5 Focus Areas That Help Banks and NBFCs Deliver Improved Customer Experience

Drive customer experience transformation in Financial Services. Thrive with a hybrid workforce model.

The onset of the pandemic has forced banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to reimagine their business strategies. With new challenges in the form of lockdowns and restrictions, providing exceptional customer servicing has been a constrained effort. This is undesirable, as even the smallest element of customer friction, especially at a time of distress can negatively impact the best of relationships.

In such a scenario of external disruption, small and mid-size financial service providers now face the challenge of optimally utilizing their limited resources. As the contact centers see greater activity and more calls, the agents need to guide their customers towards better usage of digital services while ensuring compliance and security. The back-office staff also need to provide timely collaboration, to ensure an uninterrupted process.

Let’s look at five key areas that small and mid-size financial service providers can focus on, to deliver an impeccable customer experience.

1. Make Digital Customer Onboarding a Convenient and Swift Experience

While many customers embraced the digital recourse, others have adapted to the new norm simply out of necessity. Regardless, it's only reasonable for banks to reap the fruits of digitisation in these circumstances and start onboarding customers remotely, and conveniently.

Whether it is a consumer loan, mortgage, or insurance, banks and financial institutions need to be diligent in fulfilling the ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) obligations. This task can be made faster and easier using video and supporting applications. Most customer onboarding steps such as document submission, verification, validation, and application capture can be accelerated through digital channels with little or no customer waiting times.

2. Adequately Train the Distributed Workforce

Over the last decade, banks and financial service providers understood the needs of a remote customer. However, the added dynamic in this scenario is, servicing a remote customer with a remote workforce. In financial services, data security and confidentiality are key concerns. It is critical to equip the distributed workforce to conduct business securely without any hassles to the customer. The workforce must be adequately trained in the usage of technological tools to effectively operate – be it customer origination, servicing, or collections.

These digital elements will help increase process efficiencies and reduce costs. It is also likely to reduce face-to-face interactions which build long term customer relationships, loyalty, and trust. Therefore, it is critical for financial institutions to use every digital customer interaction as an opportunity to bolster relationships and the reduce the risk of customer attrition. This feat can be achieved by training the workforce, monitoring productivity, and ensuring security.

3. Accelerate Resolution of Disputed Transactions and Issues

In India, digital lending grew 12-fold1 between FY17 and FY20 while digital payments grew 5-fold2 between 2016 and 2020. With this growth, customer issues and the number of disputed transactions is also on the rise, which can potentially increase customer attrition. Hence, financial service providers must ensure that issues are resolved quickly and use it as an opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty.

In order to provide quick resolutions, one must first understand the customer’s context and use relevant data from various customer touchpoints to support the issues. Financial service providers also need to ensure that the most recent data is made available to the agents to ensure customers a consistent crosschannel experience. Further, analysis of customer responses is also needed to improve the experience delivered. For example,

• At branch offices: Gather data about how the customers perceive ‘in-person’ services at bank branches. Sending a text message with a quick survey to get their feedback after the end of a transaction is an effective way to do so.
• In online platforms and mobile apps: Like ‘in-person’ interactions, request a quick survey after a customer issue is resolved on the bank website or mobile app.

While gathering and segmenting data are great starting points for understanding customers, this information can’t add much value by itself. For these efforts to add value, we need to apply a human filter to address gaps in the customer experience spectrum. To receive first-hand know-how, senior executives should engage with the call centre agents to ensure that they have all the information necessary for routine customer resolutions.

4. Develop Customer Call Flows with Skill-Based Routing

In financial services, a lack of status update on a transaction or application can cause significant customer anxiety. It does not help matters further, when customers are seeking this information and they are put on hold and juggled between agents. To prevent this, financial service providers need a seamless call flow capability to ensure a smooth conversation flow.

To ensure that the client's concerns are dealt with care and agility, design the call flow in a way that routes calls to agents based on their skills and department. This includes taking into consideration the technical prowess and the languages an agent is comfortable in. A smart IVR can intelligently handle how a call is routed to agents within the system.

5. Leverage High-Speed Connectivity for Contextual Engagement

Traditionally, most banks and financial institutions would segment customers by demographics to offer consumer loans, mortgage or an insurance. In the modern digital economy, most financial service providers are now keen to embrace hyper-personalisation. When digital experience capabilities combine with real-time data processing, it helps identify new opportunities and meet customer demands instantly.

According to a study conducted by Google, consumers switch between 3 to 4 screens before they complete a transaction3 . However, this engagement is possible only when digital connectivity allows them to do so. Cloud-based applications and high-speed connectivity enable FIs to engage customers at the 3 This document is under copyright of Tata Teleservices Limited (TTL). The information contained in this document is strictly confidential and is meant only for the recipient. This document shall remain the property of TTL and must not be disclosed in writing, via email in part or full without explicit prior written permission from TTL Corporate. right time. Further, customer interactions beyond their sales needs, help anticipate and respond to a customer’s latent requirements.

Summary: Build Resilience Against Future Uncertainty while Enhancing Customer Experience

According to Juniper Research, by 2024, the number of global digital banking users will exceed 3.6 billion, up from 2.4 billion in 20204 . In the wake of these figures, most banks today realize that operations are shifting from branches to digital channels, particularly since the pandemic outbreak. Hence, digital infrastructure, customer outreach and borrower experience are now taking centre stage. In this fiercely competitive digital banking landscape, customer experience is the biggest differentiator. The firms that will seize the challenge and be the fastest in delivering exemplary customer experiences will have a significant edge over their competitors on multiple fronts.

Sources:

https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PublicationReport/Pdfs/DIGITALLENDINGF6A90CA76A9B4B3E84AA0EBD24B307F1.PDF

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/markets/digital-payments-script-robust-growth-story-in-india-cards-in-race-7788161.html

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/search/shift-to-constant-connectivity/

https://www.juniperresearch.com/press/digital-banking-users-to-exceed-3-6-billion