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Executive Summary
To manage and mitigate risks in a post-pandemic world, retail banks must embrace new ways of doing business. Higher customer expectations, coupled with stay-at-home measures, have accelerated the adoption of new digital banking technologies. In its Technology Banking Vision 2020: Driving Value and Values during COVID-19,Accenture says that banks must leverage these new technology advancements to capitalize on the opportunity.
With physical branch closures and reduced in-person tra�c, banking contact centers face new burdens on personnel, systems, and infrastructure. Ballooning call volumes and reduced agent capacity are too frequently resulting in poor customer experiences.
On top of this, today's banks continue to face increasing competition from non-traditional banking services, such as PayPal, Venmo (a PayPal subsidiary), Apple Pay, and a slew of other online financial technology (fintech) services. Fintech companies make it e�ortless for customers to open new accounts, perform transactions such as borrow money, invest, or transfer funds directly from their computer or mobile phone.
In addition to their explosive growth – only accelerated by COVID-19 – these digital platforms o�er convenient, innovative, and uniqueo�erings for consumers and businesses and are particularlyattractive for digitally-savvy millennials. Fintech solutions, combinedwith COVID-19 challenges, have upped the ante for traditional banks.
The stakes are high. According to 2020 Greenwich Market Pulse, one in five small businesses and one in seven mid-market companies are more likely to switch banks as a result of how these banks performed during the COVID-19 crisis. The study also found that access to better online banking is the top consideration for businesses when switching banks.
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Fifty-five percent of customers are more likely to use a contactless payment solution because of
COVID-19, and PayPal represents the most-used mobile payment application at
73%.Source: Morning Consult
2020 Survey, conducted
on behalf of American
Bankers Association.
To address these competitive challenges while simultaneously deepening existing customer relationships, traditional financial institutions must embrace the following core priorities and the technology forces behind them:
A frictionless customer experience – to drive new revenues and deepen relationships
Personalized and enhanced services – to deliver more customer value
Increased process e�ciencies – to lower costs
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When customers are dissatisfied with service, brand loyalty is diminished. Research indicates that just one bad experience dilutes brand loyalty. Today's customers expect easy, smooth interactions that make them feel understood. Banks must deliver faster times to resolution to ensure customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
The contact center is where customers get answers. The information they need, representing the core of the digital banking customer experience and self-service channels, is the contact center's primary entry point. Banking self-service options represent the first and foremost critical link in the customer experience. Plus, they provide the added benefit of o�oading routine transactional interactions
“Worldwide lockdowns and quarantines in the first half of 2020 sent everyone online, fast-forwarding digital adoption ahead of predicted levels by three to five years. Banks have managed the immediate COVID crisis by supporting customers across contact centers and digital channels while re-engineering their open branches for social distancing.” Accenture Technology Banking Vision 2020: Driving Value and Values during COVID-19.
As physical interactions decline, today's customers have come to expect a frictionless experience enabled by streamlined technology and processes. Banks must understand their customers' servicing preferences and be willing to meet them by implementing new approaches and adopting innovative technologies. Both will be essential to deliver superior customer relations and develop customer-centric experiences.
Priority 1 – A Frictionless Customer Experience from your contact center agents to increase productivity and e�ciencies.
The self-service banking experience has evolved significantly from its automatic teller machine (ATM) beginnings. It has progressed from what seems like the relatively recent introduction of mobile banking. Both ATMs and mobile banking self-service solutions have increased customer convenience while saving banks time and resources.
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Artificial Intelligence Powers New Self-Service Services
Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), self-service interactions can drive personalized engagement across all channels ranging from mobile, web, and interactive voice response (IVR).
With conversational self-service fueled by AI chatbots, banks ensure premium customer engagement with personalization and understanding of intent and sentiment during interactions. These technologies represent the next phase of self-service. Research firm Gartner predicts that 70 percent of self-service interactions will be used via speech interfaces by 2023.
When customers are dissatisfied with service, brand loyalty is diminished. Research indicates that just one bad experience dilutes brand loyalty. Today's customers expect easy, smooth interactions that make them feel understood. Banks must deliver faster times to resolution to ensure customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
The contact center is where customers get answers. The information they need, representing the core of the digital banking customer experience and self-service channels, is the contact center's primary entry point. Banking self-service options represent the first and foremost critical link in the customer experience. Plus, they provide the added benefit of o�oading routine transactional interactions
from your contact center agents to increase productivity and e�ciencies.
The self-service banking experience has evolved significantly from its automatic teller machine (ATM) beginnings. It has progressed from what seems like the relatively recent introduction of mobile banking. Both ATMs and mobile banking self-service solutions have increased customer convenience while saving banks time and resources.
With these types of solutions, customers can quickly and easily automate routine banking queries, such as:
Locating an ATM
Checking balancesand recent activity
Completing astop-payment request
Notifying travel
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Also, AI-driven chatbots or intelligent virtual assistants can drive transactional conversations such as applying for a new product (credit card, mortgage refinance, etc.) by leveraging prior customer history and intent to eliminate friction, deepening relationships.
In addition to speeding and enhancing the customer relationship, self-service channels simultaneously reduce banking operational costs within contact centers. Self-service lowers call waiting timesby deflecting calls from higher-cost live agents, thus reducing customer service costs.
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Trust is the cornerstone of traditional banking, and banking institutions still have the edge in that regard, giving them an advantage in rolling out new services. The aforementioned Morning Consult 2020 Survey (see above pullout box) finds that respondents still prefer banking services to be delivered by a bank rather than a technology company.
By integrating new technologies, such as AI and natural language processing (NLP), banks can deliver more personalized and enhanced customer solutions. For example, using AI-driven intelligent virtual assistants (chatbots or voicebots), banks provide customers with a human-like conversational experience to facilitate smoother and faster transaction interactions.
Leveraging these intelligent virtual assistants, banks can drive self-service options and customer service automation with real-time data.
According to Accenture, nearly a third of banks say they are adopting – or planning to adopt within a year – AI-based systems that are simultaneously collaborative, interactive and explainable. In addition to transforming how banks interact with customers, AI technologies also
Priority 2 – Personalized and Enhanced Services
enable banks to pivot more quickly during times of crisis, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
NLP helps increase understanding not only of content but also context and sentiment. Moreover, the latest AI self-service channels integrate natural language understanding (NLU), delivering more value through intent recognition and routing – o�ering customers a better experience.
By helping banks understand who the customer is, their sentiment and why they're calling, conversational AI also helps drive self-service automation rates, thus reducing contact center costs. If a customer requires agent assistance, the conversational service automation platform also passes context from self-service to agents to create a frictionless interaction, driving consistency across the customer journey. Self-service options meet customers' increasing digital demands, while also laying the ground work for similar engagement in other parts of the customer journey.
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Trust is the cornerstone of traditional banking, and banking institutions still have the edge in that regard, giving them an advantage in rolling out new services. The aforementioned Morning Consult 2020 Survey (see above pullout box) finds that respondents still prefer banking services to be delivered by a bank rather than a technology company.
By integrating new technologies, such as AI and natural language processing (NLP), banks can deliver more personalized and enhanced customer solutions. For example, using AI-driven intelligent virtual assistants (chatbots or voicebots), banks provide customers with a human-like conversational experience to facilitate smoother and faster transaction interactions.
Leveraging these intelligent virtual assistants, banks can drive self-service options and customer service automation with real-time data.
According to Accenture, nearly a third of banks say they are adopting – or planning to adopt within a year – AI-based systems that are simultaneously collaborative, interactive and explainable. In addition to transforming how banks interact with customers, AI technologies also
enable banks to pivot more quickly during times of crisis, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
NLP helps increase understanding not only of content but also context and sentiment. Moreover, the latest AI self-service channels integrate natural language understanding (NLU), delivering more value through intent recognition and routing – o�ering customers a better experience.
By helping banks understand who the customer is, their sentiment and why they're calling, conversational AI also helps drive self-service automation rates, thus reducing contact center costs. If a customer requires agent assistance, the conversational service automation platform also passes context from self-service to agents to create a frictionless interaction, driving consistency across the customer journey. Self-service options meet customers' increasing digital demands, while also laying the ground work for similar engagement in other parts of the customer journey.
Increasing process e�ciencies will be essential for banks to lower costs and improve the agent experience. For example, one area where improved process e�ciencies can have enormous benefits is in after call work (ACW), a central and time-consuming component of contact center operations. ACW comprises a significant chunk of an agent's AHT. ACW takes considerable agent time and attention by requiring that agents summarize every single interaction. This work must be completed before they can take on another customer call.
So, in addition to delaying your employees in taking on and completing more important tasks, this process itself impacts the customer experience by delaying service.
A recent survey conducted on behalf of Uniphore found that over half of respondents had to wait over 30 minutes to get a response to their question when
calling a contact center. Similarly, 2020 research by Harvard Business Review shows that contact center hold times have increased 34%.
By integrating automation and real-time speech analytics into ACW processes, banks gain immediate value and deliver a better customer experience by lowering call waiting times. The system automatically transcribes conversations and records the top insights, freeing up employees to focus on customer concerns. Additionally, the system will prompt employees on correct actions based on customer sentiment and reason for the call.
At the call end, agents have the ability to edit their automated summary and upload into the appropriate internal system to improve data accuracy for future follow up. Automating ACW results in significant time savings for contact centers, thus improving the agent experience.
Priority 3 – Process Efficiencies
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Strengthening Brand Loyalty andIncreasing Operational Agility
The banking industry faces a strategic
inflection point in regards to customer
experience. To maintain and grow
brand reputation and market share,
banks must stay abreast of
increasing consumer expectations.
Today’s consumer expectations are
driven by their everyday
experiences with brands such as
iPhone, Amazon, Netflix, etc.,
where the focus is on
personalization and zero friction.
Adopting the right technology to
support banking’s personalization and
zero-friction trends will be essential for
banks to emerge stronger over the next
decade. Customers want more control
over their experiences, making intelligent
virtual assistants critical. Because
self-service allows banks to give their clients
more control, leveraging AI and NLP to deliver
frictionless self-service has become a requisite
for banks to deliver superior customer experience and
compete with non-traditional banking services.
With AI and humans working together more e�ectively to improve
automation, banks drive better outcomes with personalized conversations,
while continuing to drive e�ciencies to manage call volumes and agent
performance. Banks can ensure customer conversations are managed as
needed and deliver the responsiveness that their customers want while
keeping their own business costs in line.
