Citigroup launched a bot for Facebook Messenger a year ago in Singapore, and will begin rollout of a bot in its own app in the U.S. this quarter, “in the next few months,” Alice Milligan, Citi’s chief client digital experience officer, told Bank Innovation. Citi clarified after the publication of this article that there is no set date on which the bot will be available to its entire customer base.

The bot will be branded, possibly, as in Singapore, as Citi Bot (in Singapore, Citi Bot SG.) “Something like Citi Bot,” Milligan said. “Our customer research showed customers didn’t love the naming of bots.” Bots will seamlessly yet transparently hand off to a live agent when needed. Citi is ahead of many peers on this, and good thing — California recently introduced legislation around bots that indicated companies using bots will need to be transparent (by July 2019) about that use for California residents.

Earlier this year, Citi launched a PFM service, open to non-customers as well, which aggregated customers’ other cards and accounts into its app. Citi has ramped up its effort in digital (it was the first major bank to build an app for the Apple Watch) while it has slimmed down its physical presence, focusing on affluent customers in major metropolitan areas. The move was informed by customer research, Milligan said. Financial wellness was a major concern of Citi’s customers, and the bank wanted to address that.

“One finding was customers want to spend more moments in the moment,” Milligan said. “They don’t want to think about their bank.” Citi, she said, would try to add value to an experience without being intrusive. “Sentiment is shifting and customers are more comfortable with data and relevant offers. When someone is logged in and authenticated, it’s irrelevant offers that annoy them.” In mobile, she said, “As we’ve gotten more sophisticated, it’s less about business rules and human intervention and more about positioning ourselves around providing value to the customer. It’s not just transactional.”

Citi has a bifurcated customer base, with the urban/affluent on one side and the larger card userbase on the other. The PFM service, Milligan said, was “a kind of financial planning for people who can’t afford a financial advisor. Where’s my money going? Offering insights into spending, setting goals, setting targets.” Bringing in other issuers was a way of connecting other aspects of a customer’s life, Milligan said. Siri was also incorporated into the app.

“We were able to leverage and learn a lot from the segment,” Milligan said. This learning was often relevant to the affluent customer segment as well.

Citi is also making changes at the branch level, with mobile popup activation at branches and the usual removal of teller lines and emphasis on side-by-side interactions. The bank is also doing “roadshows,” temporary workshops at branches to “teach digital.” Given the company’s obsession with data and rollouts based on customer research, how does data collection and management work at the branch level, and what does the data coming out of the branch look like? Branch banking is not Milligan’s focus, but she noted, “We’ve got a tremendous amount of data and we’re good with structured data, so the information we’d be capturing would be useful, across all channels.”

Milligan spoke on a panel about artificial intelligence at The Economist‘s Finance Disrupted conference yesterday. She was joined by both banks and fintech companies on the panel, and commented afterward, “The purely digital companies do think fundamentally differently.” Citi wants to do things differently too.