Customer experience management The Rat
Perhaps a nod to harmful actors in this space, ‘The Rat’ is Lloyds Banking Group’s innovative call centre, AI-driven fraud detection system, aimed at identifying and mitigating potential weaknesses and hostile acts – both in real-time and by predicting future trends. So far, by using a combination of biometric data (such as voice recognition) and advanced machine learning algorithms, The Rat has thwarted thousands of potential breaches. That has collectively saved customers millions of pounds and spared them the immeasurable distress that comes with such exposure.
(RBSI), over the past year, less than a third were in-branch last year– emphasising the increasing importance technologies are having on banking habits. During the same period, 65% of RBSI’s customers used the bank’s mobile app, while 69% engaged online at least once a week.
Calling on technology
It is a good job, then, that financial technologies are developing apace. Even before the pandemic hit, local branches were on the decline according to consumer group Which?. The organisation recently said that as many as 4,782 brick-and-mortar banks had closed since January 2015 – a rate of around 54 a month. NatWest Group alone will have closed 1,154 branches by the end of the year, with other institutions like Barclays close behind. The banking sector argues this is simply a response to the way people bank – as it does too in the US where S&P Global Intelligence says sector consolidation and, more importantly, a dramatic shift to digital banking has resulted in the closure of 2,927 local branches in 2021.
43% 38
The share of customers surveyed that said they preferred call centres that use bots to simplify customer services. Time Doctor
The upshot is that calls to customer service are on the rise. Across industries, call centres have reported a surge in interactions. For the banking sector, though, the issue became critical, particularly during the darkest days of Covid-19. Writing in a company blog, Marc Blanco, BT’s director of incubation and acquisition for banking and financial services, put it like this: “The pressure on financial services organisations to provide an excellent contact centre experience is coming from all sides, and something has to change.” Blanco added that he expected an increased reliance on virtual contact was something banks and building societies would “have to factor into their operations from now on”.
Exton, for his part, says that RBSI – the offshore banking arm of NatWest Group – received roughly 121,000 calls last year. As welcome as it might be to hear from customers, this growth comes with
problems. During a 2020 investigation by This Is Money, significant variations in the performance of banks’ telephone services were uncovered. Investigators found that waiting times ranged from just two minutes to a staggering 40. Again, this is not only a British problem. According to a survey of the top ten US banks, wait times there varied too, spanning from 41 seconds to eight minutes. For its part, Exton says that RBSI typically answered calls in two minutes and 14 seconds, with an average call duration of just over six minutes. Exton adds that call times are determined by the type of call. Those relating to fraud or debt management, for example, were longer because callers required specialised support. Yet as frustrating as call waits are, the caller often does not realise that their call experience has already begun thanks to AI and virtual contact. “I bank too,” says Exton, “so I understand the issues. No one wants to be sat on a call, in a queue, to drop off or get there and find they’ve got the wrong person.” AI is really making a difference here and what was once a desired capability has quickly become the must-have.
In perfect harmony
AI is helping provide customer insight and even background information before the CSR has even answered. Writing in a guest blog for the University of Birmingham’s Business School, research fellow at the Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business, Immaculate Motsi-Omoijiade, said through the pandemic the use of AI had allowed Lloyds to identify calls from priority customers – those working in healthcare or aged over 70. In these cases, they were put to the front of the queue.
Lloyds was not the only bank using AI to help reduce the pressures on its call centres. NatWest Bank says it used conversational AI to great effect. Its AI-based virtual assistant, Cora, was quickly modified to allow customers access to Covid-related services such as mortgage holidays, cutting out the need to call the bank directly when wait times in some cases dragged into hours. RBSI, for its part, says it was able to keep its call waiting and duration times down because most calls were for transactional purposes, such as balance inquiries and payments, which it says are “quick to deal with”.
That is echoed by new technology. Conversational AI is arguably the next frontier for finance customer services, now massively advanced from the day of the chatbot. Using technologies like text- to-speech, natural-sounding voice AI and custom voice assistants, it allows customers access to information completely driven by an AI – but seemingly provided by a human.
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
Prostock-studio/
Shutterstock.com
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