Digitalisation in the banking industry isn’t new, yet we have experienced immense “tech-celeration” in the last two years to last a lifetime and pandemic-induced changes in consumer behaviours that will never return to the way it was.
Most tech-savvy consumers do not regularly walk into a bank anymore, technology provides consumers with convenient and quick access to banking services.
In Asia Pacific, consumers have a myriad digital banking services and digitalisation is continuously embraced by many. According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, digital banking penetration in the region is close to 90% and approximately 80% of consumers expect to maintain or increase use of digital banking beyond the pandemic. Most consumers are also open to buying financial products via digital channels.
Moreover, in Singapore, the recent 2022 Budget speech also demonstrated the country’s renewed push to embrace and strengthen digital capabilities. Innovation and technology are transforming the banking experience – bringing rapid changes, making things easier, faster, and safer.
As digital banking takes hold, contact centres have become the primary and, in some cases, the only human touchpoint for banks and their customers.
Customers still seek a human touch that is crucial to establishing and cultivating customer loyalty. Banks, like many other sectors, will always need to be people-centric, they will need to create strategies that deliver the best service and experience for customers. Hence, creating positive, empathic experiences and optimising human-to-human conversations are essential.
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While there is a plethora of ways to give a human touch to banking, there also lies the challenge of finding solutions that allow banks to achieve enhanced customer journey and customer/agent conversations to deliver measurable and sustainable business value.
This is where Conversational AI comes into play. Providing a human touch and embracing digitalisation are not at the opposite ends of the spectrum, and with intelligent tools such as Conversational AI, banks can genuinely understand customers’ needs, behaviours and patterns, effectively offering them seamless and quality service.
Enhancing conversations and experiences
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Conversational AI is a powerful tool that understands consumer sentiments, emotions and real intentions. When incorporated into Conversational Automation platforms, this helps optimise customer interactions by helping agents personalise their interactions with customers.
The ability to pick up on vocal cues of customers in real-time and having access to in-call coaching alerts gives agents a deeper understanding of their customers’ feelings and enhances their ability to communicate with them with empathy. Conversational AI can also recommend to agents which products and services would be most relevant and useful for their customers, based on the bank’s database of customer history, and intent detected during the conversation.
Conversational AI can also bolster a bank’s contact centre’s ability to deliver personalised and positive conversational experiences that ultimately increase conversions, while driving customer satisfaction.
Minimising after-call work
Conversational AI is also useful for the automation of after-call work (ACW) and call disposition in high-value banking journeys, such as mortgage refinance and applications. Conversational Automation can listen to and transcribe conversations in real-time and then present the call summary to the agent for editing and confirmation, immediately after. It also helps improve call summary accuracy while allowing agents to focus more on customer conversations instead of transcribing them.
The use of streamlined scripting can also help expedite customer resolution, resulting in agents handling and tracking more call outcomes to maintain quality of interactions, and reduce both average handle time and waiting time for customers.
Capturing and fulfilling promises
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The automation of promise management is also made possible using a Conversational Automation platform equipped with Conversational AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities. This can include offering a credit on refinancing a home mortgage, reducing closing fees on a loan, or scheduling an appraisal. RPA can also handle other manual tasks after the call such as updating customer relationship (CRM) databases and logging call details, which will improve agents’ productivity.
By automatically logging all promises and commitments made in real-time, customers’ expectations can be aligned immediately following the call, and agents can be better equipped to ensure that necessary follow-ups are taken to address their queries. In turn, this results in fewer repeat calls and higher customer satisfaction.
Extracting insights from every conversation
Data is everything and by leveraging AI, call centres gain a comprehensive look into customer interactions by monitoring and analyzing every customer conversation across multiple channels. By guiding agents on next-best actions while automating repetitive tasks using RPA, AI-powered platforms can also make every agent their best agent, without weeks and months of classroom training and on-boarding.
Businesses can not only gain deeper insights into trending topics and behavioural patterns, but also minimise – or even completely eliminate – costly human errors that occur from inexperienced or overworked agents.
Conversational Automation platforms with voice, email, and chat analytics can reveal the true reasons for customer churn, accurately identify complaints and uncover issues that negatively or positively impact satisfaction. Overall, this can help drive 100% compliance, ensuring that agents are consistently providing top customer service and adhering to necessary regulations.
There is no doubt that the digital economy is here to stay. In order to successfully meet changing customer needs and demands that parallel the advent of digital banking, banks must optimise both their digital and human touchpoints. A more digital world requires banks to have firm foundations in AI and automation so they can optimise every conversation. In turn, this results in an improved customer and agent experience, higher customer satisfaction, and greater loyalty and revenue.
Ravi Saraogi is the co-founder and president of Uniphore APAC
Photo: Unsplash
