- Clients engage with the company’s virtual assistant 2 million times per day for help with everyday financial needs, and the occasional joke
April 10, 2024
By Highpoint Digest News
Charlotte, NC – (Highpoint Digest) – More than 2 billion since 2018. That’s how many interactions Bank of America clients have had with Erica®, the most advanced and first widely available virtual financial assistant since it launched. It took four years to reach 1 billion interactions, since client engagement surged, reaching a second billion just 18 months later.
“Erica acts as both a personal concierge and mission control for our clients,” said Nikki Katz, Head of Digital at Bank of America. “Erica meets clients where they are and when they need us, and has become a true guide by their side.”
Over the last six years, Erica’s capabilities have expanded to support individual and corporate clients across the enterprise, including within Merrill, Benefits OnLine®, and the award-winning CashPro® platform.
“Erica is a great example of applied innovation in language processing and predictive analytics to deliver a valuable and empowering client experience,” shared Hari Gopalkrishnan, CIO and Consumer, Business & Wealth Management Technology executive at Bank of America.
To date, Erica has responded to 800 million inquiries from over 42 million clients and provided personalized insights and guidance over 1.2 billion times. For example:.
- Out of more than 30 proactive insights Erica provides to clients, the top insights include:
- Monitoring and managing recurring subscriptions – 2.6 million per month
- Helping clients understand spending behaviors – 2.2 million per month
- Keeping clients informed about deposits and refunds – 2.1 million per month
- When clients ask Erica for assistance, common inquiries include:
- Requesting an account number or routing number – 1.7 million per month
- Finding transactions – 1.5 million per month
- Assistance with money transfers and bill pay – 900,000 per month
- More than 98% of clients get the answers they need from Erica within 44 seconds, on average. When further assistance is needed, Bank of America’s Mobile Servicing Chat capability connects clients with a live representative who can answer more complex servicing questions.
Just like the 213,000 teammates at Bank of America, fostering a personal relationship with clients is a priority for Erica. For example:
- Erica has sent birthday wishes to over 7,000 clients since launch.
- Erica also has a sense of humor, sharing more than 30 jokes with clients 49,000 times to date. For instance, “What did the duck say to the bartender? Put it on my bill.”
- In February 2024, Erica helped clients get the most out of their next coffee date by alerting them to the new partnership between Bank of America and Starbucks.
“Our data science team has made more than 50,000 updates to Erica’s performance since launch – adjusting, expanding and fine-tuning natural language understanding capabilities, ensuring answers and insights remain timely and relevant,” said Katz. “2 billion client interactions is a compelling milestone though this is only the beginning for Erica.”
Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world’s leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 69 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 3,800 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 57 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BAC).
