Using Chatbots and artificial intelligence will not lead to job losses: Banks

The banks are resorting to the use of chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline customer service. It raised speculations in the job market that there may be job losses due decreased man power needs due to these automations. But the concerned lot may rest assured, as the banks have clarified that there will not be any job cut on this account. The bankers said that these new tools are only to complement the existing staff, as reported in The Economic Times. Several banks including State Bank of India (SBI) and HDFC Bank tied up with various artificial intelligence firms for conversational banking with chatbots.  Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, deputy MD and chief information officer, SBI, said,"We find that chatbots are useful for employees. For instance, if an employee has entered a particular screen and does not know how to proceed, the software will sense inactivity and a bot will pop-up offering assistance." Whereas, the HDFC Bank website chatbot has dealt with about one lakh conversations in a week, according to  Nitin Chugh,digital banking head of HDFC Bank. Not only this, the insurance companies are also following the trend as recently,  HDFC Life  started  the first life insurance chatbot. Even as these facilities are customer and employee friendly, these are to support the existing infrastructure in early disposal of queries. As the banks reassure, this will not affect the number of job vacancies in future in any way.