– PARIS and STRASBOURG, France, April 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Cre’dit Mutuel and IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that following a successful pilot, the use of Watson technologies is extended to 20,000 employees across 5,000 branches to continue to strengthen customer relationships. This marks the first commercial use of Watson by a financial institution in France to assist its professionals. The bank’s customer advisors have been using Watson services in French for the past year, integrated in their business applications, as Cre’dit Mutuel and IBM have partnered to train and improve Watson’s French language capabilities.
By mid-June, Watson-based solutions will be deployed to client advisors across the 15 federations of Cre’dit Mutuel throughout France:
After one year of intensive training with the business experts of the bank, and after a successful pilot with 150 client advisors in 20 branches, both solutions were strongly endorsed by the pilot’s users. Working with Watson-based solutions trained with internal business knowledge has helped them free up time; improve the speed, relevance and accuracy of responses to queries; and ultimately reinforce relationships with their customers, providing more personalized attention. According to an internal survey of participants, 94 percent of the respondents would recommend the Virtual Assistant to colleagues and 87 percent would recommend the Email Analyzer. The pilot also demonstrated that client advisors were able to find the right answers to most of their customer questions more than 60 percent faster using the Watson-based Virtual Assistant.
“As a mutual bank with a strong local presence all over the country, we continue to invest in our branches to help advisors deliver more personal relationships with our clients, whether face to face, by phone, or digital. In this context, Watson is a perfect working partner to assist our professionals, augment their service quality and help them bring more value to clients,” said Nicolas Thery, chairman at Cre’dit Mutuel. “We are evolving our banking business to deliver a growing number of diversified and valuable services to clients, and we recognize how important it is for our professionals to be central to our client relationships.”
“Cre’dit Mutuel’s work with Watson is a powerful example of how professionals are working with cognitive technologies to improve their performance and enhance how they interact with customers,” said David Kenny, senior vice president, IBM Watson & Cloud Platform. “Cre’dit Mutuel is focused on making their customer relationships more personal and valuable, and we are proud to work with them as they demonstrate how Watson is helping their employees more quickly provide the right answers to customer questions.”
Cre’dit Mutuel will extend the use of Watson technologies to additional use cases later this year, for health, personal risk insurance, car credit insurance, and bank credit services.
About Cre’dit Mutuel
A leading European bank acknowledged for its financial strength and top-quality ratios, Cre’dit Mutuel is deeply attached to its core retail banking business and mutualist values. It has gradually diversified over time, first as a pioneer in bancinsurance and then in other fields such as telephony, remote surveillance and, more recently, contactless payments. Its technological expertise, which has constantly been a focal point of its development strategy, has enabled it to become one of Europe leading payments solutions providers. For more information, visit: www.creditmutuel.fr
On this specific project, 15 of the 18 federations of the Cre’dit Mutuel work together. They are as follows:
Cre’dit Mutuel d’Anjou, Cre’dit Mutuel Antilles-Guyane, Cre’dit Mutuel du Centre, Cre’dit Mutuel Centre Est Europe, Cre’dit Mutuel Dauphine’-Vivarais, Cre’dit Mutuel Ile-de-France, Cre’dit Mutuel Loire-Atlantique et Centre-Ouest, Cre’dit Mutuel Maine-Anjou Basse-Normandie, Cre’dit Mutuel Me’diterrane’en, Cre’dit Mutuel Midi-Atlantique, Cre’dit Mutuel Nord Europe, Cre’dit Mutuel de Normandie, Cre’dit Mutuel Oce’an, Cre’dit Mutuel Savoie-Mont Blanc et Cre’dit Mutuel du Sud-Est.
About IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing
Watson represents a new era in computing called cognitive computing, where systems understand the world in a way more similar to humans: through senses, learning, and experience. Watson continuously learns from previous interactions, gaining in value and knowledge over time. With the help of Watson, organizations are harnessing the power of cognitive computing to transform industries, help professionals do their jobs better, and solve important challenges.
As part of IBM’s strategy to accelerate the growth of cognitive computing, Watson is open to the world, allowing a growing community of developers, students, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts to easily tap into the most advanced and diverse cognitive computing platform available today. Watson solutions are being built, used and deployed in more than 45 countries and across 20 different industries.
For more information on IBM Watson, visit: ibm.com/Watson. Join the conversation at #ibmwatson.
Media Contact: Samantha Mayowa, 401-419-9569, [email protected]
Logo – http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/95470/ibm_logo.jpg
(Immediapress – Adnkronos
Immediapress e’ un servizio di diffusione di comunicati stampa in testo originale redatto direttamente dall’ente che lo emette. Padovanews non e’ responsabile per i contenuti dei comunicati trasmessi.)