Podcasts
Finance in Focus: Creating conversational commerce in banking

Overview
Have you heard about conversational commerce, the next big thing happening to the interfaces of your favorite apps? Modern app interfaces are becoming increasingly conversational and intuitive, using context to help predict behavior and proactively take users to where they need to be. Indeed, such developments are spurring much activity in the financial technology sector, particularly around advances in voice recognition. Capital One, for example, is integrating with Amazon Echo, and Ally Bank is offering voice recognition with Ally Assist. Banks, meanwhile, are working on voice-based biometric authentication.
Join Jeffrey Chan and Chris Skinner in taking a look at different types of apps, with a particular focus on using Facebook Messenger to offer customer service—as Toronto–Dominion (TD) Bank Group did starting in December 2015. In this episode, we explore some key questions with Jeffrey Chan, the innovator who helped make the launch possible:
- What was the motivation for delivering this application, and how is it going?
- Were any interesting lessons learned?
- How has this approach been received by customers?
- Are adoption levels high?
- Are there any concerns so far? Do you have any thoughts on automating responses rather than having humans reply?
This podcast is moderated by Matt Kinney, an offering manager for banking industry and analytics solutions, at IBM, and includes the following industry experts:
- Chris Skinner, CEO, The Finanser, Ltd., and chairman, The Financial Service Club. Chris has written a number of books, including ValueWeb: How Fintech Firms Are Using Bitcoin Blockchain and Mobile Technologies to Create the Internet of Value (Marshall Cavendish International, 2016) and Digital Bank: Strategies to Launch or Become a Digital Bank (Marshall Cavendish International, 2014).
- Jeffrey Chan, manager of marketing innovations, TD Bank Group. Jeffrey is a digital marketing professional who draws on more than a decade of combined experience in ecommerce, online communities and financial services.