AI-driven contact centres serve customers on their terms

Con­sumers have become more demand­ing of their finan­cial ser­vices providers over the past decade, expect­ing banks to meet them where and when they want to inter­act through their pre­ferred chan­nel and device. When it comes to the inter­ac­tions them­selves, they expect to be served not only quick­ly but in a per­son­alised and con­tex­tu­al way that doesn’t require answer­ing the same ques­tions repeat­ed­ly while being passed through dif­fer­ent chan­nels and agents.

While these are firm expec­ta­tions of con­tact cen­tres across all indus­tries in the dig­i­tal age, cus­tomer emo­tions often run deep­er when deal­ing with banks — the guardians of our mon­ey and day-to-day trans­ac­tions. Con­sumers increas­ing­ly want banks to not just pro­vide finan­cial ser­vices but also advice, look­ing out for their over­all finan­cial well­be­ing.

There’s a lot at stake. The days of stay­ing with a bank for life are dwin­dling, while dig­i­tal-first banks have made the abil­i­ty to switch between finan­cial ser­vices insti­tu­tions seam­less and easy. In a recent glob­al study by Talkdesk, almost two-thirds of finan­cial ser­vices cus­tomers said a sin­gle poor cus­tomer ser­vice expe­ri­ence will neg­a­tive­ly impact their brand loy­al­ty, pre­sent­ing a stark and imme­di­ate threat to incum­bent banks.

“Bank­ing cus­tomers today are no longer sticky,” says Rahul Kumar, direc­tor of finan­cial ser­vices strat­e­gy at cus­tomer expe­ri­ence solu­tions firm Talkdesk. “The pro­lif­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy means our inter­ac­tions with mon­ey are now con­stant; it’s embed­ded in every­thing we do. And if some­thing goes wrong, peo­ple ulti­mate­ly expect their bank to be avail­able, proac­tive and able to resolve issues prompt­ly. If that expe­ri­ence is not deliv­ered, they can very quick­ly take their busi­ness some­where else, which is a real threat for banks.”

Sev­en in 10 cus­tomers are more loy­al to finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies that are active­ly invest­ing in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and accel­er­at­ing their pace of inno­va­tion, the Talkdesk research found. How­ev­er, expec­ta­tions are fail­ing to be met, in large part because banks are using tra­di­tion­al con­tact cen­tre solu­tions not built specif­i­cal­ly for finan­cial ser­vices firms.

Giv­en banks have com­plex ecosys­tems sup­port­ing com­plex bank­ing process­es, it has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to adapt to cus­tomer expec­ta­tions that evolve in real time. The instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion desired by con­sumers today can­not be deliv­ered by lega­cy tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tems, leav­ing incum­bent banks strug­gling to keep pace with the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence offered by the nim­ble, dig­i­tal-native upstarts that have emerged in recent years.

“Con­sumers want every­thing now, but banks aren’t able to deliv­er that expe­ri­ence through their cur­rent con­tact cen­tres,” Kumar says. “Lega­cy tech­nol­o­gy is a key inhibitor to inno­vat­ing quick­ly and deliv­er­ing the con­tact cen­tre expe­ri­ences that cus­tomers expect.”

To help finan­cial insti­tu­tions over­come these bar­ri­ers, Talkdesk has cre­at­ed the first cloud con­tact cen­tre solu­tion built specif­i­cal­ly for banks. Talkdesk Finan­cial Ser­vices Expe­ri­ence Cloud for Bank­ing sim­pli­fies the com­plex tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tem that has been devel­oped in large finan­cial insti­tu­tions over the years, offer­ing a uni­fied, mod­ern, secure and intel­li­gent plat­form that is pur­pose-built to sup­port cross-chan­nel cus­tomer jour­neys in bank­ing today.

With the solu­tion, banks can orches­trate a num­ber of mod­ern cus­tomer jour­neys. They can offer a white glove expe­ri­ence for lend­ing using Talkdesk video chat and co-browse capa­bil­i­ties, for instance. They can use AI to not only auto­mate sim­ple inter­ac­tions but also proac­tive­ly engage cus­tomers in con­tex­tu­al inter­ac­tions. They can also ele­vate the expe­ri­ence of their agents by pro­vid­ing a sin­gle pane of glass that pro­vides them with all the tools and infor­ma­tion they need to deliv­er the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, while dri­ving pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy for the banks.

“These are all facets of what the Talkdesk plat­form enables, pur­pose-built for bank­ing,” says Kumar. “And as we are a turnkey solu­tion, offer­ing all of these capa­bil­i­ties and inte­gra­tions into back-end sys­tems, we can sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­ate time to val­ue for a con­tact cen­tre invest­ment by giv­ing finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies every­thing they need in a sin­gle sys­tem.”

AI is set to be a cen­tral enabler of the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ences in bank­ing. Con­tact cen­tres are bogged down by thou­sands of rou­tine queries and requests that are easy to deal with but dom­i­nate the valu­able time of agents, such as ques­tions about account bal­ances, recent trans­ac­tions or reset­ting pass­words. Using AI tech­nol­o­gy to auto­mate these sim­ple inter­ac­tions ele­vates the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence by facil­i­tat­ing fast self-ser­vice.

When more com­plex inter­ac­tions are passed onto human agents, AI is there again to improve inter­ac­tions through con­tex­tu­al analy­sis. This could involve giv­ing agents tips and guid­ance, real-time prompts or access to rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion based on the intent of the con­ver­sa­tion. The result, again, is that issues and enquiries are dealt with much faster.

For banks, the val­ue is not only in the improved cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and the knock-on impacts on cus­tomer churn, but dri­ving cost effi­cien­cies too. The cost of ser­vic­ing a cus­tomer with an agent is esti­mat­ed to be around eight to 10 times high­er than the cost of ser­vic­ing a cus­tomer with AI. Even when human agents are required, their abil­i­ty to ser­vice peo­ple faster, sup­port­ed by AI, reduces aver­age han­dling times, and there­fore costs, fur­ther.

“The future of bank­ing is going to be more com­modi­tised,” says Kumar. “New­er busi­ness mod­els are com­ing into play, such as bank­ing as a ser­vice, embed­ded finance and mar­ket­place offer­ings, which will only lead to even more com­plex ecosys­tems with mul­ti­ple part­ners play­ing a role in orches­trat­ing a sin­gle cus­tomer jour­ney. Our goal is to help sim­pli­fy and deliv­er the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, even in these com­plex ecosys­tems.

“We also believe the future of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in bank­ing is not just dig­i­tal, it is hybrid. We expect a clever mix of tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple to be the most preva­lent inter­ac­tion mod­el for banks in the years ahead. Our abil­i­ty to deliv­er a cohe­sive, con­nect­ed expe­ri­ence in this hybrid mod­el is key. We con­tin­ue to make invest­ments in AI to make it more pre­dic­tive and improve the self-ser­vice expe­ri­ence, but we’re also invest­ing in ensur­ing the agent expe­ri­ence — deliv­er­ing those cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions — is seam­less, fast and secure.”

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it talkdesk.com/banking

Pro­mot­ed by Talkdesk