Yorkshire Building Society touts customer service gains with AI agents

Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) is using AI agents to help reduce admin and improve customer service – and the high street lender said it's recording solid results so far.

Three AI agents named Penelope, Sam, and Alf are supporting customer service teams by summarizing complex complaints, searching policies and past cases, and drafting member communications, all with human oversight.

Penelope helps draft final responses for complaints, while Alf supports this process by searching policies, procedures, and past cases. Sam, meanwhile, summarizes long or detailed complaints.

According to the building society, Sam is saving an estimated seven minutes per use, with Penelope saving up to 26 minutes when supporting more complex complaint responses.

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“That time really adds up,” said Polly Conner, senior manager of customer relations at YBS. “We’re able to minimize the amount of time staff are spending on admin tasks and actually spend that time talking to our customers, helping them resolve the challenges they’ve faced.”

The high level of regulation around financial services means that handling complaints from the building society's three million members and customers requires a lot of admin.

That can mean switching between multiple systems, searching for policies, summarizing long histories, and drafting detailed responses in advance of any conversation.

"This technology is going to give our members more choice and better access to information when they need it most,” said Simone Fox, director of customer support at YBS. “But there will always be a human available to speak to them when they need it.”

AI in banking

The results highlighted by YBS come amidst a sharpened focus on AI in the financial services sector, with a host of major providers ramping up adoption of the technology.

In January this year, Nationwide announced a partnership with Moneyhub to launch an AI-powered transaction analytics platform for customers across the UK.

Lloyds Banking Group, meanwhile, is also accelerating AI innovation internally in a bid to drive customer support capabilities. The bank unveiled plans to launch a new AI Academy earlier this year, with the aim of providing 67,000 staff with practical skills.

Building the foundations for AI

Before rolling out new tools, YBS built a cloud native data platform with Microsoft Fabric and strengthened data governance through Microsoft Purview.

It also enhanced its security with Microsoft Sentinel, expanded infrastructure foundations in Azure, and introduced Windows 365 remote desktops to enable secure, flexible working.

“Our ambition with data and AI is to improve our organization, help our colleagues be more efficient, make better decisions, and ultimately, serve our members better,” said Rebecca Fitzgerald, YBS director of data and AI. “All built on trust, with responsibility built in.”

Elsewhere, YBS is piloting AI agents to support internal risk and control testing, with early results suggesting efficiency savings of around 40%.

The high street lender is also rolling out a new customer service platform built using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact-Centre-As-A-Service. This brings customer history, previous self-service activity, and relevant guidance into one place for colleagues.

An AI assistant can summarize cases, highlight relevant knowledge and help draft responses, reducing the need to search across multiple systems.

“The platform is really going to help our colleagues better serve our members,” Fox commented. “It’s going to enable them to have a 360‑degree view of our members, so they’re not having to move between various platforms.”

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