Banks crazy about call centers

Though banks are often criticized for abysmal customer service, executives in other service industries have now actually begun to look to them for best practices in one area: the use of call center performance as a customer service differentiator.

According to Wes Hayden, chief executive officer of Genesys Software Laboratories, the banking industry is ahead of many other industries in the use of call centers.

“That is because it’s a competitive market place with relatively undifferentiated product. Each bank can put its own twist on it, but money is money. So customer service really does make a difference,” Hayden said.

Australian banks like ANZ and National Australia Bank (NAB) are wide adopters of advanced call center technology such as in inbound marketing to drive cross-sell and proper call routing. ANZ, with two call centers in Melbourne, is in the process of migrating its call centers into contact centers that can handle other types of communication such as e-mails and faxes, and potentially also instant messaging and video chat.

NAB’s director of financial services Steve Collier said that click to call bank and click to chat are part of the bank’s plans in the near future. Westpac focused on virtualizing its interactive voice response (IVR) technology, streamlining the processes in order to improve agent and customer usability.

“When it comes to the customers, the days of a bank saying ‘this is the way you will interact with us’ are over. The organization that allows the customer to deal with it the way the customer wants will be the winners in this banking industry,” Ross McEwan, Commonwealth Bank’s head of retail banking service, observes.

Banks in other markets like New Zealand are also trying innovative approaches.

ASB, which is owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and has provided the larger bank with many of its senior management including CEO Ralph Norris, started making welcome calls to new customers in an attempt to move from a reactive to proactive call center model. The bank claims it has been handsomely repaid for its efforts, as a high percentage of the courtesy calls resulted in the sale of additional products.

Integrating web technology into contact center services will be the next key competitive differentiator for companies. Web chatting is an example of non-intrusive technology that has already taken off in some markets, led by consumer expectations.

Genesys’ research shows that eight percent of Asia Pacific companies plan to offer web chat in the next few months and 14 percent will implement proactive chat beyond that. Proactive chats begin after a customer has engaged with an offer made on a company’s website and initiates a process that calls up a web chat with a service agent.

Early adopters of customer service-oriented web technology like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank have found it highly profitable. Bank of America’s proactive web chat that assists customers looking for mortgages has led to an 800 percent increase in the rate of online mortgage closures. — TAB