The Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) has confirmed that it has begun experimenting with AI powered customer service avatars in its corporate call center operations.
The Japanese banking and financial services organization has leveraged tech from AVITA to launch AVACOM, a digital customer service tool that converts human appearances into avatars.
Initially reported by Tokyo FinTech, the test period will see the solution explicitly deployed within the corporate customer department, where it will be used for telephone-based explanations of products and services.
For SMBC, the trial’s goals are twofold: to ascertain whether the use of digital avatars will increase the level of CX and to uncover whether it will improve agents’ working conditions.
Regarding the latter, the company believes that the avatars will help to foster an inclusive environment where employees from diverse backgrounds can showcase their skills freely, regardless of location or external perceptions.
The SMBC-AVITA Partnership
The news of the AVACOM trial follows the announcement in September of last year that SMBC had signed a basic agreement with AVITA, a Japanese tech company that specializes in AI and avatars.
The agreement combined SMBC’s customer base and infrastructure with AVITA’s advanced AI capabilities to “create new social value.”
In the SMBC official news release, the company described how the relationship would help to improve the customer experience:
By utilizing avatars and AI technology, SMBC Group and AVITA will explore ways to promote a warm CX that creates new bonds between people and society.
But what exactly are customer service avatars? And how prevalent are they likely to become?
Are Digital Avatars the Future of Customer Service?
In short, avatars are virtual assistants that act as a digital representation of a person.
In customer service, for example, instead of typing questions to a chatbot, customers can speak to an avatar supported by generative AI (GenAI) technology to provide more human-like and intelligent interactions.
Interestingly, SMBC’s trial follows announcements from several major tech players that are experimenting with digital avatars.
Indeed, earlier this month, Character.AI released an enhancement that will allow app-users to have voice conversations with digital avatars … and the avatars will talk back.
Described as “like having a phone call with a friend,” the feature supports seamless two-way voice interactions in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Users can start conversations with their chosen avatars with a single tap, with the company outlining several potential uses for Character Calls, including language practice, job interview preparation, and role-playing games.
Elsewhere, back in May, ServiceNow unveiled its own GenAI-powered digital customer service avatars.
Announced at the company’s annual Knowledge 24 event, ServiceNow introduced interactive digital characters designed to enhance employee and customer experiences by providing more engaging and personal interactions.
Developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, the solution uses ServiceNow’s Now Assist GenAI and AI enterprise software, along with NVIDIA’s Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for speech, large language models (LLM), and animation.
ServiceNow highlighted HR, finance, IT, retail, and travel as ideal sectors for this technology, noting its potential to guide employees through work policies and software features.
Although no official release date was announced, ServiceNow President and COO, CJ Desai, emphasized the company’s commitment to advancing GenAI capabilities:
As AI becomes deeply ingrained in our everyday lives, customers and employees expect technology to intelligently learn and adapt to their individual work and communication styles.
“We’re continuously expanding our collaboration with NVIDIA to explore new ways for people to interact with generative AI through Now Assist, to help ensure AI is a friendly, engaging, and empathetic experience for everyone, based on users’ preferences.”
There have also been rumblings of Zoom potentially entering the AI avatar space, with CEO Eric Yuan discussing the topic in a recent interview with The Verge:
I truly hate reading email every morning, and ideally, my AI version for myself reads most of the emails.
