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The new chat-engine wars are underway, with Microsoft announcing its long-awaited integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot into Bing while Google published a blog post about its own chatbot for search, called Bard. Here’s something you don’t see every day: Microsoft Corp. is serving up a snazzy web search tool. And Google, whose search page has barely changed in 24 years, is also racing to launch a just-as-cool revamped tool in the next few weeks. It seems that officially, the new chat-engine wars are underway, with Microsoft on Tuesday announcing its long-awaited integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot into Bing and calling it a “copilot for the web.” Google published a blog post hours earlier about its own chatbot for search, called Bard. For Google in particular, it could be the riskiest strategic move it has made in years, a metaphorical leap off the couch that the company has been relaxing on for far too long. Update : Google is already grappling with chatbot accuracy problems … [Read more...] about Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Maybe: The great AI chatbot race

Many once-promising financial startups are cash-strapped; others have broken business models. By Jeff Kauflin & Emily Mason ; Illustration by Matt Chase for Forbes ON November 15, the cofounders of Ribbon Home, a five-year-old financial technology company that promised to fix a “broken” homebuying market by offering buyers the ability to make all-cash offers, sent a cryptic and disconcerting email to its entire staff. “During this time of uncertainty, we ask team members who are not customer- or finance-facing to shift their focus from work to self-care, spending time with family and doing things that bring you comfort,” it read in part. Six days later, New York City-based Ribbon dismissed 85% of its staff—190 people—and cut severance to one week’s pay versus the six weeks employees had been previously promised. Fewer than 30 people remain today, and the company recently announced that it has paused all new business. Ribbon’s days are … [Read more...] about Merge Or Perish: 25 Struggling Fintech Startups

Inside the chaos at Synapse, where questionable management tactics by CEO Sankaet Pathak have left the company with its future in jeopardy. I n July 2019, the 29-year-old CEO of San Francisco financial technology startup Synapse scolded five of his engineers for not making faster progress. “Do you even enjoy this project?” Sankaet Pathak asked. “Not really,” the team’s leader answered. “That’s it, you’re out,” Pathak declared, firing the employee on the spot in front of his colleagues. Synapse’s Human Resources director, Juan Aguayo, confiscated the terminated worker’s key card and computer. But as Aguayo spoke, he received a message on his laptop, and his tone started to change. Minutes later, he said to the engineer, who was now crying, “Don’t worry, you’re not fired.” The dazed, confused employee went back to his desk. Pathak never spoke to him about the incident again, acting like it never happened. The engineer started looking for a new job the following week … [Read more...] about Broken Synapse: Why Employees And Customers Are Fleeing This Andreessen-Backed Fintech Startup

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In a digital business world, customer service is the pivot on which a business's customer experiences turn. Weak customer service interactions can taint a brand and cause terrible social media disasters. Improving a company's e-commerce customer service should be at the forefront of their business development plans. Each brand has a unique method of engaging with consumers through customer service. The key is to change its perspective about the goals of its customer service representatives. The goal should be about building a unique customer experience that supports the brand's promise. To help, these 13 experts from Forbes Communications Council share their ideas about the critical ways in which a company can improve its e-commerce customer service offerings. 1. Leverage Live Chat E-commerce is driven by instant gratification and convenience. The whole customer experience is centered around that concept: find a … [Read more...] about 13 Effective Ways To Improve E-Commerce Customer Service

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Alfred Kahn is the founder and CEO at OvationCXM , a customer experience management company. Embedded finance has become ubiquitous throughout many industries as businesses continue to desire financial services in their platforms. Although the opportunities embedded finance provides by increasing convenience to the end user and expanding revenue streams for the financial institutions that power the products, embedded finance complicates a company’s ecosystem. It can make it harder to deliver A-plus customer experiences. Meanwhile, B2B use cases are growing quickly as companies look for fast and easy ways to speed up receivables, ensure transactions and more. Both the financial providers and the companies that are embedding these capabilities have to be intentional about maximizing the benefits of embedded finance while managing any pain points that come with having more moving pieces involved in delivering … [Read more...] about The Rise Of Embedded Finance: Exploring The Next Wave Of Digital Banking

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The state of Montana has a wealth of riches to draw in newcomers, including four full seasons offering a wide range of outdoors activities, no traffic, a low cost of living, and friendly people, to name just a few. Now a consortium of government, academic and business leaders in the state, including the Montana Manufacturing Association under the Montana Chamber of Commerce, has been working for the past few years on a collection of other attractions to draw one specific kind of newcomer to Big Sky Country: manufacturers. While Montana already has over 4,100 manufacturing companies with over 21,400 employees generating $3.8 billion in economic output, state leaders see a lot more opportunity in that sector. “We’re leaning into our state’s strengths with our western lifestyle, entrepreneurial spirit and high-quality education system that is nimble and responsive to evolving workforce needs,” explained Todd O’Hair, … [Read more...] about Bozeman Landed Hyundai’s New Horizons Studio R&D Center. Now Montana Is On The Hunt For More Manufacturing

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK It seems unfair to name winners and losers in fintech for 2020. We should give the losers a pass because of the year we just had, right? This is the Fintech Snark Tank, folks—pity is for pansies. Let’s get to the lists. The Winners 1) Stripe With plans to raise another round of funding that could value the company at nearly $100 billion, no fintech company is as hot as Stripe. And the ratio between the firm’s valuation and the number of people who know what Stripe does is astronomical. The payment acceptance company benefitted greatly as the global pandemic forced people to buy online instead of in-person. But that’s not the only reason Stripe is a fintech winner for 2020. It continues to innovate and recently announced the launch of Stripe Treasury which will: “Enable platforms like Shopify to offer merchants access to financial products. Platforms can offer … [Read more...] about The Winners And Losers In Fintech And Banking In 2020

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK 2021: The Year of Value Chain Disruption I’ve never been a big fan of “Year of the [fill-in-the-blank]” proclamations. Google the term “year of the customer” and you’ll find that every year for the past 15 years has been heralded as the year of the customer. Hey, one year it might just really happen. And past claims of “disruption” in financial services have centered on changes at the customer interaction level—i.e., digital account applications, user interfaces, etc. That didn’t really result in much true disruption because there is a whole value chain of activities that occur leading up to the point of customer interaction—and little of that has changed to date. Changes (or disruptions) to the value chain have certainly been in the works for a while now, but 2021 is going to shine a much brighter spotlight on those activities—making 2021 the year of value chain … [Read more...] about Top 5 Banking And Fintech Trends For 2021

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK A few years ago, I wrote something about how large banks were doing interesting things about learning more about their customers. It prompted a response from a credit union CEO who told me, “Big banks don’t know—and will never know—their customers as well as credit unions know their members.” My response: “Dude, you don’t know Jack.” I quickly added, “...or Jim or Jenny or Jill or any of your other members whose names begin with the other 25 letters of the alphabet. You know your members’ names, the names of their children, where they go to school, etc. That’s all well and fine—but you don’t really know their financial lives because you have a very limited view.” And that was a few years ago. Since then, Americans’ financial lives have become more complex. The proliferation of fintech providers has expanded the number of providers that consumers have accounts with, … [Read more...] about Americans’ Shadow Financial Lives: Why Banks Don’t Know Jack (Or Jill)

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK Recent consumer studies I’ve conducted (as Director of Research at bank consultancy Cornerstone Advisors) reveals that Bank of America is losing primary bank status among consumers—predominantly among Millennials. 1 To be clear, young consumers aren’t leaving Bank of America—they’re opening additional accounts and shifting their perception of which account is the primary account. The percentage of Millennials (consumers 26 to 40 years old) who call a Bank of America checking account their primary account declined from 22% in October 2020 to just 13% in July 2021. The megabank also lost share of primary status among Gen Xers (ages 41 to 55), dropping from 18% to 10% over that same time period. Although not as dramatic a drop, other financial institutions lost share of primary checking account status including: Wells Fargo. The bank went from having 12% … [Read more...] about Bank Of America Is Losing Its Grip On Millennials As Fintechs Reinvent The Checking Account