Who or What is EVA? – if you google (“EVA chatbot”) you will find: “HDFC Bank’s EVA (Electronic Virtual Assistant) is India’s first and largest Artificial Intelligence-powered banking chatbot. Eva uses the latest in AI and Natural Language Processing to understand the user query and fetch the relevant information.”
EVA is an intensively used acronym for a virtual assistant but Eva in Bulgarian – my father’s country/language – is a nice-sounding women name.
But not only…
EVA is the name of the first chatbot introduced a few years ago on the Bulgarian market by the second largest in Retail Bank – Postbank (a subsidiary of the Greek Eurobank). My short story today is about this Eva.
Bulgarian (not Indian) Chatbot EVA was launched in 2018 with a live chat feature that responds in the Facebook Messenger app. The virtual assistant is online 24/7.
In the beginning, it provided useful information for consumer loans, credit cards, and debt consolidation programs (which solve issues with customers troubled with credit exposure). Other useful information customers and non-customers could receive were about other bank products and services, bancassurance products, location of closest office and ATMs. Customers could solve issues with forgotten usernames and passwords of their online banking, PIN of their debit or credit cards, and many other significant issues.
Now after 3 years from launch, the bot is well-trained, and its specialty is mortgage loans. “She” can share with you information about search and selection of real estate, mortgage financing, loan parameters, and required documents for the deal – all that only by applying online.
Needless to say, the EVA Postbank app is compatible with Android and iOS smartphones and can be downloaded free of charge from Google Play and the App Store.
Eva speaks Bulgarian and can chat only. Unpopular languages like Bulgarian at the beginning are the challenge for voice recognition programs and especially for speaking and pronouncing by the “machine”.
My investigation shows as well that:
- The largest Bulgarian bank in retail DSK Bank (subsidiary of the largest Hungarian bank – OTP) is about to introduce its chatbot in Telegram application as well. After chat and live assistant usually comes Voice assistant, it is matter of time only.
- BNP Paribas has also launched the EVA chatbot. The purpose of it is to support customers in the purchasing processes.
- UniCredit in Czech Republic and Slovakia has deployed AI in its recruitment process via UniCredit chatbot. This is a smart recruiter that interviews candidates for the first time and provides valuable data. The unique here is that the UniCredit Bot works with collected data, measures how candidates fit a position, their approach to work, even their logical thinking.
Not only but especially during the last two years customers are intensively looking for contact with their banks and wherever they are, they expect to have the bank on their phones – formal contact is covered by their mobile apps and informal – exactly by chatbot solution.
At the end of this story, it still makes me wonder when speaking about chatbots what is the right form – “Who is Eva?” or “What is Eva? “
What do you think?
Sources:
https://sirma.com/stories/eva-chatbot-for-postbank.html