Trade Republic has trained up more than 1,000 customer service agents, amid criticism of its chatbot service.
In a world of finance, where automation, AI and chatbots are becoming more commonplace, Germany’s most valuable startup is taking the opposite path.
Trade Republic, which is valued at €12.5 billion, is ditching its customer service AI chatbots and replacing them with more than 1,000 human customer service agents to ensure that customers can speak to real people.
The Berlin-based stock trading app says it has invested a double-digit million euro sum to provide new infrastructure, product development, and the training of more than 1,000 customer service agents who provide direct assistance to customers in eight languages.
Christian Hecker, co-founder and CEO, Trade Republic, said: “Our goal is to be the long-term home for our customers’ entire assets. Our customer service has been completely redesigned. At its core are trained agents who can provide personalised assistance to customers.
“Within the next twelve months, we aim to offer the best customer service of any bank in Europe. That is our ambition.”
The move is in response to criticism from users in its domestic market of Germany and Austria to its customer service offering with customers complaining about poor accessibility, long waiting times, and poor support, according to reports.
The new human-led customer service is replacing its hybrid approach, which uses a mix of AI chatbots and human agents, which only offered a standard chat function, with no live chat or telephone hotline.
Trade Republic, which operates across 18 European countries, has more than 10m customers, it says.
The new customer service is available 24/7, free of charge, in the Trade Republic app, where customers can call and chat with human customer service agents.
If questions are not resolved immediately, customers can track the status of their request live in the app, Trade Republic said. Trade Republic is working with an external provider that is supplying the customer service agents.
Many fintechs and banks are investing heavily in AI to improve their customer service offering. In the UK, Starling Bank and Revolut have recently rolled out AI financial assistants to help improve their offerings to customers.
But last year Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted that its focus on cost-cutting through AI across customer service had led to lower quality and Klarna went on a recruitment drive to ensure customers had the option to speak to a real person.