United KingdomFinance and insurance2022 – ongoingBath Building Society
Bea customer and intermediary chatbot, subsequently paused
Bath Building Society paused Bea after it helped too few customers
Problem
Mortgage intermediaries needed quick answers about lending criteria, including outside staff working hours.
Approach
Bath Building Society launched Bea with Consectus in August 2022 alongside its live chat service. The conversational AI answered common questions and offered human escalation. In its 2024 annual report, the society said it had paused Bea while further developing the underlying AI because it had helped some customers but too few overall.
Results
No published figures
Takeaway
The society paused the service despite some successful interactions. It did not publish a threshold for acceptable customer assistance.
Categories
- Size
- Small business
- Industry
- Finance and insurance
- Business function
- Customer service
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Conversational and voice AI
- Adoption
- Vendor solution
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
The society reported that Bea had helped some customers but had not helped enough. It paused the assistant while developing the AI further.
The report described Bea's launch with Consectus to answer intermediary questions about mortgage criteria. Complex enquiries could transfer to staff during office hours or proceed by email outside them.
Full details are in the original sources.