
The Promise
Many years ago, the banking industry introduced the call center channel with the goal of lowering service costs and improving the overall customer experience. The plan was essentially to eliminate basic, low value transactions from the traditional banking branches banking, which would allow branch workers to focus on higher revenue-generating activities, while also providing customer service access around the clock.
However, even as large numbers of transactions were switched to call centers, the banks did not experience the anticipated reduction in transaction costs. In fact, as a result of customers having easy access to the call centers, the number of transactions surged, which in effect just created yet another channel with high ongoing cost management and poor customer experience. Let’s take a look:
Lack of Call Center Efficiency
The starting point for call center efficiency and lowering operating costs is to reduce the overall volume of calls. In fact, just a 5 to 10% reduction in call volume can save up to $10 million annually. However, instead many banks created a self-perpetuating cycle where 50 to 60% of the inbound calls were driven by their own errors stemming from customer-focused processes that were poorly structured and insufficient channel integration that limited the sharing of data. This resulted in many preventable service inquiries and repeat calls, which occur when the customer can’t easily find the information they need or is not attended to sufficiently the first time around, all of which negatively affected the customer experience as well.
In fact, a survey by American Express reported that in order to provide consumers with an excellent customer service experience, representatives must be able to provide a satisfactory answer to their question’ (86%) or be able to connect them with someone who is knowledgeable (78%). In other words, customers believe the most important attribute of a successful customer service professional is efficiency, i.e. the ability to answer questions or handle transactions quickly. Over the years, however, many bank customer service agents were not able to do this, due to a lack of proper training, together with being forced to rely on those same poorly functioning processes and channel integration, so agents were often forced to rely on the “go-to” product experts in their department. In fact, according to SilverCloud, 63% of subject matter experts and managers at banks spend more than 1/3 of their day answering front line questions with many spending more than 40%!
This has also led to a situation where unnecessary transfers and escalated calls have spiraled out of control. At the same time, the customer has also suffered from the lack of customer service competence. In fact, it was found that consumers themselves want to sense that customer service professionals feel empowered to effectively and autonomously do their jobs, to handle requests on their own without transfer or escalations. When employees feel confident in their ability to answer customer questions on their own, without the aid of an internal support person, their overall effectiveness and disposition with customers improves, and as a result, so does the customer’s confidence.
Lack of Self-Service Functionality
Another catalyst for the failure of the banking call centers has been the lack of self-service on-line functionality to handle all the basic customer service requests. First of all, calls handled by agents typically cost about $4 per contact, while the cost per contact online is only around: $0.10 to $0.15. Therefore, just shifting between 5 and 20% of call volume from agents to the Web would save up to $25 million per year! It’s been a badly missed opportunity for most. When an effective knowledge database is deployed on a bank’s website, repetitive customer questions, especially those that are technology related, such as “how do I reset my online banking password” are greatly reduced, which in turn frees up the customer service agents to respond to more profitable account and product inquiries.
Today, customers have evolved and are more than ever looking for ease in doing business, especially when it comes to their financial services. Now, it’s up to the banks to evolve as well or be relegated to a thing of the past.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/financial-darwinism-why-financial-call-centers-have-failed-to-deliver
Publish Date: May 30, 2017 5:00 AM |
2021 Buyers Guide Inbound Call Handling Services
1.) | 3Fiftynine
Branches Calls are received by the right person or department. The right corresponding information is shown to the agent which makes that appointments are handled quicker and more secure. |
2.) | Agara
Agara is an autonomous virtual voice agent powered by Real-time Voice AI. It is designed to have intelligent conversations with your customers, vendors, and partners without any assistance from human agents. It can handle a wide variety of calls including inbound customer care calls, outbound lead generation calls, appointment scheduling calls, and overdue payment recovery calls.
Agara is available for several industries including banking, insurance, retail, e-commerce, airlines, and telecom. Powered by advanced Real-time Voice AI that understands speech in real-time, automatically determines the right process to follow and guides the caller along in the process with natural conversation.PH: +1 (512) 333 4634 |
3.) | Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.PH: +1 512-872-7565 |
4.) | Connect Assist
Contact Centre Services We’re a specialist Contact Centre business and market leaders helping socially focused organisations deliver quality support to their clients and service users. We do this by providing 24/7 helplines, software solutions and consultancy services.
Since launching in 2006, we’ve operated at the sharp end of customer service, supporting some of society’s most vulnerable people. We’ve pioneered in our space to become a specialist in helplines, whilst using the most advanced communication and database technologies available.
Our social mission has remained a constant throughout, providing many meaningful career prospects and growth opportunities to people within our local communities and fur... (read more)We’re a specialist Contact Centre business and market leaders helping socially focused organisations deliver quality support to their clients and service users. We do this by providing 24/7 helplines, software solutions and consultancy services.
Since launching in 2006, we’ve operated at the sharp end of customer service, supporting some of society’s most vulnerable people. We’ve pioneered in our space to become a specialist in helplines, whilst using the most advanced communication and database technologies available.
Our social mission has remained a constant throughout, providing many meaningful career prospects and growth opportunities to people within our local communities and further afield. We work nationally, but with the care and commitment of a local company. In our opinion, that’s what sets us apart.
Our mission is simple: to create positive human outcomes. Here’s what we do:
• We’re transformational, both in our ability to affect positive change in people’s lives and in viewing change as a way to adapt and improve.
• We’re architects of communication, mixing heart with experience, process with insights, and human with technological.
• We keep things simple, pooling together knowledge and experience to create easy yet fulfilling customer experiences.
• We embrace technology, which enables our clients to thrive and provides us with insights to inspire positive change.
Our values underpin everything we do. We strive to be:
• Human. We’re rich in technological resources, but ultimately people are at the very core of our business.
• Emotionally intelligent. Our experience and insight allows us to adapt to different landscapes, situations and challenges.
• Driven. We’re motivated to consistently improve and innovate, exceed expectations and achieve the best personal outcomes for customers. We’re compelled by seeing the impact we can and do have.
• Methodical. We guide each of our clients through a tailored and methodical pathway, offering effective solutions to deliver their vision.PH: 07973640527 |
5.) | Jointly International Inc.
Front Office Solutions Front office is your Company’s first line of customer interaction and serves as the mirror of your business. Focus on your core business and let our competent staff handle your various front office needs such as:
* Customer Service via chat, email or phone * Technical Support via chat, email or phone * Helpdesk * Virtual Assistant/Receptionist * Answering Service * Lead Generation * Appointment Setting * Verification * Surveys * Debt Recover, Collections
PH: +61 7 5660 6284 |
6.) | MattsenKumar LLC
Contact Center Outsourcing By catering valuable, usable and enjoyable customer service, businesses can increase their CSAT Score and Customer Retention Rate. We help organizations to provide quality customer service through varied channels like email, phone and live chat. Ensuring quality after-sales support is our USP and we rely on proven approaches to ensure quality customer service. |
7.) | OpsTel Services
SPEED The SPEED solution solves for service level issues while cost optimizing the environment with automation.
Provides an enhanced way to speed up & optimize invoking temporary agent skills configuration changes into the contact center environment.
Speed allows you to schedule both future changes & temporary changes that auto-revert back to the original state when scheduled time expires.
Speed features:
*Automated / Scheduled Temporary Agent Skills Configuration Management *Immediate Temporary or Reoccurring Schedule Skills Configuration Changes *Easy to Use/Operations Administration Focused *Descriptive Monitoring Activity Dashboard *Detailed “End to End’ Audit Trail and Performance MonitoringPH: 1+480-435-9390 |
8.) | Vads
VADS Inbound Contact Center VADS Inbound Contact Center Services provide live operators who answer incoming calls as you would yourself. A team of professional script writers is available to help you script a greeting and experience programmers will set up a time and money saving program. Our unique approach to call center services is client-focused, and takes each project’s unique needs into account to our client’s satisfaction. We offer solution as part of our service to keep you in touch with your client and drive sales.
- Customer Service - Walk In Center - Service DeskPH: 0217991445 |
9.) | Tru29 Outsource Solutions Inc.
Front Office Solutions Any part of your business operations that requires constant end-customer facing task is an essential part of your business.
This task requires a good customer experience results for every customer interaction. Our extensive experience in handling Front Office related tasks can help you focus on your core business while being cost-efficient at the same time. |

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