When it comes to customer experience in banking, sights and sounds matter most.

Natural-language-processing technology and design and digital user experience, known as UX, were seen as the top ways to drive improved customer experience, according to a recent poll by Bank Innovation. The poll found 34% out of 136 respondents believed that natural language processing is the sort of technology financial institutions can use to improve their services for the customer. Another 31% said improves to design and UX are what might improve the experiences of customers.

Just 21% of respondents said application programming interfaces, or APIs, can be used to improve experiences, followed closely by 17% who believed that chatbots are crucial to customer experience.

The poll was conducted in February and the full results are below:

A February article on Bank Innovation supports the importance of natural-language processing and design/UX. The article points out that BNY Mellon, for example, was seeking partnerships with fintech companies that provided natural-language processing and design/UX technology, among others.

“We explore all technologies,” Lucien Foster, head of digital partnerships at BNY, told Bank Innovation. “We have an AI team, a blockchain team, an RPA (robotic process automation) team, and many more within the bank. But it often makes sense to look outside for technology solutions.”

For example, the bank recently announced a partnership with Arria NLG, a natural language processing platform, through its subsidiary Eagle Investments Systems. The goal of the partnership, Foster said, was to enhance automation by applying advanced natural language generation (NLG) technology. Arria’s technology will provide BNY clients with data and insights in “near realtime.”

Similarly, German digital banking fintech Fidor Solutions recently teamed up with Vancouver-based conversational AI firm Finn AI to produce a chatbot with natural language processing technology.