NAB is the first bank in Australia to launch a digital virtual banker specifically for business customers, enabling them to receive instant answers and assistance with common banking questions and tasks.

NAB’s virtual banker is in pilot and available 24/7 on nab.com.au, providing help with more than 200 common questions related to the servicing of business banking accounts.

NAB Chief Operating Officer Antony Cahill said the development of the virtual banker continued NAB’s commitment to providing leading solutions that make life easier for customers.

“Our research shows that two thirds of Australian SMEs cite dealing with administrative tasks as taking a lot of effort, and our customers desperately want to spend more time on their business and less time on dealing with admin tasks.

“’We’re working hard to make banking an easy and supportive experience for our customers and technology like this helps save business customers critical time. When they have a question about their banking, our virtual banker is there to help solve it 24 hours a day, seven days a week; it’s a simple and seamless on-the-go experience.

“We will continue to develop the virtual banker over coming months, enabling an even broader and more diverse range of instant answers and guidance for business customers.”

The virtual assistant’s artificial intelligence is derived from thousands of real-life customer enquiries. There are more than 13,000 variants of the 200 questions the virtual banker can answer; if the question can’t be answered, the customer will then be directed to a human banker.

Customers were involved in the testing and development phase, with more than 75 per cent saying a virtual banking was a highly desirable offering that would help them with their banking needs.

Part of NAB’s delivery of new customer self-assistance also includes walk-through tutorial videos for NAB Connect users. The short step-by-step videos help customers understand how they can use and take advantage of the platform’s wide capabilities, with tutorials that help with common tasks like ‘adding users’ or ‘setting up reoccurring payments’.

The initiatives are just two examples of the many that have been developed by NAB’s Customer Journey teams, who are reimagining specific customer experiences.

“We currently have a number of different streams of work underway with almost 1000 employees across various areas of the bank – from bankers, to product specialists, marketing experts and technologists – working together on these projects and delivering at pace,” Mr Cahill said.

Hear from NAB’s EGM Business Transformation Anne Bennett talking NAB’s new Virtual Banker

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