Credit where tech credit is due

 

By Ariella Brown

Credit for keeping the service in automated service 

When was the last time you were delighted by an automated process from your credit card?

Tech innovation doesn't always deliver a better customer experience, as we saw in Customers and brands are not on the same page about tech. A lot of automations that companies implement  tend to frustrate customers as they're designed for cost-cutting rather than service. 

Customers are discouraged from even attempting to speak to people at companies that  either offer only "live" chat or email for contact or who put customers through endless rounds of menus and wait times that can extend to an hour. But when a company does get it right with an automated response that saves the customer time while delivering just the outcome hoped for, the company deserves credit for doing it right.

Such is the case for Bank of America. This week I discovered that I retained a large credit on the card. That was due to my having put in the payment for the statement balance twice. I first put it on July 3 and didn't see it applied, so I put it in again on July 5. When an email let me know that my balance was a negative number, I inferred that both payments went through. 

Not wanting to keep that balance until I'd spend it down, I wanted to request a refund check. When calling in and putting in the number, the system identified the credit balance and offered the option to get a refund. This was then confirmed with an email.

That was wonderfully easy and fast.There was no additional time spent on going over the account, the mailing address, or any of the other things one has to review when calling an online seller like Amazon about an issue on a delivery. 

 When the automations are set up to offer what people really want, then they do save everyone time and aggravation. We need more of this and less of the kind of tech that is used only for the seller's immediate benefit and not for the customers.

In truth, what benefits customers benefits the business because happy customers are the ones you retain and who add the most lifetime value (LTV).

Related:
Visualizing the customer journey
Keeping it Rrreal

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A is for Apple and APIs in the ABCs of BNPL

 Digital technology and integrations between banks, fintech, and retailers are not just changing the how but when of payments. As a result, the way consumers pay for their purchases includes an increasingly popular option called buy now, pay later (BNPL).

Taking out a loan for a purchase as small as $35, which is basically what BNPL is, would never have been considered in the past. It would have been far too cumbersome for both consumers and lenders. But thanks to the prevalence of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the financial industry, the process is now as easy and seamless as a credit or debit card transaction.

Nearly every major retail store and site now offers customers the option to pay with a BNPL. The players in that space already include the Swedish fintech Klarna, as well as the US-based Sezzle and Affirm. The name behind many store credit cards, Synchrony, also has its offering, and now even bank-branded credit cards like Citi and Chase, as well as Amex, give their customers the option to use BNPL.

The space is heating up even more with Apple’s announcement that it would offer its own BNPL called Apple Pay Later through a subsidiary of the company that has obtained lending licenses.

Use of BNPL has exploded, accounting for $100 billion in retail purchases in 2021, up from $24 billion in 2020, as reported in Fintech Times. The forecast for the market indicates that the trend is here to stay. The global market for BNPL is expected to hit $3.98 trillion by 2030 with a CAGR of over 45%, starting from 2021, according to Allied Market Research.

Read more in The Way We Buy Now: The ABCs of BNPL The title is a nod to Anthony Trollope and my immersion in Victorian lit back in the day.

AI Transforms Business Data Models

(Image: pixone/iStockphoto)

As big data continues to grow, extracting value from it calls for new tools.

Increasingly, businesses that rely on data to drive decisions are applying AI to surface actionable insight quickly and accurately.

Finding innovative solutions to the problems raised in data analytics, particularly with respect to adapting machine learning to credit scores, is what they've been working on for the past six years at Experian's DataLabs. The EVP and Global Head of the labs, Eric Haller, spoke to All Analytics about the new direction for predictive modeling.

Read more in

AI, Machine Learning Power Transformation

Keeping your identity

Clones, robots, alien shapeshifters, or disembodied consciousness take over people's identities in shows such as Star Trek and Doctor Who. They can then take over the lives of the people they've duplicated, particularly when they have access to their memories. How can anyone defend himself when he can't tell friend from foe?

In real life, most of us don't fear having someone else show up in person claiming to be us. But we are concerned about identity theft. Our digital world makes it all too easy for the bad guys to hack into personal information posted online, as well as financial information that we can think is secure. The cost of identity theft can be huge when hackers get access to our credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts.

Read more in Your Personal Online Guardian

The evolution of money

We've come a long way from coins to bills to checks to plastic to online payments and digital wallets. The question now is:

Is society ready for bitcoin? My answer in 2000 words (as specified by the assignment) is at  http://www.coindesk.com/is-society-ready-for-bitcoin/