Creating a unified, multi-channel strategy for retail banking - why banks need to learn from their contact centres

Verint's Witness Actionable Solutions division is the worldwide leader in software and services that help businesses capture customer intelligence and optimise their workforce performance. Its workforce optimisation capabilities include quality monitoring, compliance and IP recording, workforce management, speech analytics, performance management, eLearning and customer feedback.  Deployed in contact centres - as well as the remote, branch and back offices of global organisations - the workforce optimisation solution captures, analyses and enables users to share and act on cross-functional information across the enterprise.  With Witness Actionable Solutions, organisations can improve interactions and the underlying back-office processes that enhance the customer experience and build customer loyalty. 

By Richard Ray, Head of EMEA Business Consulting, Witness Actionable Solutions, Verint Systems

Despite major customer service developments such as online banking, telephone banking and the widespread deployment of ATMs, retail banking still depends heavily on branch offices to succeed in a highly competitive market. For many consumers, branches still serve as the primary customer touch point, which provides a challenge for banks - how can they make the most of this channel while addressing its acknowledged inefficiencies?

If you consider a typical retail bank branch, its inefficiencies can often hide its potential strategic value. Traffic into the branch is sporadic, resulting in periods when no customers are present - yet at other times there are queues and customer delays. Many transactions are routine - such as paying-in or withdrawing cheques and cash, and changing currencies. Other transactions like opening accounts and arranging mortgages are far more complex, take much longer and require specialist skills from the branch staff. Branches also spend a lot of time on assembling and processing paperwork, processing loan and mortgage applications and completing documentation. This is in addition to tasks such as chasing overdue loans as well as general office duties, financial management and reporting.

For many years now it has been generally assumed that branches are an expensive channel for banks to operate, hence the growth in contact centre and Internet channels and the closure of many smaller, less profitable branches. What this approach didn't really address though, is the fact that customers don't just operate through a single channel - Forrester Research has shown that for researching a new product 47 percent prefer to use the Internet, but for opening a new account, 82 percent use a branch. Customers use channels such as the contact centre and online banking to view account statements, but still choose the branch when they have account problems.

So banks are learning to live in a multi-channel environment, but they haven't subjected their branch operations to the same levels of cost and process scrutiny as their other channels. Banks know exactly how much specific activities cost in the contact centre - because tasks are always measured - but it's rare for the same disciplines to be applied within the branch. However, there's a growing agreement that without accurate measurement it's difficult to make the right decisions. Should a bank adopt a customer acquisition or customer retention policy? What about charging for current accounts? Should customers be managed in portfolios, or is the traditional product-based approach more applicable?

To make these sorts of decisions, banks need to fundamentally understand what each activity - such as clearing a cheque - costs. This seems obvious, but it's not always applied, often because the process of capturing such data is too complex. As one banker recently said: "there's no such thing as unprofitable customers, only unprofitable ways of serving them".

Learning from the contact centre

In the contact centre banks have long used technology to help schedule their staff, monitor and manage productivity, ensure quality and consistency, and develop the skills of their agents. Initially contact centres handled these tasks manually or through separate applications. Now many bank contact centres use a single Workforce Optimisation (WFO) solution to ensure that their centres have the best human resources at hand to meet customer transaction demand, create customer value and receive the optimum return on their contact centre investment.

Although banks and contact centres have many similarities - customer queues, staff to schedule, and the need to serve customers promptly and well - they have significant differences in the kind of operational data they use. Banking contact centres draw their operational data from a core ACD that gives the centre its real-time, granular performance data. To achieve similar control; however, many branch managers have had to develop their own systems to address their customer demand/staffing problems, help improve customer satisfaction and drive local revenues and profits. These are still typically manual processes supported by standard spreadsheets and documents.

While basic forecasting and scheduling have made some in-roads into banking and retail, it's rare to find examples of adherence to schedule, quality assessments, performance feedback and supervisor coaching as we would recognise them from the contact centre. At the same time as their contact centre colleagues have benefited from highly-structured WFO practices supported by rich operational data, bank branch managers have been left to try and achieve the same thing without the benefit of tools or reliable data.

Tapping into additional branch resources

It's time for retail banking organisations to apply some of the process and functional support from their contact centres to the branch network. Workforce Optimisation techniques are now available to help support everything from branch customer service levels to some of the underlying back-office processes that can have such an impact on the overall customer experience.

WFO for banking can combine information from different systems and areas within bank operations and customer service branches to help managers to:

  • Forecast demand and the staffing requirements to meet each individual branch/store locations' service goals
  • Automate and streamline scheduling, allowing branches to meet forecasted demand and service level goals by deploying the right number of staff with the right skills
  • Track, capture and analyse screen sequences and keystrokes on employee desktops to identify navigation effectiveness and process efficiencies
  • Monitor employee performance and customer satisfaction by capturing customer interactions - either on demand or selectively through user-defined business rules
  • Consolidate performance data from bank systems and applications into actionable information
  • Measure employee performance consistently using KPIs and role-appropriate scorecards
  • Deliver individualised and best practice training right to the employee desktop

Deploying WFO in the bank branch is now a reality following the introduction of Impact 360 for Retail Financial Services, a powerful WFO solution that combines software and services to bring together workforce management, quality and process analysis, eLearning, performance management and customer feedback under a flexible, scalable framework. Key benefits that retail banking organisations can target will include:

  • Accurate and available data to drive, better, quicker management decisions
  • Empowered, trained and engaged branch employees who are able to create more customer value
  • And an improved branch customer experience

More information: www.Verint.com