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January 30, 2024

Akbank empowers staff to search through 10,000 records in seconds with Azure OpenAI Service

Akbank, one of Türkiye's largest banks, has transformed its customer support operations using Azure OpenAI Service to improve employee and customer experience. Previously searching through answers in a 10,000-article knowledge base, Akbank staff now conversates with an AI chatbot. Generating correct answers 90 percent of the time, chatbot allows customer representatives to easily save up time, in time of need. This enhances quality and accuracy and helps customer support agents save three minutes in every interaction, freeing them up for more proactive service.

Akbank

Founded in 1948 in Adana, Türkiye, Akbank started as a local bank focused on providing funding to local cotton producers. Its growth continued with the establishment subsidiaries in subsequent years, including AKSecurities, AKInvestment Trust, and AKAsset Management. Akbank, now serving over 10.8 million active customers, extends its services through a vast network, with more than 700 branches and 12,000 employees. “For the past 75 years, we have focused on creating solutions with innovative technologies, and customer as well as employee experience is one of our biggest priorities,” notes Gizem Yalçın Smart Digital Assistant Applications Technical Product Owner at Akbank.

With innovation at heart, Akbank modernized its customer support services, it set out to better serve its customer, improve operational productivity, and bring value-added benefits . “Our branch employees and customer representatives had access to a query search portal. They used this to gain more information to address customer queries and issues like error messages. If needed, they would reach out to the central support management,” explains Yalçın.

Searching through approximately 10,000 records that were quite similar would take time. “We wanted to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create a more human-like interaction, allowing representatives to articulate their experiences in their own words and solve customers' problems more efficiently,” adds Yalçın. “We aimed to transform the inquiry and search process in the knowledge base into a more modern, simplified experience.”

Revolutionizing branch operations

The smart digital chatbot assistant has transformed employee experience, not only reduced workload but also brought additional productivity. "When needed, branch employees save time in every customer interaction using the Azure OpenAI-based chatbot," notes Yalçın. “And with every minute saved, our productivity increases.” Unsurprisingly, Akbank employees received the chatbot very positively. "The majority started using it as soon as they got used to the new product. And most importantly, they report that the chatbot answers 9 out of 10 questions correctly,” adds Yalçın.

To support its customers proactively, Akbank incorporated suggestions into the chatbot, which are prompted during intervals between serving customers. “Knowing the priorities, bot allows staff get faster responses. This way, especially our staff serving to customers will get faster support and thus improve the customer experience,” elaborates Yalçın. “And now that our staff saves hours during customer support interactions, they have been freed up for such proactive service.”

Akbank also used the chatbot to update its knowledge base of 10,000 documents and enhance its readability. “The chatbot presents the most up-to-date information in every query, which is crucial in a fast-paced banking environment,” adds Yalçın. “It also serves as a Turkish grammar teacher, refining our articles.”

Soaring ahead with AI superpowers

Looking ahead, Akbank plans to bring the chatbot directly to its millions of active customers and enable them to address their queries without middlemen. “The chatbot was only our first product, and we’ve already designed the technological infrastructure for our future systems. This is the journey we're embarking on, and we're collaborating closely with Microsoft,” Yalçın concludes.

“When needed, branch employees save time in every customer interaction using the Azure OpenAI-based chatbot.”

Gizem Yalçın, Smart Digital Assistant Applications Technical Product Owner, Akbank

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