"Money is simple. The art is raising trust and dealing with people," stated the IBM Institute for Business Value in its publication "Fit, Focused and Ready to Fight. How Banks Can Get in Shape for the Battle Ahead", published shortly after the near global financial meltdown began in the late 2000s.
Even now, retail banks win by gaining, keeping and growing customers. "Customers create value for banks by buying more products and services more often and thereby increasing banks' profitability. Overcoming the challenge of adding new customers, keeping them longer and increasing their value starts with understanding the quality of customers' experiences," highlights Ebrahim Dinat, COO at contact centre solution provider Ocular Technologies.
Detrimental to these financial institutions is when contact centre agents lack ready access to valuable customer information housed in the CRM system - limiting cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
In "Mastering customer engagement challenges in retail banking", a white paper by Aspect Software, an Ocular Technologies software partner, most retail banking institutions are shown to be siloed institutions, restricting the ability to provide real-time reporting and analytics on customer interactions, leading to poor management decisions, inefficient workforce management and agent attrition. "As many banking transactions are complex and time-consuming, such an operation results in frustrated customers and an increased defection. It is proven that only a streamlined solution can break down the barriers, produce more efficient customer interactions and improve profitability," says Dinat.
The white paper has researched how today's banking experience is perceived as so confusing that many customers react with high levels of stress and frustration, accompanied by the potential for distrust.
According to Ernst and Young: "Three clear priority areas are emerging alongside rebuilding trust: focusing on strengthening the brand, segmenting the customer base to further personalise product and service offerings, and making measurable improvements to service quality." With these priorities in mind, retail banks have a significant opportunity to streamline their internal processes and workforce to provide integrated, consistent interactions that build consumer trust, whether conducted through self-service portals, direct conversation, social media or other online channels.
"In South Africa, we offer our customers Aspect Unified IP, which fully integrates with Microsoft Lync Server 2013. This empowers agents to properly delve into the organisation and locate the most qualified available expert to assist a customer by means of presence, instant messaging (IM), voice and desktop sharing.
"The benefits in retail banks throughout the US have shown how this solution not only improved the experience of current and future customers, but also the organisation's bottom line," says Dinat.
Another important element to note is that banks continue to face varying dimensions of risk associated with customer defaults, compliance and operations. Deduced in the white paper is that improving risk management by eliminating operational silos, increasing transparency and implementing consistent risk management practices will almost always be their mandate.
The paper further shows that the inability to collect debt drives down profit for banks, but better visibility into the customer may reduce this risk. Agents can make better decisions based on their holistic view of customer interactions with analytical applications that provide information such as a customer's credit rating, income, propensity to purchase and payment patterns on loans.
"Proactive collection strategies based on captured customer data can help identify a loan default risk early on, offset the cost of write-downs and maintain customer satisfaction. Real-time and historical business intelligence is used to improve outbound campaign calling strategies and effectiveness - enabling collections to call customers at the right number, at the right time, to optimise recovered revenues. Customers are satisfied with the outcome of their interactions, and retail banks minimise bad debt and staffing costs.
"We believe retail banks can reduce their risk from not meeting the new regulatory compliance guidelines by utilising Aspect's workforce management tools to ensure contact centre agents are appropriately coached on the implications of non-compliance," adds Dinat.
Another area of retail banking risk is in the treatment of sensitive customer information. In many situations, purchasing a financial product requires multiple forms, each containing private customer information such as income, home addresses and phone numbers. At any point in the process, the information can be compromised, putting both the retail bank and consumer at risk for identity theft.
"Aspect and Microsoft can create secure workflows that will protect sensitive information through automated approval processes - reducing risk exposure. Files no longer reside on desks waiting to be forwarded from individual to individual for approval," says Dinat.
As retail banks take advantage of new ways to communicate with their customers and next-generation customer contact technologies, they're empowered to make the customer experience a focal point across the enterprise. This creates exceptional customer experience leadership that translates into additional customers, long-lasting loyalty and positive word of mouth that adds revenue to the bottom line.
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