According to a global digital banking survey, contact centers remain customers’ most preferred channels in times of negative experiences that matter. The same study also reported that satisfaction with contact centers influences the customers’ overall satisfaction twice as much as with digital channels. The importance of contact centers has been repeatedly stressed upon for increasing customer satisfaction in banking. In the age of digital transformation, where developments in AI, machine learning, cloud solutions, and robotic process automation (RPA) are disrupting existing business models, financial services leaders are busy reinventing their contact centers to transform the customer experience. This article delineates three key features that enable contact centers to thrive and deliver an unmatched omnichannel experience and how they can be achieved through modern digital technologies.
The importance of contact centers in banking and financial services
With the increased focus on customer experience across industries, banks and financial institutions are now being forced to rethink contact centers as experience centers. Amidst a worldwide lockdown in response to the pandemic, remote engagement has become the only mode of interaction and exchange between organizations and their customers. Where both banking and financial services relied heavily on their branches for delivering their services, implementing cutting edge solutions at the contact centers has become the entry-point to survival, rather than a means to gaining competitive advantage. Contact centers are, therefore, not only becoming the primary touchpoint for more complex interactions with customers but also presenting newer avenues for selling services. So, what makes a contact center successful for BFSI players today?
The contact center reimagined
In today’s situation, these are the three critical needs of a thriving contact center:
- Workforce Management Dashboard: Data is the key to thriving in today’s business conditions. Such solutions solve a multitude of problems that plague and clog the contact center, like high response and waiting times, lack of unified and updated client information, non-compliant behavior, and inefficient resource management. In high-risk scenarios such as reporting the loss of a card, waiting times can cost real money to key stakeholders across the value chain. With automation and machine learning algorithms, the contact center employees can access visual maps to navigate problem resolution pathways, optimize call timings and durations, implement services across multiple channels and learn from the data generated – all of this, with a smaller workforce.
