f519dc9-1787-4004-b016-083c29e7ff8d
Malik, Sadir
6e915630-b654-42c2-ac8f-da68707413c4

Graham, Gary, Nisar, Tahir M., Prabhakar, Guru, Meriton, Royston and Malik, Sadir (2025) Chatbots in customer service within banking and finance: do chatbots herald the start of an AI revolution in the corporate world? Computers in Human Behavior, 165, [108570]. (doi:10.1016/j.chb.2025.108570).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to identify whether chatbots are useful for customer service, how they are impacting customer service in banking, and how professionals feel about the future impact of chatbots. Employing a largely qualitative approach, the study found that chatbots are a useful tool for customer service automation, with significant potential for providing good quality service. In general, sentiments towards chatbots were positive for simple tasks, with users and experts citing convenience, 24/7 availability, and speed as primary factors driving customer satisfaction levels. However, the limitations of chatbots in answer accuracy and reliability mean that they still require significant learning and development to be a sufficient solution for complex customer service problems. Chatbots are significantly limited in their capabilities and ability to parse customer queries. Therefore, they cannot be expected to handle all customer queries without some assistance from a human. On the other hand, chatbots have huge potential for learning, and artificial intelligence as a field presents a largely untapped universe of opportunity. This study thus highlights how chatbots are currently being used and how they are likely to be used in the future. Based on these findings, we develop an experimental framework that explains how to assess chatbots for dynamic customer service capabilities.

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Accepted/In Press date: 21 December 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 23 January 2025
Published date: 28 January 2025
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Banking & finance, Chatbots, Convenience, Customer satisfaction, Dynamic capabilities, Learning & development, Value creation

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 500043
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/500043
ISSN: 0747-5632
PURE UUID: 7b67a8a4-ad6d-4e4d-81e5-e27897ff9025
ORCID for Tahir M. Nisar: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2240-5327

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Date deposited: 14 Apr 2025 16:33
Last modified: 22 Aug 2025 01:48

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Contributors

Author: Gary Graham
Author: Tahir M. Nisar ORCID iD
Author: Guru Prabhakar
Author: Royston Meriton
Author: Sadir Malik

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