Tag: Capital One

Capital One Launches ‘Eno’ SMS Chatbot For Basic Banking Tasks

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Friday, Capital One launched “Eno,” a text message-based chatbot for handling basic banking tasks such as checking account balances, managing credit card payments, and reviewing recent purchases and payment history. The bot is now available to a limited number of customers, with further roll-out planned for the coming months. According to Capital One, “Eno” is the first natural language SMS chatbot created by a U.S. bank. Last summer, Singaporean bank DBS launched a chatbot to let customers handle basic banking tasks via text.

What Brands Need To Do
This is not the first time Capital One has experimented with conversational interfaces. Previously, the McLean, Virginia-based bank announced an integration of its banking app with Alexa to allow customers to handle their banking needs via voice command. According to a report from analytics firm VoiceLabs, about 33 million voice-first devices will be in circulation by the end of 2017. Therefore, It is up to brands to figure out their brand voice and incorporate conversational tools into their services to provide a better customer experience.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: 9to5 Mac

 

Capital One Customers Can Now Bank With Alexa

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Alexa keeps getting smarter as it adds basic banking to its long list of skills today. Capital One announced at SXSW the integration of its banking app with Amazon’s voice-activated virtual assistant. The new skill allows users of Alexa-enabled devices to ask Alexa to check their account balances, review recent transactions, and even pay their bills with pre-linked accounts. All they need to do is to enable the skill in the Alexa mobile app, then link Alexa with Capital One accounts.

What Brands Need To Do
As Amazon and their developer community continue to build out Alexa’s capabilities, the Echo is becoming an increasingly business-friendly platform for brands to connect with consumers via a conversational interface. As Amazon expands the Echo family and makes push for Alexa integrations, brands will need to be proactive in getting on board with those devices via deep integrations or partnerships.

For more information on how brands can develop authentic brand voices and navigate the new rules of discovery, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

Why More Companies Should Sponsor Developer Tools Like Capital One Did

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a surprising move, Capital One bank has sponsored a developer for his work on CocoaPods, an open-source platform for managing and scaling Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. It is rare for a non-tech corporation like Capital One to sponsor a developer tool, but as technology continues to infiltrate all facets of people’s daily lives, recruiting top-tier technical talent is becoming increasingly important to non-tech-related companies. Therefore, it makes sense for Capital One to make a nice gesture towards the developer community, especially considering it is coming out with its own mobile payment app.

What Brands Need To Do
As more and more companies realize the need for app developers and engineers to help them transit towards mobile, the market for recruiting those talents has become highly competitive. Normally, top engineers choose tech companies like Facebook and Google over non-tech corporations, as they are typically solving more interesting problems there. In order to compete with the big tech companies and startups, companies in other industries should consider following Capital One’s example, and build good will in the developer community to raise their profile among the highly sought-after talent.

 

Source: CocoaPods Blog

Why Banks Are Launching Their Own Payment Apps

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The next big competitor for Apple Pay may not be Android Pay or Samsung Pay after all. Instead, It could be one of the homegrown mobile payment solutions some banks are developing. Last week, Capital One added a new mobile payment feature to its Android app, becoming the first U.S. bank to release tap-to-pay functionality in mobile app. Likewise, earlier today Chase introduced its digital wallet service named Chase Pay, which allows users to pay with a QR code within the Chase Pay app. Chase partnered with MCX, the consortium of retailers led by Walmart, to get Chase Pay accepted in MCX’s member stores, where the Chase customers will have to use Chase Pay inside the CurrentC app instead. Chase Pay is said to be aiming for a mid-2016 launch.

Market Impact
Banks have long enjoyed a stranglehold on payment solutions, either with cash or cards. They faced some challenges from digital payment solutions such as PayPal, but have remained largely unfazed in monopolizing the way people make purchases in the real world. But the recent rise of mobile payment, made viable by the proliferation of smartphones and kickstarted by the introduction of Apple Pay last year, has threatened to undercut banks’ market dominance in consumer payments. Therefore, it’s no surprise that some banks are now scrambling to come up with their own mobile payment solutions, despite their low profit margins. However, if Chase Pay’s confusing UX design, complicated by its affiliation with MCX, is any indication, the banks still have a long way to go before their products can truly compete with the likes of Apple Pay.

 

Source: Re/Code