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Next-gen IVRs "JPMorgan Chase built an in-house AI to review
commercial finance contracts," she said. "Coin, named for
IVR systems continue to evolve, routing calls long after contract intelligence, could process a year's worth of legal
merchants stopped phoning in credit card authorizations. analysis in a matter of seconds. By saving time and taking
IVRs that harness the power of AI can recognize a caller's over mundane tasks, Coin freed the legal team to focus on
best path, anticipate customer needs and intelligently more complex assignments."
route calls, Hofman stated. Instead of simply recognizing
when someone says "two," today's voice response systems Reuben wondered how small or midsize businesses,
understand complex phrases and "purposes" for someone's without the aid of a giant team of data scientists and
call. By recognizing a caller who is "having a problem technologists, might apply AI models. When you look at
with my internet," the system can route a call to the correct examples like Coin, you might begin to wonder if AIs will
specialist more efficiently. take our jobs, she said. While I don't see that happening in
the near future, I thought it might be useful to reframe the
Hofman envisions a future in which IVR technologies question. Instead of asking whether AI will replace me, I
can analyze caller histories; next-gen IVRs would know began to consider what aspects of my job I would like to
if a customer had previously called support, sent a PDF replace with AI, she added.
of their bill or chatted online with a representative. This
knowledge will empower IVR systems to seamlessly Reuben recalled early commercials for the Apple App
direct customers to the best option, before they even state Store that would say: You want to do this? There's an app
the reason for their calls. for that. You want to do this other thing? There's an app
for that. Apple even registered the phrase, "There's an app
"IVRs of the future will focus on self-service, allowing for that."
companies to provide a hyper-specialized level of service,"
Hofman said. "This will help to improve the overall Reuben reframed Apple's phrase by asking if there's an AI
customer experience by evaluating customer interactions app for whatever she wanted to do. "Whenever I came up
and tying those interactions to actionable revenue." with a repetitive task that I didn't want to do anymore, I
Automating risk, security would ask myself, 'Is there an AI for that?' and I would
begin my search," she said. "Over the past three years, I've
Rich Clayton, vice president of analytics at Oracle, said done a lot of experiments, looking for AI applications that
demand for transparency across the global regulatory could assist my work."
landscape underscores the need for improved risk
management. Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide Human-like, only faster
automated authentication, monitoring and threat detection "AIs perform cognitive functions typically associated
to protect merchant portfolios. with humans, but they're able to manage large datasets
at very high speeds," Reuben said. "Their capabilities
Automated forms of risk management can also help include machine vision, voice and pattern recognition and
merchant defeat online forms of fraud, according to natural language processing. In some cases, machines are
Sandy Travers, founder and CEO at TranZlytics LLC, a learning how to program themselves. This technology is
fraud-prevention platform. "Our secure portal highlights accelerating innovation. Self-driving cars, for example, are
real-time activity and threat-level alerts, enabling banks, powered by AI."
processors, ISOs and merchants to thwart CNP [card not
present] fraud before it happens," Travers said. "It helps When she began experimenting with AI in her business
ISOs manage portfolio risk by showing them where the life, Reuben summarized her AI interactions as saying,
bad actors are." "Hey, Siri, set a timer for eight minutes." What began as an
uncharted experiment led to a range of different areas and
Fraud is continually evolving, Travers noted, making it options, from geo navigation to transcription to building
critical to evaluate each fraud type and consistently shut web pages to improving her mental focus to bookkeeping,
down emerging nefarious schemes to stop new iterations she stated.
from developing. AI solutions, combined with human
oversight, are excellent defenses against increasingly One of the more successful tests involved scheduling
prevalent fraud vectors, she stated. meetings. Anyone who has done business with Reuben

There's an AI for that over the past three years has probably interacted with
Andrew or Amy, the AIs that manage her calendar. "As
As AI options take over the more mundane tasks a consultant, I frequently schedule meetings, but hate the
associated with managing a business, they free executives inevitable email ping pong that happens as you go back
and customer service representatives to work on more and forth," she said. "And rescheduling and cancelling
complex tasks. For Deborah Reuben, president at Reuben meetings can also be labor intensive. X.ai is a great
Creative LLC, this summarizes AI's core value proposition. solution: Andrew or Amy can manage my calendar, using
APIs to work across multiple platforms."

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