- Reduced weekly calls to human agents from 175,000 to 120,000
- Achieved a 4-month migration of messaging platform to AWS Connect
- Implemented domain-driven design for seamless multi-channel customer experiences
- Developing 'Genie' for agentic, proactive AI customer interactions
Fifth Third Bank, now the ninth-largest bank in the United States, is at the forefront of leveraging conversational AI to dramatically enhance customer experience and operational efficiency. By strategically adopting AWS Connect and a robust AI strategy, the bank has significantly reduced call volumes to human agents, improved self-service capabilities, and is paving the way for a future of intelligent, proactive customer interactions.
The journey began three years ago when Fifth Third Bank identified a critical challenge: an overwhelming 175,000 calls per week were reaching human agents in their consumer call center. Many of these calls were for simple inquiries that could be resolved through self-service. This realization spurred a deep dive into customer needs and internal processes, leading to questions like, "How might we avoid the need for these contacts?" and "How do we enable better self-service?"
Michelle Graham, Senior Director of Data Engineering, and Kevin Anderson, Product Manager on the AI Transformation team, spearheaded this initiative. Their analysis revealed that some issues were as simple as clunky backend processes or unclear website wording. More significantly, they identified opportunities to empower customers to self-serve through digital channels. This led to a strategic shift from a human-agent-focused contact center provider to AWS Connect, a platform that offered a more integrated and AI-centric approach, aligning with Fifth Third's existing AWS cloud infrastructure.
A prime example of their success is the dispute status inquiry. Previously, customers had to call to check the status of a dispute, generating 13,000 calls monthly for this single, simple task. By building a centralized API for dispute statuses and integrating it across messaging, IVR, mobile, and online banking, Fifth Third Bank eliminated the need for these calls. This domain-driven design principle, "build once, use multiple times," has enabled faster scaling and quicker market delivery of new features. The overall impact? A remarkable reduction from 175,000 weekly calls to between 120,000 and 130,000, significantly improving both NPS and average handle time.
Looking ahead, Fifth Third Bank is investing heavily in "agentic experiences" with their next-generation chatbot, "Genie." This AI will not just direct customers to self-service options but will perform actions on their behalf, such as transferring money or answering complex questions dynamically. The bank emphasizes that AI is not a "silver bullet"; rather, it's crucial to first understand and optimize underlying processes using methodologies like Lean Six Sigma before applying AI. This, coupled with strong cross-functional collaboration across product, engineering, compliance, and risk teams, has been a key accelerator in their rapid and successful AI transformation.
“People often want to use AI I think is a silver bullet to fix all the problems. And I think it's really important that you understand your process that you're trying to fix first before you just put AI on top of something.”
- Mohammed Borulkar, Principal Solutions Architect with AWS
