Financial firms earn money by borrowing short-term cash cheaply and lending or investing it for higher, long-term returns. A steeper yield curve-which indicates a wider gap between short-term and long-term interest rates-means more profitability. However the yield curve continues to be relatively flat recently, squeezing profits and adding pressure to counter with aggressive cost-cutting measures.
That's bad news for financial sector contact centers. As noted previously, about 70% of center budgets goes to labor, making centers an obvious target for cost-cutting. Large firms began offshoring customer service operations in early 2000s and shifted domestic agents to remote work in more recent years. Consequently, the 2022 office evacuation drill was less jarring than elsewhere.
But uneven customer support performance throughout the pandemic has prompted firms to reconsider the relative value of offshoring and remote domestic workers for their overall cost-control strategy. One possible response is to repatriate as least some offshored service operations; another is to grow the remote model for domestic agents even further. Either way, intelligent automation is emerging as the most effective way to reduce costs while also giving a much-needed boost to productivity and efficiency.
Tech 1.0
Technology has long played a job in financial firms' contact centers because most day-to-day transactions are simple to manage through non-human channels. Existing technologies can offer a customer's account balance, payment deadline, branch office locations and hours, etc. But when home loans or foreclosures are in play, no customer will accept a technology program like a negotiating counterpart. A dark tone of these exchanges is usually set by emotion rather than reason. So financial firms need technology that really improves agents' ability to satisfy the full-range of customers' needs.
An agent's complex day
Agents within this industry face multiple challenges. Along with providing empathy and adaptability in situations where high-stakes money matters are emotionally charged, agents also deal with financial transactions which are often susceptible to federal and state regulations. This contributes to their training requirements. Large firms may employ thousands of agents, which boosts the logistical challenge of delivering thorough and uniform training. Inconsistent or insufficient training could leave agents susceptible to making mistakes, and even small mistakes can expose the firm to hefty fines or lawsuits.
Lastly, the pandemic abruptly turn off in-branch customer support access, sending customers to the phones to deal with both simple and complex issues. This caused a spike in contact center call volume and complexity. Complicated issues typically handled by account execs and managers now fell to agents, who found themselves at the customer-facing end of the chain and services information upheaval and instructed to cope with more calls and unfamiliar issues that they were not educated to handle.
Tech 2.0
It's impossible to manually address all occasions when agents stay too much time in after-call work or leave customers on hold for too much time. But with intelligent automation, business rules are put in position to watch these metrics and remind agents once they cross specific thresholds.
When agents choose the wrong AUX state, it's difficult to recognize which did so in error and which did so to prevent answering calls; coaching afterwards isn't effective. Intelligent automation notifies agents within the wrong state immediately. Potential savings are huge: One financial services customer leveraged AUX state alerts to realize $16.8 million in annualized savings.
Tech me back home
Many large financial firms sent half or even more of their contact center operations overseas, where lower wages reduced operating costs. But when the pandemic forced overseas agents to work from home, pockets of weak electricity and WIFI service availability led to poor customer support delivery. Overloaded infrastructure caused problems among remote domestic agents too, however the problem-and its impact on the client experience-was greater in offshore operations.
For financial firms that decide to repatriate customer service operations, intelligent automation's proven capability to lower costs, increase agent efficiency, and facilitate consistent customer experiences because of its unique blend of RPA and real-time information systems capabilities will give you a vital competitive advantage in the post-pandemic marketplace.
Conclusion