Users of the newly-released range of Google Home and Mini devices in Singapore will be able to chat with their pods about banking services offered by OCBC Bank in the latest iteration of the bank's voice commerce strategy.
OCBC customers will be able to initiate a conversation with the Google Assistant for information on services ranging from planning for retirement or a new home to saving for a child’s education. The interactive chatter is augmented with the latest financial market updates, unit trust prices and foreign exchange rates.
As an inducement, the bank is partnering with local telco retailer StarHub to offer a $20 promotional rebate to customers who buy a Google Home device.
Voice-powered technology has been deployed across the bank since October 2016, when OCBC Bank was the first in Singapore to enable customers to initiate e-payments using Apple’s Siri voice assistant. More recently, Siri has been deployed to enable business and retail customers to check their account balances and make funds transfers using just their voices.
The voice commerce play complements other self-service digital channels such as AI-powered chatbot ‘Emma’, which was launched in 2017 and specialises in answering home and renovation loan queries on the OCBC Bank website in an intelligent, human-like way.
Aditya Gupta, head of e-business Singapore says: “For our customers to be able to interact with OCBC services by simply speaking to AI assistants on their smartphones and smart home devices is an exciting development, and an important one as we shape the bank of the future. We are the first bank in Singapore to collaborate with Google on this game-changing service, and will continue to embed ourselves in consumers’ lives using voice-powered AI tools, which will be able to answer more questions and perform more tasks for OCBC customers over time.”.