How Trading Chatbots Are Transforming the Financial Markets
Several years ago, when we set out to create an AI chatbot for the online trading segment, the landscape couldn’t have been more different than it is today.
It was clear that we were heading into a world where the first line of customer support would be handled by chatbots across a variety of industries. However, there was still a general sense that they had some way to go if they were to be considered as useful as human support agents.
This was long before the current wave of excitement surrounding AI due to the public releases of large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. The public had already been exposed to products like Siri and Alexa, but still generally regarded corporate chatbots as glorified FAQ sections that had more to do with delaying the inevitable call to customer support than anything else.
Cut to 2023, and we observe a seismic shift in both interest in AI chatbot technology among brokerage decision-makers, but also a broader acceptance of these non-human agents among the general public. The current buzz around AI has businesses from all sectors rethinking their own chatbot strategies and has also increased expectations regarding the abilities of chatbots in general.
More than just front-line support
Devexa, our chatbot for online trading venues, has always been much more than just an interactive FAQ section. While she’s equipped to field lower-priority queries, leaving human agents free to address customer issues of higher importance, it’s much more accurate to describe her as a complete trader’s assistant. She has access to multiple sources of critical information and can perform actions on behalf of the trader, rather than just being there to parrot company policies.
What’s more, the systems that Devexa interacts with are live and always in flux. Whether it’s CRM information regarding a declined deposit, trading engine data about an imminent margin call on an open position, or live price updates across thousands of data feeds, Devexa’s role as a mediator between clients and brokerage systems is far more dynamic than any LLMs.
Try asking ChatGPT the current price of Nvidia stock and you’ll receive something like this:
ChatGPT’s responses are currently informed by training data from the Internet that cuts off in 2021, which is why it’s not able to provide you with live asset prices at the moment.
On the other hand, when you ask Devexa what the current price of IBM stock is, you’ll get this:
Beyond that, you can also ask her to alert you when the price dips to a certain level, or even to open a trade on your behalf when this occurs. Furthermore, you can talk to her through your preferred chat application, and you can even send her voice messages!
Of course, comparing Devexa to something like ChatGPT isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison as Devexa is operating in a much more constrained environment. She’s unlikely to have a philosophical discussion with you on free will versus determinism or write Drake lyrics for you in the style of Celine Dion, but what she does she does exceptionally well.
The comparison is worth making, though, because it illustrates how advanced Devexa was compared to other corporate bots when she launched more than three years ago, but also how impressive she is relative to the current darlings of the AI space today.
What Devexa can do for your business?
As you can see, Devexa is more than just a customer support agent that doesn’t require coffee breaks. This is one of the key points that we try to get across to brokers interested in exploring chatbot technology. Aside from improvements in customer service, Devexa can be a boon to several other brokerage departments.
Back office/compliance
Devexa can help ease friction in client onboarding by assisting new registrations with the account verification process (KYC/AML checks). As back office and compliance departments will testify, the process of verifying new accounts can be time-consuming and repetitive.
This is particularly so during periods of increased interest in trading, such as during bull markets, or when a certain sector or asset class is experiencing a boom. Devexa can help clients solve many of their verification issues without requiring human intervention, leaving team members free to address the edge cases.
Marketing/PR
Devexa provides a valuable channel through which to directly contact your customers.
Integrated as she is with popular applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and Slack, your business can enjoy a line of communication that’s far more reliable than email, phone, or client-area messages.
Chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram are regularly found at the top of yearly download and active user lists. If you want your message to be seen, chat is the channel of choice, and as customers become more acquainted with Devexa and increase their reliance on her features, they will naturally begin to prioritize incoming messages from her.
Client segmentation/tailored messaging
Devexa is also a priceless source of client segmentation data. The more your clients interact with her, the more data regarding their preferences your business is able to collect.
This allows you to tailor the messages you send your clients based on information gathered over prior interactions. This becomes a virtuous loop in which your communications increase in relevance over time. Rather than blanketing your users with one standard message for everyone, you can use the insights that Devexa offers to provide individualized service.
Devexa can segment clients according to the type of user they are (e.g., trader or investor), their risk profile, the asset classes they prefer as well as the individual symbols within those broader categories that they favor. This allows you to group clients and share newsletters and financial news items that are more relevant to them, or to share an upcoming seminar that they’re likely to be interested in.
No need for AI specialists
As with all AI systems, ongoing training is the key to their success. Understanding that Devexa would only be able to realize her true potential by integrating fully into the brokerages that use her, we had to devise a method of training that doesn’t require any technical expertise.
Devexa can learn new skills with zero coding via an easy-to-use admin panel. New skills can be added via this interface, and existing responses can be confirmed, or marked as “off-topic.”
This method allows Devexa to learn from your existing team members rather than requiring her own specialist entourage to teach her new things. This means that an administrator with a thorough understanding of your business’s operations and policies can fine-tune Devexa into a thoroughly capable colleague.
Fully integrated, fully configurable
Devexa was built with the business logic of the online trading industry specifically in mind. To this end, she can be fully integrated with all popular front-end and back-end brokerage systems such as trading platforms and CRM systems. The more areas of your business that she has access to, the smarter she gets, which leads to her being more useful to your customers.
Packaged with preconfigured scripts, Devexa performs impressively right out of the box, but she truly comes into her own when her scripts are tailored to reflect your brand’s identity and business priorities.
Our white label solution also allows you to tailor the appearance of the program to be in keeping with the look and feel of your brand and your existing user interfaces such as client area and trading platform.
Constantly evolving
If you’ve been following the progress of Devexa since its launch, you’ll know that this is a very actively developed product on our part. We have been iteratively improving Devexa with many updates designed to make her both easier to use for the trader, and easier to manage and train for the broker.
In this way, the end user’s relationship with Devexa is also evolving as she gradually takes on new abilities. Traders increase their reliance on her as her abilities increase. A perfect example of this was the addition of speech-to-text, which means that users can now query her in multiple natural languages.
For brokerage teams, she ends up handling a larger percentage of overall queries as her scripts continue to be refined. In tests of brokers using Devexa, she was able to handle around 35% of incoming queries with no human involvement. This is a remarkable feat considering the size of modern brokerage call centers.
See for yourself
At the moment many companies appear to be clamoring to position their businesses as somehow tangentially connected to the AI narrative that’s taking markets by storm. Devexa is a long-running Devexperts project that was around before AI was a central talking point and will be here long after the news cycle has moved on.
More than anything else, we believe that Devexa offers the online trading industry a genuine opportunity to leverage these technologies in a much more productive manner than just paying lip service to them. This isn’t the product to add to your lineup for marketing purposes, it’s something you take seriously and induct into your business operations like a promising new team member.
Book a demo with us and we’d be delighted to show you what Devexa is and how your trading business can benefit from using it.