Search Results (7)

The use of machine learning (ML) methods has been widely discussed for over a decade. The search for the optimal model is still a challenge that researchers seek to address. Despite advances in current work that surpass the limitations of previous ones, research still faces new challenges in every field. For the automatic targeting of customers in a banking telemarketing campaign, the use of ML-based approaches in previous work has not been able to show transparency in the processing of heterogeneous data, achieve optimal performance or use minimal resources. In this paper, we introduce a class membership-based (CMB) classifier which is a transparent approach well adapted to heterogeneous data that exploits nominal variables in the decision function. These dummy variables are often either suppressed or coded in an arbitrary way in most works without really evaluating their impact on the final performance of the models. In many cases, their coding either favours or disfavours the learning model performance without necessarily reflecting reality, which leads to over-fitting or decreased performance. In this work, we applied the CMB approach to data from a bank telemarketing campaign to build an optimal model for predicting potential customers before launching a campaign. The results obtained suggest that the CMB approach can predict the success of future prospecting more accurately than previous work. Furthermore, in addition to its better performance in terms of accuracy (97.3%), the model also gives a very close score for the AUC (95.9%), showing its stability, which would be very unfavourable to over-fitting. Full article

Telemarketing is a widely adopted direct marketing technique in banks. Since customers hardly respond positively, data prediction models can help in selecting the most likely prospective customers. We aim to develop a classifier accuracy to predict which customer will subscribe to a long-term deposit proposed by a bank. Accordingly, this paper focuses on a combination of resampling, in order to reduce the imbalanced data, using feature selection, to reduce the complexity of data computing and dimension reduction of inefficiency data modeling. The performed operation has shown an improvement in the performance of the classification algorithm in terms of accuracy. The experimental results were run on a real bank dataset and the J48 decision tree achieved 94.39% accuracy prediction, with 0.975 sensitivity and 0.709 specificity, showing better results when compared to other approaches reported in the existing literature, such as logistic regression (91.79 accuracy; 0.975 sensitivity; 0.495 specificity) and Naive Bayes classifier (90.82% accuracy; 0.961 sensitivity; 0.507 specificity). Furthermore, our resampling and feature selection approach resulted in improved accuracy (94.39%) when compared to a state-of-the-art approach based on a fuzzy algorithm (92.89%). Full article

Outbound telemarketing is an efficient direct marketing method wherein telemarketers solicit potential customers by phone to purchase or subscribe to products or services. However, those who are not interested in the information or offers provided by outbound telemarketing generally experience such interactions negatively because they perceive telemarketing as spam. In this study, therefore, we investigate the use of deep learning models to predict the success of outbound telemarketing for insurance policy loans. We propose an explainable multiple-filter convolutional neural network model called XmCNN that can alleviate overfitting and extract various high-level features using hundreds of input variables. To enable the practical application of the proposed method, we also examine ensemble models to further improve its performance. We experimentally demonstrate that the proposed XmCNN significantly outperformed conventional deep neural network models and machine learning models. Furthermore, a deep learning ensemble model constructed using the XmCNN architecture achieved the lowest false positive rate (4.92%) and the highest F1-score (87.47%). We identified important variables influencing insurance policy loan prediction through the proposed model, suggesting that these factors should be considered in practice. The proposed method may increase the efficiency of outbound telemarketing and reduce the spam problems caused by calling non-potential customers. Full article

This study examines technology effectiveness for industry demand in which artificial intelligence (AI) is applied in the financial sector. It summarizes prior studies on chatbot and customer service and investigates theories on acceptance attitudes for innovative technologies. By setting variables, the study examines bank revenue methodologically and assesses the impact of customer service and chatbot on bank revenues through customer age classification. The results indicate that new product-oriented funds or housing subscription savings are more suitable for purchase through customer service than through chatbot. However, services for existing products through chatbot positively affect banks’ net income. When classified by age, purchases by the majority age group in the channel positively affect bank profits. Finally, there is a tendency to process small banking transactions through the chatbot system, which saves transaction and management costs, positively affecting profits. Through empirical analysis, we first examine the effect of an AI-based chatbot system implemented to strengthen financial soundness and suggest policy alternatives. Second, we use banking data to increase the study’s real-life applicability and prove that problems in customer service can be solved through a chatbot system. Finally, we investigate how resistance to technology can be reduced and efficiently accommodated. Full article

Internet telephony permit callers to manage self-asserted profiles without any subscription contract nor identification proof. These cost-free services have attracted many telemarketers and spammers who generate unsolicited nuisance calls. Upon detection, they simply rejoin the network with a new identity to continue their malicious activities. Nuisance calls are highly disruptive when compared to email and social spam. They not only include annoying telemarketing calls but also contain scam and voice phishing which involves security risk for subscribers. Therefore, it remains a major challenge for Internet telephony providers to detect and avoid nuisance calls efficiently. In this paper, we present a new approach that uses caller reputation to detect different kinds of nuisance calls generated in the network. The reputation is computed in a hybrid manner by extracting information from call data records and using recommendations from reliable communicating participants. The behavior of the caller is assessed by extracting call features such as call-rate, call duration, and call density. Long term and short term reputations are computed to quickly detect the changing behavior of callers. Furthermore, our approach involves an efficient mechanism to combat whitewashing attacks performed by malicious callers to continue generating nuisance calls in the network. We conduct simulations to compute the performance of our proposed model. The experiments conclude that the proposed reputation model is an effective method to detect different types of nuisance calls while avoiding false detection of legitimate calls. Full article

The banking industry has been seeking novel ways to leverage database marketing efficiency. However, the nature of bank marketing data hindered the researchers in the process of finding a reliable analytical scheme. Various studies have attempted to improve the performance of Artificial Neural Networks in predicting clients’ intentions but did not resolve the issue of imbalanced data. This research aims at improving the performance of predicting the willingness of bank clients to apply for a term deposit in highly imbalanced datasets. It proposes enhanced Artificial Neural Network models (i.e., cost-sensitive) to mitigate the dramatic effects of highly imbalanced data, without distorting the original data samples. The generated models are evaluated, validated, and consequently compared to different machine-learning models. A real-world telemarketing dataset from a Portuguese bank is used in all the experiments. The best prediction model achieved 79% of geometric mean, and misclassification errors were minimized to 0.192, 0.229 of Type I & Type II Errors, respectively. In summary, an interesting Meta-Cost method improved the performance of the prediction model without imposing significant processing overhead or altering original data samples. Full article

Pharmacy personnel often answer telephones to respond to pharmacy customers (subjects) who received messages from automated systems. This research examines the communication process in terms of how users interact and engage with pharmacies after receiving automated messages. No study has directly addressed automated telephone calls and subjects’ interactions. The purpose of this study is to test the interpersonal communication (IC) process of uncertainty in subjects in receipt of automated telephone calls ATCs from pharmacies. Subjects completed a survey of validated scales for Satisfaction (S); Relevance (R); Quality (Q); Need for Cognitive Closure (NFC). Relationships between S, R, Q, NFC, and subject preference to ATCs were analyzed to determine whether subjects contacting pharmacies display information seeking behavior. Results demonstrated that seeking information occurs if subjects: are dissatisfied with the content of the ATC; perceive that the Q of ATC is high and like receiving the ATC, or have a high NFC and do not like receiving ATCs. Other interactions presented complexities amongst uncertainty and tolerance of NFC within the IC process. Full article