Would you be surprised if we tell you that four out of every five bank customers would rather contact their banks using instant messages, social media, web chat, email, and other channels instead of dialing the customer care number and waiting for the call to be connected?
That’s right! As per Capgemini’s 2021 World Retail Banking Report, four out of five, or 80 percent of customers expect an omnichannel banking experience. The same numbers of customers also expect customer service agents to keep a track on their previous transactions and queries, a study by Forrester revealed.
When so many customers expect omnichannel experience from their lenders won’t it behoove banks and financial institutions to invest in omnichannel communication systems? It surely will, and many banks and financial institutions are leveraging tools such as omnichannel contact center software to handle all incoming messages and customer communication in one place.
This blog discusses how banks and financial institutions can streamline banking operations by using sophisticated omnichannel contact center software. If you are a professional in the banking and financial services industry, then this blog post is just for you. Dive right in and thank us later.
Why Should Banks Focus More on Customer Service?
Banks must do whatever it takes to enhance their customer service because a little lacuna in services can result in loss of customers. A stat published by Marketing Tech News revealed global banks and financial institutions are losing 20 percent of customers because of poor customer service.
A Temkin research found that 70 percent of respondents said that they will leave their banks if the service is poor. That’s not all! As many customers below the age 55 said they would switch to another bank for good if they receive superior customer experience there, a study by Mobiquity revealed.
How Omnichannel Contact Center Software Can Help Banks and Financial Institutions?
The advent of omnichannel contact center software has been a blessing for the banking and financial services sector as it helps all types and sizes of lenders and financial companies in multiple ways. Here are some of them:
1. Enhanced Productivity
Banks and financial institutions that leverage omnichannel contact center software are able to enhance their agents’ productivity by leaps and bounds. That’s because when agents are on the phone, they can only talk with one customer at a time. During the conversation, they would give their undivided attention to the call and provide the right solutions or replies to all the requests.
But by using omnichannel contact center software, the customer support representatives can handle multiple customer interactions across channels. For instance, an agent receives a notification on social media, a message on instant messenger, and an email all at the same time. He or she can attend all the interactions seamlessly using one computer system.
2. Cost Effective
Would you be surprised to know that omnichannel is cost effective? It’s no mystery to guess why banks and financial institutions realize lower cost and higher profitability when they leverage omnichannel solutions. That’s because when their customer service representatives handle multiple number of customer interactions simultaneously, the organizations can manage a large number of interactions with relatively fewer number of employees.
Now if the need arises to back the theory using credible data and stats, we just happen to have those as well. A recent research found that when a company provides omnichannel experience, its cost per contact reduces by 7.5 percent. The same study also found that companies that provide omnichannel experience report a yearly revenue growth of 9.5 percent.
3. Higher FCR Rate
For banks and financial institutions, the first contact resolution (FCR) rate is one of the top Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A higher FCR rate, which is over 80 percent, signifies the efficiency of a bank or financial institution and they must try their best to maintain such a world-class FCR rate. While a poor FCR rate, which is below 71 percent, not only signifies lack of efficiency but also lower agent productivity and customer satisfaction rate.
The right omnichannel contact center software can enable banks and financial institutions to route all texts, emails, instant messages, chats, social media notifications and comments to the right agent and all issues or queries of customers are answered in the most efficient manner.
4. Excellent Flexibility and Scalability
Flexibility and scalability is the hallmark of banking and financial institutions. When banking and financial institutions leverage omnichannel contact center software, they are able to scale up and scale down their customer service operations as per business requirements. Like many other industries out there, banks and financial firms experience peak and lean seasons.
For instance, when interest rates are lower banks and financial services companies are extremely busy with financing requests and queries from businesses and individuals. In such a period, if they rely on conventional communication systems, they would be flooded with calls. But if they use sophisticated omnichannel contact center software, they can handle all queries and requests in a seamless manner.
5. Tailored Customer Service
A study conducted by J.D. Power found that over three-quarters of customers would stick with their banks and financial service providers when they get tailored customer service. A research by Capco revealed that 70 percent of customers regard customization as ‘highly-important’ in today’s financial services landscape.
Omnichannel contact center software can enable banks and financial institutions to provide tailored customer service to customers. When customer service agents have the entire interactions of all customers consolidated on a single platform, providing tailored customer service is easy for them as they have access to the customer’s preferences and transaction history. After that, they can tailor their response as per their customers’ preferences and loyalty.
6. Automated Interactions
“In 2030, I would say that you probably have two billion people that’ll be using day-to-day banking services, independent of banks.” This is one of the famous quotes by Australian futurist and author Brett King. He is absolutely right! That’s because banks and financial institutions would be automating most of the manual and repetitive tasks.
Omnichannel contact center software would play a huge role in automating a large part of customer service operations. Many sophisticated omnichannel contact center software solutions can automate interactions by using AI-powered chatbots and solutions.
7. Self-Service Options
A study conducted by American Express found that three out of every five customers in the United States prefer an automated self-service for simple customer service tasks, such as a website or mobile app.
Banks and financial institutions that use omnichannel contact center software enable their customers to access a wide range of self-service options starting from multilevel interactive voice response (IVR) systems and chatbots to frequently asked questions (FAQs) and resource centers.
Taking Everything into Account,
Gone are those days when customers would call banks and financial institutions to get their issues resolved. In today’s digital age, when a majority of people have a smartphone, many of them would prefer to contact by using a wide range of channels such as instant messaging platforms, social media, web chats, emails, and more.
In fact, most bank customers expect omnichannel experience from their lenders and financial institutions. That’s why it’s extremely important for banks and financial institutions to leverage omnichannel contact center software and provide exceptional customer service.
Also Read: https://usatimenetwork.com/
