Bank of America is rewiring its internal systems and adding APIs to create a seamless hand-off between its virtual chatbot Erica and live chat backed by agents.

“Erica has now become, effectively, on mobile, our gateway to service. And the way we always contemplated that from the outset was … Erica is your first line of servicing,” with live chat being second, and a phone call with an agent being third, said Christian Kitchell, head of AI solutions and the Erica group at the $2.6 trillion bank.

As the bank continues to build out Erica with more sophisticated functionality across various platforms, it’s exploring ways to connect Erica’s back end with the infrastructure that supports live chat agents and its call center for smooth transitions between the three servicing options.

For the next 12 months, the focus will be on connecting Erica with sales and servicing chat agents across Bank of America’s banking and investing arms to present an easy workflow so customers can speak with specialists when necessary, without the friction of leaving the mobile app to make a phone call. The automated hand-off will allow the live chat agent to see the chat history for context, and the customer would still be pre-authenticated for account-specific discussions.

Much of the architecture for live chat has been built out, Kitchell said, so most back-end integration will involve extending the live chat capability for mobile servicing, and ensuring that Erica’s connectivity and contextual hand-off happens fluidly. The team will be looking at a combination of APIs along with foundational platform development and rewiring to accomplish this.

Since Erica’s inception in 2017, the bank has spent the better part of two years assimilating systems and data sets for the virtual chatbot. “There’s no easy way to do it. Honestly, it’s just digging in and sort of knowing the wires to the source, and knowing what you need to do from an API perspective to assimilate them,” Kitchell said.

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