The San Francisco-headquartered firm is looking to break fresh ground with its new online customer service platform.

Wells Fargo is testing a new online chat service powered by artificial intelligence for Facebook Messenger, as big banks across the world increasingly look to use technology to improve customer service. 

The bank's new “bot” for Facebook's popular instant messaging service is part of the company's innovation agenda, which focuses on incorporating financial services into third-party environments. The pilot has initially been rolled out to several hundred Wells Fargo employees, and in coming months, the bank plans to invite a few thousand clients to try it out. 

Wells Fargo's move comes as banks, wealth managers and asset managers across the world continue to revamp outdated technology systems and introduce new ones that harness artificial intelligence to interact with clients, removing the need for humans to handle basic client questions. Earlier this year, Canada's largest lender hired an artificial intelligence luminary as head academic advisor to its research unit. 

It is not yet clear, however, whether the service will be extended to Wells Fargo's asset management clients and those of Abbot Downing, the firm's private banking unit.

“Our goal is to deliver information ‘in the moment’ to help customers make better informed financial decisions,” said Steve Ellis, head of Wells Fargo's innovation group. “AI technology allows us to take an experience that would have required our customers to navigate through several pages on our website, and turn it into a simple conversation in a chat environment. That’s a huge time-saving convenience for busy customers who are already frequent users of [Facebook] Messenger.” 

Wells Fargo began using Facebook Messenger to provide customer assistance in 2009. Last year, the bank adopted the service as its main channel for addressing customers' common questions and service issues.