Reinventing The End-User’s Service Experience In India’s Banking Industry

When banks operated majorly via their physical branches during the pandemic, service was straightforward, if not quick - and because employees recognised regular visitors, in-person banking brought a semblance of personalisation.

Today, however, the banking industry stands digitised. Therefore, to say that the customer experience of banking services has improved would be a falsity. According to the Forrester India CX Index, only 4 out of 29 brands delivered better experiences to their customers in 2021 than the year before - out of which, just one brand was a bank. When better customer service costs less than poor customer service, it is high time for banks to turn away from customer disservice and delight their customers with quick and seamless experiences.

A new era and evolving priorities

During the pandemic, digital adoption across customer bases and employees alike accelerated rapidly. Standards are set high by digital application ecosystems and leading brands, and customers are now used to omnichannel experiences and fast service. When leading companies are reaching out proactively to resolve customer issues before the customer can spot them, having a customer repeat their issues and problems to multiple service touchpoints automatically sets a bank for failure.

So, what does good service look like in the banking industry? Benchmark your service along with these three critical imperatives:

1. How many times does the customer call you before their issue reaches the department which is able to resolve it?

2. How long does it take to fix their issue, and how does the customer’s level of satisfaction change over that journey?

3. How much does it cost to deliver their fix, and are your competitors delivering faster service at lower costs on similar tickets?

Leading private banks of India, like Axis Bank, are undertaking digital transformation efforts to up their customer's service experience and adopting cloud solutions to deliver faster service at 24% lower costs, improving customer satisfaction by 35%. So, how can it be done? With cloud-based customer experience orchestration solutions like Tata Tele Business Services’ SmartFlo.

Delightful customer service, decoded

Delivering great customer service as a banker means seamless omnichannel orchestration in today's remote, digital-first reality. Here are the four tenets that drive delightful service experiences within banking operations:

1. Cloud-first contact centre: Instead of tethering your service agents to their desks within contact centre infrastructure, leverage cloud-hosted contact centres to deliver service to your customers anytime, anywhere by connecting them to your agents. In addition to 24x7x365-ON service, cloud contact centres also reduce the costs of service orchestration.

2. Agent enablement: Today, customers expect to be not just heard but also understood and empathised with. To deliver such service experiences, agents need to be empowered with the right information sourced from contact centre-CRM integrations and real-time sentiment analysis to finetune their interactions with the customer in real-time.

3. Orchestration excellence:Instead of routing inbound calls randomly or by availability, leading banks are now able to gauge the customer's intent and route the calls to the right department, thereby connecting their customer directly to the point of resolution or to agents that have built a rapport with the customer - this leads to faster service, and lesser agent minutes spent on issues they can not solve.

4. Privacy protection:With data privacy laws placing greater responsibility on the bankers, now mask your customer's numbers from the agent and vice-versa, enabling smooth service while maintaining the privacy of your customers and preventing data leakage.

Today’s cloud-based contact centre solutions like SmartFlo by Tata Tele Business Services help you align your customer service strategy to these tenets while taking a security-first approach and enclosing agent monitoring toolsets and data analytics-powered dashboards within the solution.

What next?

As agents and customers alike become more digital-savvy, they are less likely to stick with banks that offer sub-optimal service experiences. Moreover, digital onboarding solutions are making it easier for customers to switch their banks - therefore, delivering great service is critical to retaining your customers. Moreover, customers that are happy with the service provided by their bank are over 12 times more likely to try other products and services, thereby opening more upsell and cross-sell opportunities. All of it starts with great customer service - start delivering it today, and drive your banking business toward growth in this new normal.