15 million chats per year: Lessons in AI-driven customer conversations from Lloyds Banking Group with Cainan Wright and John Young

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Once switched off during busy periods, Lloyds Banking Group’s chatbot now handles more than 15 million conversations a year. Learn what it really takes to build AI solutions that customers trust with their money.

We sit down with Cainan Wright, Senior Product Owner, and John Young, AI Lead - Chatbots and Generative AI, from Lloyds Banking Group, to explore their remarkable nine-year journey in building one of the UK's most successful banking chatbots. From handling 3 million conversations in 2021 to over 15 million in 2025, they share the hard-earned lessons of transforming a rather "unloved" virtual assistant into a mission-critical service for almost 27 million customers.

We cover how the team stabilised their service by focusing on the basics, investing in design expertise, and securing organisational buy-in through demonstrating clear value.

Cainan and John also share valuable insights into their pragmatic approach to generative AI, explaining how they combine deterministic processes with generative language capabilities to deliver the best customer experience while maintaining brand consistency and ensuring regulatory compliance.

The team's journey offers important lessons about perseverance and the importance of striking a balance between innovation and responsibility when deploying AI in a highly regulated industry.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

01:34 – Meet Lloyds Banking Group

03:18 – The unloved virtual assistant era

05:30 – AI before ChatGPT

06:50 – Stabilising the service and earning trust

14:23 – From underloved to mission critical

16:55 – Buy-in from stakeholders to scale AI capabilities

18:41 – Defining new AI roles in banking

20:51 – Scaling from 3 to 15 million conversations

25:15 – How to handle a 5x increase in three years

27:43 – Experiments with generative AI in banking

30:24 – Using an LLM classifier

31:07 – Improving tools within teams

32:45 – Using generative AI for value and impact

34:56 – Valuable design research sessions

38:56 – Meeting customer expectations with generative AI

46:04 – Maintaining consistency in probabilistic landscape

49:30 – The right tool for the right job in conversational AI

55:26 – How do you measure the impact of generative AI?

56:13 – Responsible AI and proving business value

1:01:10 – The next 12 months

1:07:02 – Magic wand moments

1:11:34 – If the team could start over again

1:14:03 – Closing remarks from Kane

Show notes

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