Jones hoped customers would be reassured as they learned about the privacy and technology safeguards in place, but that any who stll has concerns about online help involving AI could “go into a branch and talk to someone over the counter”.

He could not immediately say if Westpac NZ would alert customers to the use of AI at the start of a call, in the same manner as the current notification that a conversation could be recorded.

Outperform a human

In an in-house pilot, Jones said the AI could outperform a human contact staffer for certain tasks, such as summarising the issues raised in a call.

But he said the new Microsoft system won’t see any job cuts. It’s been introduced to bolster the human call staff.

He said it should lead to a dramatic reduction in the dreaded, “I’ll just put you on hold …” or “I’ll just transfer you …” because staff will have a clearer view of all of customer’s activity, and and a better ability to get a fast summary of, say, a new fraud tactic that a caller has encountered.

“We had an example last week where an external customer phoned about merchant terminal replacement. We compared what the [human] agent had captured as the reason for the call with what the Microsoft product said was the reason for the call, and we got much richer content from the Microsoft tool,” he said.

“The AI gave a great summary of the call. It listed the questions that the customer had asked and the responses that the agent had given. It gave a summary at the end of any outstanding actions, and they gave a suggestion for a follow-up call for the agent.”

Up to a third faster

Jones would not give current call centre wait times or call times, saying averages varied by query and other factors.

But tests have shown a call can be resolved in 20 to 30% less time, using Microsoft’s AI, Jones said, “because the warm-up is much faster” for the agent as the AI helps out with quick summaries of the customer’s history, and the issues they’re dealing with – particularly the rising and complex issue of fraud and scams.

Emotional rescue

The Microsoft AI also has emotional smarts, Jones said.

“There’s sentiment analysis so the agent can determine how the customer conversation is going, and if the conversation starts getting more difficult. Then there is an automatic escalation in the background to supervisors who can come in and help support the agent.”

Cost-savings

Jones said, in the short term, Westpac NZ will pay more (the pilot did not extend to Westpac Australia), but that in the medium term it will come out ahead as “legacy” call centre software, supplied via a telco, is phased out.

What about hallucinations and errors?

AI can make factual mistakes or “hallucinate” incorrect information, as recently highlighted by the “for entertainment purposes only” terms-of-use that Microsoft has applied to the free version of its Copilot AI.

Can any AI be trusted to have a role, even in partnership with a human, in providing help with your banking questions, which for many, will be their most personal information outside of health.

“The message is, when AI in deployed in these solutions [like Westpac NZ’s] there are no shortcuts,” Taylor said.

“There’s a significant amount of effort that has to go in the customer side and the technology side to make sure it’s deployed safely.

“The organisation’s got to be very clear on its AI principles, follow up with policies and procedures of how they’re going to enforce those principles, and then follow up with controls.

“These are technical solutions to make sure those policies and procedures are implemented now, we’ve obviously got a number of those controls native into the platform that help with that, and there’s a number of techniques you can use to mitigate that hallucination, or actually eradicate it, by making sure the AI system is very focused on just a set body of knowledge and can only answer a set range of questions.

“So if you it gets asked a question outside its remit, it won’t give an answer.

“You’ve got to have controls in place to make sure the accuracy is where it needs to be. And I know, you know that’s a big conversation between regulated entities and the regulators to make sure that there’s evidence that there is that level of accuracy. So that’s a big part of our role as a partner to support customers.”

Westpac’s Jones added: “The body of knowledge that Duncan’s talking about, in this case, is our product databases and our processes, procedures, guardrails, policies and so on. So that’s largely where the content is coming from. We’ve been working on cleaning those up and making sure they’re robust for the past year or so in preparation for this project.”

The in-house pilot began in September and has grown to involve some 5000 staff who use internal helpdesks “if they’ve got issues with ATMs or refunds or deposits not processing, or technology questions”.

The plan is for the AI technology to be rolled-out to public-facing contact centres by August.

Jones said all of Westpac NZ’s regular contact centre staff are in-house, though the bank uses contractors to deal with surges.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.