{"id":13157,"date":"2016-11-20T14:00:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T14:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=13157"},"modified":"2016-11-20T14:00:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T14:00:09","slug":"emirates-nbd-announces-voice-based-and-chatbot-virtual-assistant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2016\/11\/20\/emirates-nbd-announces-voice-based-and-chatbot-virtual-assistant\/","title":{"rendered":"Emirates NBD announces voice-based and chatbot virtual assistant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Emirates NBD has announced that it will soon debut \u2018<em>EVA<\/em>\u2019, an\u00a0intelligent voice-based and chatbot Virtual Assistant for banking in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).<\/p>\n<p><em>Emirates NBD Future Lab<\/em>, a key initiative of the bank\u2019s digital strategy, is currently piloting EVA\u2019s voice capabilities via a select customer user group for calls to its customer service centre. The beta version includes chatbot capabilities via the bank\u2019s Facebook messenger, soon to be extended to its popular mobile banking application. The pilot enables the user group to interact and receive assistance from EVA using natural or conversational English, offering a more intuitive and personalised customer experience, based on artificial intelligence algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEVA will soon be an exciting new addition to our customer service toolkit, acting as an intelligent virtual assistant to help customers with their banking needs,\u201d said Suvo Sarkar, Senior EVP &amp; Group Head \u2013 Retail Banking &amp; Wealth Management at Emirates NBD. \u201cLeveraging cutting-edge technology, EVA will usher a new era of instant customer service via a human-like conversational interface. Activating EVA is a part of our over-arching customer-first philosophy to make banking simpler and more convenient through digital innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to recent reports by Statista, 43% of mobile voice search users do so because it is quicker than going on a website or using an app. <em>Emirates NBD Future Lab<\/em> is testing implementation of EVA as part of the bank\u2019s AED 500 million commitment to digital innovation and multichannel transformation to increase customer loyalty. As virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, Amazon Echo and others play an increasingly important part of our daily lives, Emirates NBD plans to continue to invest in evolving EVA\u2019s functionalities to become more engaging and intuitive.<\/p>\n<p>Commenting on the bank\u2019s plans for EVA, Pedro Cardoso, Head of Multichannel and CRM at Emirates NBD said, \u201cEmirates NBD has always been a step ahead in anticipating customer\u2019s needs and offering simpler banking solutions by leveraging digital innovation. \u00a0We recognise that customers today need quicker access to service and EVA\u2019s intelligent voice and text with natural language recognition capabilities will help us provide a level of engagement never seen before by the region\u2019s banking customers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the first phase of the pilot, EVA will understand the customer\u2019s request and route directly to the appropriate menu solution both via voice and chat, allowing self-service where possible, or routing to a customer service agent to resolve the query. In the near future, EVA\u2122 will transform the traditional way customers interact with the bank, by offering a true omnichannel experience allowing customers to start a conversation over chatbot and continue via voice across multiple devices, making it much easier and more convenient.    \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emirates NBD has announced that it will soon debut \u2018EVA\u2019, an\u00a0intelligent voice-based and chatbot Virtual Assistant for banking in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Emirates NBD Future Lab, a key initiative of the bank\u2019s digital strategy, is currently piloting EVA\u2019s voice capabilities via a select customer user group for calls to its customer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":13170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1741,809,16,332,185],"tags":[598,946,285,76,1279,184],"class_list":["post-13157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking-finance","category-more-news","category-regional-news","category-software","category-uae","tag-banking-finance","tag-emirates-nbd","tag-mobile","tag-mobility","tag-software-for-business","tag-uae"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}