Discover deploys generative AI in its contact center

Discover Financial Services is using generative artificial intelligence from Google to simplify the way agents research and address customer queries in its contact center.

On Tuesday, the two companies announced that the $152 billion-asset bank is deploying Google Cloud's AI development platform, Vertex AI, to summarize policies and procedures for agents so they can quickly return answers to customers while on the phone, and enable real-time search for documents using natural language. 

One major goal is to alleviate the mental load on agents so they can better focus on the customer. As digital banking has progressed, "The calls that customer service agents are getting today are the most difficult calls," Szabolcs Paldy, senior vice-president of operations at Riverwoods, Illinois-based Discover, said in an interview. "You don't call for your balance or to sign up for an offer."

Discover is one of the first financial institutions to go live with this particular use case, Google says.

"These procedures could be hundreds of pages," said Paldy. "Finding the relevant procedure in real time is a challenge."

Discover integrated generative AI capabilities into its internal agent tool, Action — something agents are already familiar with, meaning they don't need to toggle back and forth between different systems. In Discover's pilot, which started running earlier this year, the bank observed that it could take up to 70% less time for agents to locate the right information, which can be the difference between minutes and seconds.

Experts at the bank and Google Cloud trained Google's large language models with frequently asked questions that agents have posed to those with more expertise within Discover, and had humans validate a sample of answers. The two entities also used an automated acceptance testing tool to run test cases and improve the model. 

"There is a misconception that AI models will work out of the box for every use case," said Yolande Piazza, vice-president of financial services at Google Cloud, in an interview. "It's very much a collaboration between the enterprise and Google."

Discover is also experimenting with summarizing chatbot conversations for agents when the exchange between a customer and a bot transitions to a live person — and a customer may assume the agent is all caught up.

Other Vertex AI customers include Scotiabank and Deutsche Bank. Meanwhile, financial institutions of all sizes are integrating generative AI into their operations. Ally Financial has also deployed generative AI to its contact center, but to summarize calls for agents through its Ally.ai platform. KeyBank is testing the use of generative AI to help contact center reps answer questions. First Horizon is using AI to detect when call center agents are stressed out and need a break. Banks and payment companies are using generative AI for a number of other use cases, including compliance and small-business lending.