Restoring consumer confidence

By Scott Wickware

As financial institutions hope the worst of the economic crisis is behind them, improving customer confidence is quickly becoming their next big challenge. To rebuild a sense of trust within the industry, institutions need to go out of their way to make their customers feel valued, by ensuring their needs are met and putting a greater emphasis on tightening security measures.

The financial services industry generally has lower customer attrition rates than other sectors - largely attributed to customer inertia rather than customer satisfaction - yet research has shown[1] that many UK call centres in the financial sector fail to live up to customer expectations. Less than half (45 per cent) of customers felt that their concerns were being respectfully addressed by call centre agents, and only 31 per cent were satisfied with the way their queries are handled.

These low attrition rates have fostered a culture of complacency among banks; however, as new entrants such as Metro Bank join the market, customer churn can be expected to increase. Consequently improving reputation, brand perception and customer service will be crucial.

Fundamental to delivering a better customer service is understanding what motivates customers. It is important to recognise that people are, by nature, task orientated and just want to get a job done as quickly as possible with minimal fuss. Financial institutions must remember that first impressions count and that service begins the moment a customer picks up the phone. Research has found that 72 per cent of consumers prefer the phone channel for accessing customer service and company information[2]. As customer service calls continue to rise, financial institutions need to take advantage of the innovations in technology to deliver a cost effective and satisfying customer service experience by empowering customers to serve themselves.

With significant advances in call centre automation technologies, customers should no longer need to sit in slow telephone queues to speak with an agent, only to be routed to the wrong department or cut off. It is a frustrating experience for anyone to endure, particularly people on the move, with limited time to make a call. Seventy per cent[3] of all interactions with call centres are now from mobile devices, which means that the majority are from people using their precious free minutes from their phone plan. So being placed on hold can be both exasperating and expensive. According to a report from the centre for economics and business research, inefficient call centres are costing consumers £8.3 billion per year in time and money (wasted on ringing call centres), which works out as £171 per adult consumer per year.

Leading financial institutions such as Lloyds Banking Group, Aviva, Citibank and Bank of America are already embracing solutions such as natural language call steering that allows customers to say what they want in their own words. The speech recognition technology understands what service they need and quickly and accurately directs them to the correct agent or automated service. On average, natural language call steering reduces the time to route calls by as much as 50 per cent and cuts misroutes by an average of 60 per cent, thereby improving the overall customer experience.

The cost savings of using natural language call steering are also considerable. Based on a company handling one million calls per month and automating just five per cent of calls using speech recognition, an institution could handle 600,000 additional calls per year and save an average of £3 per call, which amounts to £1.8 million per annum cost reduction.

To more aggressively combat identity theft and to provide more caller convenience, a growing number of financial institutions are using voice authentication to identify and verify callers. Voice authentication uses voice biometrics technology to prove the customer is who they say they are based on the unique characteristics of their voice. This technology is especially pertinent to the financial services sector given the sensitive nature of phone transactions. When calling into a financial institution's customer service department, people want to feel confident that their personal information is secure. Fifty-five per cent of UK consumers said that they prefer to do business with a company that offers voice authentication[4].  Consumers remain vulnerable to identity theft as existing forms of security for phone-based customer care are failing to adapt to new threats. Banks have taken a defensive line on fraud by placing the onus on their customers to show greater vigilance. Indeed, research has shown that over half of consumers sometimes lose or forget passwords, increasing security risks and costs.[5] While the public should accept more personal responsibility, they are also justified to look to their banks for protection; as affirmation that they are a valued customer.  

Voice authentication is an important security measure for retail banks as well as investment banks and trading environments, which are continually striving to meet rigorous security regulations. One of Canada's largest investment management companies, Invesco Trimark, for example, is implementing voice authentication to protect its sensitive client data and ensure caller convenience. The initial tests on the system yielded a security rate of 100 per cent - in every instance, the voice authentication system prevented imposters from accessing client data.

These customer service solutions provide significant efficiency gains as well as improvements to customer satisfaction - particularly important in these tough economic times. Now, more than ever, the financial services industry needs to go on the charm offensive and start listening to its customers. Banks have always been willing to be the first to embrace cutting edge technology for faster payments and real-time trading. It's now time to more seriously consider customer satisfaction. If financial institutions want to maintain customer stickiness they need to think about how they can meet customer expectations for a slick and hassle-free service while providing their customers the peace of mind that they have taken the necessary steps to protect their money from fraudsters. The good news for this industry is that in the process of improving customer service, they can actually save money as well.

[1] http://www.callcentre.co.uk/ccf-news-content/full/financial-services-call-centres-leave-customers-dissatisfied

[2] Yankee Group Anywhere Consumer: 2007 US Communications/Customer Satisfaction Survey

[3] Celent 2007, while this statistic specifically references the financial services market, it is a leading indicator of what all customer service organisations can expect.

[4] Harris Interactive: The 2008 Secure Identification Survey assessing caller authentication methods for UK customer care

[5] Harris Interactive: The 2008 Secure Identification Survey assessing caller authentication methods for UK customer care