Bank of America adds AI to EricaAssist for faster calls

Bank of America has added generative AI features to EricaAssist, its tool for customer service employees, to help staff resolve client needs more quickly.

More than 18,000 customer service representatives use EricaAssist as a human-assisted AI agent during client conversations. The tool works alongside staff on calls, summarising why a client is calling, gathering relevant information, and suggesting next steps based on the employee's role and the client's relationship with the bank.

The latest changes are designed to deliver contextual guidance in under three seconds, allowing employees to keep their attention on the conversation while receiving real-time prompts and summaries.

According to the bank, EricaAssist has cut average call times by nearly one minute per interaction, an efficiency gain for call centres that it says also improves the client experience.

The update is part of a broader push by large banks to apply generative AI within customer service operations rather than only in consumer-facing chatbots. In this case, Bank of America is using the technology as an internal assistant, with the employee remaining responsible for the interaction and any outcome.

Ashley Ross, Head of Consumer Client Experience and Business Transformation at Bank of America, described the change as an extension of the bank's mix of human support and technology.

"EricaAssist reflects our high tech, high touch approach," Ross said. "By combining human judgment with real-time AI guidance, we're helping employees navigate complex topics more easily and serve clients more effectively in the moments that matter most."

The upgrade is also part of a wider technology spending programme. Bank of America spends USD 14 billion a year on technology, with more than USD 4 billion directed to new initiatives, including AI.

The investment shows how major financial groups are trying to embed AI tools into day-to-day operations while maintaining tighter controls than in open consumer systems. In regulated sectors such as banking, internal support tools may be easier to deploy because they are designed to assist staff rather than act independently.

Tom Ellis, Chief Information Officer and Head of Consumer Technology at Bank of America, said governance remained a central part of the design.

"This technology helps our teammates deliver relevant insights in seconds, while operating with strong governance, transparency, and accountability," Ellis said.

EricaAssist recommends next steps without interrupting the flow of the conversation, supporting customer service representatives handling a range of servicing issues.

Wider roll-out

Bank of America expects to extend EricaAssist into additional servicing scenarios and business lines later this year, suggesting the current deployment has focused on a defined set of customer service workflows before a broader internal roll-out.

Bank of America serves nearly 70 million clients and has about 60 million verified digital users, giving it a large base across which to test and scale service technology. Its consumer footprint also includes around 3,500 retail financial centres and about 15,000 ATMs in the United States.

The bank's approach reflects a common pattern in financial services, where firms are introducing generative AI first in tightly controlled settings such as call support, document search, and workflow assistance. Those uses can offer measurable productivity gains, particularly when institutions can point to lower handling times or faster access to information.

For Bank of America, the immediate metric highlighted was the reduction in call duration, with EricaAssist cutting average calls by nearly one minute per interaction.