Lloyds Banking Group is introducing Athena, a new customer AI knowledge hub and its first large-scale generative artificial intelligence product, to better support customer service colleagues.
Leveraging AI, Lloyds Banking Group plans to drastically reduce the time its customer service colleagues spend searching for resolutions. The Group serves around 28 million customers, with customer service colleagues in telephone and online banking teams helping around two million customers every month.
Lloyds says its customer service colleagues spend considerable time navigating its 13,000 internal information articles to understand the information and resolve the customer’s query.
To resolve this challenge, it began using Athena, a one-stop knowledge shop of information that can quickly scan the 13,000 internal articles. Prior to introducing Athena, searches would take an average of 59 seconds, with Athena bringing that time down to around 20 seconds – a 66 per cent time reduction.
Since the start of 2025, 21,000 Group colleagues have already used Athena to search 2.1 million times. By the end of the year, the Group aims to introduce Athena to many more colleagues in relevant customer support roles, hitting an estimated 40 million searches.
“With Athena, our colleagues can support our customers faster and more effectively than ever before,” said Pete Steel, consumer engagement director at Lloyds Banking Group. “Simplifying the process of accessing the information our customers need, in a fraction of the time, means we focus on valuable conversations with our customers, save them time and support them in the moments that matter most.”
As a tool for enhancing the customer experience, AI is expected to bring at least £50million in revenue growth and productivity improvements in 2025.
“This technology isn’t just an upgrade – it’s a revolution,” Ranil Boteju, group chief data and analytics officer at Lloyds Banking Group, also added. “We are freeing up thousands of hours as Athena puts critical information at our colleagues’ fingertips, leaving them free to help our customers with more complex, bespoke needs.”
