Kasisto’s AI platform is powering a mobile-only bank in India, where chatbots handle all consumer requests.

Signe Brewster - MIT Technology Review - May 17, 2016
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People in India can now open an account with a bank that’s only accessible via mobile devices. Called Digibank, it’s staffed by chatbots intelligent enough to answer thousands of questions submitted via chat.

The machine-learning-based technology is a product of Kasisto, a New York startup that spun out of the company that created Apple’s Siri assistant. Kasisto trained its KAI artificial-intelligence platform with millions of questions asked by customers during their banking experiences.

“A lot of the bots that are out there are what we would consider ‘dumb bots.’ It’s very easy to break them, and it’s very easy to ask an out-of-context question, and they just don’t know how to handle it,” says Dror Oren, Kasisto vice president of product. “What we’re building is very, very unique in its ability to create real conversations.”

Facebook brought chatbots into the public eye last month when it integrated the digital assistants into its Messenger platform. But researchers are far from perfecting chatbots’ ability to hold a conversation. After Microsoft debuted a Twitter bot called Tay that learned to converse from the people who interacted with it, the Internet quickly taught it to say nasty things.

Via a chat box, users can ask the KAI-generated banking bots a customer-service-related question. Or they can give the bot a command like “Pay Jennifer $25 for dinner yesterday” and it will respond with requests for more instructions. If transferring money would result in an overdraft, it can alert the user and ask if he’d like to move money between accounts.

One of KAI’s strengths is its ability to entertain multiple channels of conversation at once."Most systems will guide you through the payment on a rule-based system,” Oren says. “But in our system, instead of just saying, ‘Use Venmo,’ you can actually say something that’s completely out of context. The system comes back and asks, ‘Which account do you want to pay out of?’"

After digesting examples of real conversations from customers’ interactions with banks, KAI uses statistical classifiers to quickly figure out what topic a customer is broaching. One of KAI’s strengths is its ability to entertain multiple channels of conversation at once. If a user holds a conversation with a bot and then in the middle asks a question about something totally unrelated, the bot knows to answer the question and then return to the original topic of discussion. KAI can recognize different intents and separate them without becoming confused, just like a human.

Matt Swanson, a managing partner at Silicon Valley Software Group and former founder of SpeakerText, describes chatbots as a new medium for communication. Traditional banks with online presences tend to make customers dig for how to reach customer-service representatives—generally via a call or live chat.

But bots are slowly making inroads at other financial institutions. RBS, for example, is preparing to use an AI called “Luvo” to help customers with basic requests, though complex customer-service questions will be passed along to a human. Bank of America also allows customers to interact with a bot on Facebook’s Messenger platform.
Digibank is the first to rely so heavily on a chatbot. It is an integral part of the banking experience—not just a face to turn to when there’s a problem. A customer can go directly from performing an action to seeking an answer to a question without interrupting the flow of what they are doing.

Using text instead of voice also means the bot can accomplish far more sophisticated actions, according to Swanson. "Text is a much easier machine-learning problem to solve than voice,” Swanson says. “It’s almost like the difference between digital and analog. With text-based interactions you have a very explicit set of inputs. A text really makes a cleaner starting point for machine-learning or natural-image-processing algorithms."  
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Kasisto plans to adapt KAI to banking-related industries such as wealth management and workplace benefits. It could also see a wider rollout, as the software is built to adapt to any space—as long as the AI is trained on related questions.

Tactics without strategy is dumbing down our discipline
By Mark Ritson, Marketing Week on 11 May 2016

If marketers want to be taken seriously they must end their preoccupation with tactics and tools and focus on their strategy, devised by throroughly researching, segmenting and targeting their market.

There is no easy way to start this week’s column without sounding like a wanker, but I am genuinely worried about the state of our discipline. We’ve never been regarded as the most strategic part of the organisation but in the last few years marketing seems to be devolving into a base tactical pursuit devoid of strategic thinking.

To understand my point, you have to realise the distinction between strategy and tactics. Marketing strategy is where we play and how we win in the market. Tactics are how we then deliver on the strategy and execute for success. In traditional military strategy, the generals of old would gather, survey the battlefield in depth, review the enemy’s forces and then decide exactly where to attack, at what time and with which forces. Strategy agreed, the orders would be sent down to the various battalions who then concerned themselves with the tactical business of executing their respective objectives. A troop charged with taking a hill, for example, might deploy its archers and then send in the infantry to finish off the enemy.

In the traditional world of marketing we follow a similar systematic process. First we build a map of the market from research in the form of a decent segmentation. From there we can decide which segments to go after and how to position our brand for optimum success. Finally we devise clear strategic objectives for each target segment specifying the goal we will achieve. Only then – with clarity on who, what and when – do we start to think about tactical execution and which specific tools we might apply.

But that last paragraph now describes an approach in apparent decay. The last decade has seen marketing deluged with a sea of new tools and techniques. The concept of real-time rather than long-term planning has added fuel to the fire. Finally, a new breed of marketer who prefaces their title with the tactical term ‘digital’ has inundated our discipline with under-trained, overly tactical managers who have already selected their mode of execution long before any research or strategy has been even countenanced. They already have their crossbow drawn with no clue where, who or what they are attacking.
Over on the other side of town, Marketing magazine – the long standing rival of Marketing Week – has just been retired and subsumed into a tactical title called Campaign. The editorial team behind the move talk about “creativity”, a “new breed” and “breaking down silos”. But if the exit plan is to move from silos to a giant tactical ghetto where does that leave our discipline?

There used to be a section in every marketing and retail magazine that featured hundreds of promotional gifts and freebies. Golf balls, frisbees and branded pens – you know the kind of thing. There is a very real danger that Campaign and then the rest of British marketing goes this way over the next few years. All this talk of social media platforms, virtual reality and 3D fucking printing is missing the point – the strategic point – of marketing. Our discipline must be founded on understanding consumers and then coming up with the strategy that helps our organisation win in the market. All the tactical mish-mash and creative hoo-haa that follows is an important part of the marketing plan, but it’s not the starting point and it’s certainly not the most important bit.

A general manager at a client I advise recently asked me to chat with a marketing manager about his 2016-17 marketing plan. The GM was worried it was all “bells and whistles”. Sure enough when we went through the plan there was a surfeit of digital tactics for the year ahead but when I asked him about his targeting, positioning and objectives the look on his face astonished me. It wasn’t that he was unsure of his answer, it was his abject confusion that such questions were even appropriate any more. I used to battle against the executives from finance and accounting who sneeringly referred to marketing as the “colouring-in department”.  As time goes on I fear they might have a point.
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As the greatest strategist of them all, Sun Tzu, observed more than two millennia ago: “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” I hope so. Because we need an urgent re-centering of marketing back towards strategic fundamentals before it’s too late.

Article from Ben Davis at eConsultancy

An eye-catching stat from a Forrester report got me a bit worked up The survey concluded that 43% of firms with a mature digital strategy see competing departments wanting to own digital as the most significant barrier to effective digital transformation.

Sheesh, it paints a pretty picture of our industry doesn't it? No sooner have we decided digital is imperative than I.T., Marketing, Ecommerce, Tech and Communications descend into a bun fight.

When I thought more about the nest of snakes that corporate culture can be (be thankfully doesn't have to be), I decided it would be more productive to dwell on the delights of startup culture.

Behind the workplace tropes (ping pong, beer, takeout) and seat-of-your-pants risk involved in working at an early stage startup, just what is startup culture?

What is startup culture? 

The chance of a promotion and a pay rise. 
This is by virtue of a startup's growth. Big corporates must emulate this and promote as much as is possible, something that banks have recently woken up to, as new talent begins to think 'why the heck should I kill myself for you?' Top MBA graduates are now 40% less likely to choose banking as a career, with some looking to tech instead. Bank of America reacted by this year announcing earlier promotion for analysts and associates.

Co-location
Again a virtue of diminutive organisation size. Open-plan offices have been de rigueur for a while now at big corporates. But the advantage that startups have is that often their entire organisation is a cross-functional team. As companies get bigger, Accounts, Sales and, crucially, Tech get their own domains on their own floors. I.T. can be thought of only as a ticketing system (however agile). What co-location does is increase the efficiency of communication. Small issues can be raised without fear of bureaucracy or being ignored. Meetings don't have to be scheduled weeks in advance - minutes can be grabbed here and there, with employees empowered to act. 

Productive informalityI can't remember where I first saw this phrase, but it was in an excellent blog post somewhere. Productive informality is enabled by co-location, but it's more than that. It's a get-on-with-it attitude that dictates a loose reign for managers who trust employees to tread the right side of 'process'.

Getting on with it
Targets that are too prescriptive, too detailed and reviewed too seldom can cripple employees who are afraid of committing to something that 'isn't my job'. The review process is ongoing, it's the other side of a coin of responsibility, opposite self-awareness (I'm writing quickly and don't have the time to change that metaphor).

A focus on long-term revenue
A startup is all about money 'then' not 'now'. The focus to begin with is product and funding, then user adoption, then service, then marketing. Only corporates that allow a division to take a long-term view can achieve new and disruptive product development.

Democracy (unless the founder weighs in)
There's still a management structure in a startup, of course. But every member of staff is invested enough in the project to be respected for their views. Ultimately, the founder may say 'we're doing it my way', but not until others have had their say.

Confidence
If you watch Silicon Valley, the HBO series, you'll know that the joke of series one was startups who said they were going to 'change the world'. It's funny because it's true. This zeal for product and company mission is what engenders ownership of brand and service. Some of that startup confidence needs to be bottled, and pumped into ailing corporates. Never diss the product.

Recruiting for personality AND skills
This is what every company tries to do, big or small. However, through sheer numbers of applications, HR departments in big organisations have to discount some people who haven't ticked every box. Goldman Sachs is using machine learning to better sort through the 40-50 applicants per position. This is a tricky one to get right but it is so important. To quote Richard Branson from LinkedIn:
"The first thing to look for when searching for a great employee is somebody with a personality that fits with your company culture. Most skills can be learned, but it is difficult to train people on their personality. Great grades count for nothing if they aren’t partnered with broad-ranging experience and a winning personality. If you hire the wrong person at the top of a company, they can destroy it in no time at all."

Flexible working
Working all hours or working none. Working everywhere or nowhere. There's a lot of truth in Marissa Meyer's assertion that corridor meetings are important - teams need to interact. But quite simply, the employee who can stay at home and take delivery of a refrigerator/ fibre-optic internet connection/ leather swing without taking holiday is far more likely to double their efforts at home and when back in the office. Those pesky millenials just love to sit in a Hackney/Williamsburg cafe on a Friday afternoon (stereotype alert).

Using the best tools
1. Can I have a Mac please? Can I use Google Drive?
2. Sure - as long as you use two-step authentication and never share outside our domain.
That is the response of an enlightened business owner.

1. What about Slack?
2. Is that a new band?
1. No, it's a messaging tool that would really help some of our teams?
2. Great - I'm glad we hired you.

A healthy ratio of tech to non-tech
Techies should not be too busy to dip into ad hoc work (like everyone else in the office) because the I.T. Head has calculated exactly how much resource he needs to complete the current pipeline.

Access to the leader
Culture is passed down from the top and becomes dyed in the wool. If the leader is only in the office once a month (and not just in his/her office), you should be worried.

Perks
All the above are perks (to those who have never known them). Throw in some free drinks (without caveating their provision in a boring email) etc. etc.

Conclusion ​
Can big corporates achieve all of these things? I don't know, but the challenge is theirs.
Better that than wrestling for 'control' of digital, something that should eventually be too pervasive to be wrangled by just one person, team or department.