The Canadian generative AI pilots are designed
to support colleagues in the Bank's contact centres and engineering
practice
TORONTO, May 16, 2024
/CNW/ - As generative AI continues to transform how businesses
operate, TD Bank Group (TD) today announced two pilots to support
more streamlined customer experiences in its contact centres and
accelerate the coding workflow for its engineers.
"Generative AI is transformative; its potential to revolutionize
how we deliver for our colleagues and customers is incredible,"
said Luke Gee, Head of AI and
Analytics at TD. "Our early exploration of generative AI is an
evolution of our ongoing AI strategy. Through Layer 6, our AI
research and development centre, we've developed a deep
understanding of the technology that we intend to leverage to help
support our customers, colleagues and communities now and into the
future."
Delivering enhanced customer experiences in TD contact
centres
When contact centre colleagues require support to answer a
customer inquiry, they seek the advice of supervisory support
teams. This process can lead to longer hold times. TD developed a
generative AI virtual assistant that, once implemented, is designed
to help contact centre colleagues retrieve answers to these
day-to-day banking inquiries in seconds, resolving them in a
shorter amount of time.
Layer 6 helped develop the generative AI virtual assistant and
train it alongside colleagues with a deep understanding of TD
policies and procedures. The generative AI virtual assistant
provides summarized responses using conversational language to
contact centre colleagues, including links to the TD policies and
procedures used to source its answers. Colleagues can reference
them and complete the necessary next steps to answer customer
inquiries faster.
The introduction of large language models (LLMs) in contact
centres has already proven to be impactful, according to a 2023
Stanford and MIT study. The study found that one Fortune 500
software firm's contact centre saw a 14% increase, on average, in
the number of customer issues resolved per hour. The technology had
the greatest impact among novice workers, who were able to solve
35% more customer issues per hour.
The Bank is testing the generative AI virtual assistant with
front-line contact centre colleagues this year.
Accelerating the pace of software development for TD
engineers
To augment the work of its engineers, TD launched a pilot for
GitHub Copilot, a generative AI programming assistant developed by
Microsoft.
GitHub Copilot is designed to help streamline simple tasks and
accelerate code development. Users can prompt Copilot in natural
language to get responses to coding questions, explanations of
complex coding topics, suggestions for security recommendations,
and more.
At TD, GitHub Copilot is assisting engineers by analyzing the
code they're writing and providing real-time suggestions for
completing and testing it. With additional time, TD engineers can
focus on tasks that require more expertise and provide greater
value to the Bank. The platform also enables a more efficient
developer experience by helping engineers develop maintainable
code.
"We expect that generative AI is going play an important role in
how we evolve our engineering function and culture at TD," said
Licenia Rojas, Senior Vice
President, Chief Engineer and Architect at TD. "We are taking a
thoughtful approach that prioritizes security to help protect our
customers and business. By implementing solutions such as GitHub
Copilot, we're helping empower our talented engineers to focus on
new opportunities and demonstrating our commitment to delivering a
positive engineering experience and to developing the best
technology talent in the industry."
Between September and December
2023, TD launched a pilot among a select group of engineers,
who tested GitHub Copilot to help develop unit testing code. In a
survey of colleagues who participated in the test, TD found:
- 50% of engineers surveyed said GitHub Copilot could save
them up to 20 hours over a two-week sprint.
- 93% of data engineers surveyed said they were equally or more
productive with the help of GitHub Copilot
- 75% of engineers surveyed said it was easy to
integrate GitHub Copilot into their everyday work.
Both the contact centre and the engineering pilots were
developed through TD Invent, the Bank's enterprise approach to
innovation. Within this approach, TD explores how emerging
technologies like generative AI and spatial computing can be used
to address real challenges before reviewing their potential to be
scaled. Today, the Bank has a robust innovation pipeline, spanning
across multiple lines of business.
"Through TD Invent, every line of business at TD is working
together to understand how we can operationalize emerging
technologies to get them to our customers and colleagues quicker
and help shape the future of banking, " said Imran Khan, Head of TD Invent. "With generative
AI, we have a real opportunity to create experiences that are more
personalized, insightful and productive."
Today's announcement is part of TD Tech and Innovation Day, an
annual event showcasing the Bank's unique technology and innovation
story. This year's theme is Human-Centered Innovation which
highlights the people behind our innovation and the customers,
colleagues and communities we innovate for.
About TD Invent
TD Invent drives innovation at the Bank. Through our three areas
of focus— Colleague Ideation, Human-Centered Design and Innovation
Acceleration —we work across our innovation ecosystem to help meet
the evolving needs of our customers, colleagues and communities,
accelerating future growth opportunities. To learn more about how
we're helping to shape the future of banking at TD, visit
tdinvent.td.com.
About TD Bank Group
The Toronto-Dominion Bank and its subsidiaries are collectively
known as TD Bank Group ("TD" or the "Bank"). TD is the sixth
largest bank in North America by
assets and serves over 27.5 million customers in four key
businesses operating in a number of locations in financial centres
around the globe: Canadian Personal and Commercial Banking,
including TD Canada Trust and TD Auto Finance Canada; U.S. Retail,
including TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank®, TD Auto Finance
U.S., TD Wealth (U.S.), and an investment in The Charles Schwab
Corporation; Wealth Management and Insurance, including TD Wealth
(Canada), TD Direct Investing, and
TD Insurance; and Wholesale Banking, including TD Securities and TD
Cowen. TD also ranks among the world's leading online financial
services firms, with more than 17 million active online and mobile
customers. TD had $1.91 trillion in
assets on January 31, 2024. The
Toronto-Dominion Bank trades under the symbol "TD" on the
Toronto and New York Stock
Exchanges.
SOURCE TD Bank Group