Building an ROI Case for Customer Interaction Solutions in Financial Services.

The contact center is in a state of transformation. As financial services firms increasingly focus on organic growth, contact centers, which span phone and Internet channels, are expected to drive cross-selling efforts as well as strengthen customer relationships.

But what must happen to make today’s contact centers a powerful contributor to profitable growth?

One critical factor is the recognition that inbound, customer-initiated interactions must be managed with extreme care and precision. If financial players are to provide an exceptional service experience and strengthen customer loyalty, they must be able to rapidly identify and act on customer issues. If they are to capitalize on customer-initiated interactions to drive growth, they must be able to address their customers in a personalized fashion and present offers that are highly relevant. Unfortunately, most financial firms presently lack the ability to truly personalize and contextualize interactions with their customers. They are prone to pitching irrelevant or inappropriate offers that can actually damage the customer relationship. They undermine perceptions by failing to manage customers across channels in a seamless way.

To thrive in today’s hyper-competitive markets, companies must invest in intelligent interaction platforms that are designed to provide a compelling customer experience and strengthen profitability. Truly intelligent solutions of this kind must provide a single view of the customer across channels. They must have the ability to apply real-time analytics and business rules to customer profiles drawn from historical data and contextual data captured during the customer interaction. Leading financial firms now understand the value of highly intelligent, fully integrated and profit-minded contact centers. By enabling multi-channel interaction, delivering a full-spectrum view of the customer and providing real-time guidance to agents, Customer Interaction Optimization solutions will take contact centers to the next level of performance.

Brief analysis herein, shows how contact centers can deliver differentiated customer service, build more profitable customer relationships and demonstrate the ROI on customer interaction solutions.

Market Drivers: Key Trends in Financial Services.

Several industry mega-trends are influencing the environment in which contact centers are now evolving. Among them:
1. Intensifying Competition.
2. Customer Backlash.
3. Organic Growth.

The Challenge: Irrelevant Offers and Inappropriate Interactions Undermine Relationships.

Against this backdrop, financial firms are looking to their contact centers as a force for profitable growth. As the front line connection to customers, these centers are now expected to go beyond conventional forms of customer service and capitalize on opportunities to deepen customer relationships. Considering the diminishing returns and high risk of annoyance associated with outbound telemarketing, companies are becoming particularly interested in the possibilities of inbound marketing – which is initiated by the customer’s call or visit to a Web site or even a face-to-face interaction in a retail branch.

The problem that contact center managers face is that their systems are inadequate for the growing demands being thrust upon them. They suffer from an:

1. Inability to Personalize Offers and Recommendations.
2. Inability to Manage Customers Across Channels.
3. Inability to Empower Front-Line Service Personnel.

The Opportunity: Intelligent Customer Interaction.

Profit-minded contact centers are building their foundation on Customer Interaction Optimization platforms. This represents the next generation of intelligent interaction solutions – going beyond basic analytics to provide predictions around customer behavior and drive action that maximizes business benefits. Such platforms are software-driven solutions that provide recommendations to service representatives or communicate directly to customers, drawing on continually refreshed profiles of contextual and historical customer data. Such interactions may occur in the call center, within an IVR, on a Web Site or at an ATM or retail branch. These solutions are notable for their intelligence (drawn from real-time analytics and data on historic behavior),their orientation to the individual customer and their capacity to enable channel spanning interaction. Whereas today’s call centers and Web sites are often siloed and rule-bound, the Customer Interaction Optimization approach is based on the principle that companies can most powerfully strengthen customer relationships through an integrated platform based on real-time intelligence.

Advanced Customer Interaction Optimization solutions are composed of several key elements including:
1. Real-Time, Personalized Guidance.
2. Multi-Channel Engagement.
3. Full-Spectrum Customer Insight.

For financial services firms looking for a competitive edge, such systems provide several key benefits and advantages. Among them:
1. Enhanced Cross-Selling and Upselling.
2. Stronger Retention and Loyalty.
3. Compelling Customer Experiences.

What to Look for in a Customer Interaction Optimization Solution Provider
As financial services players consider possible ways of addressing their customer-focused business challenges, they’ll need to examine the types of solution providers that can get them to the next level. Here are some of the key decision criteria that should guide an investment in a Customer Interaction Optimization solution:
1. Industry Expertise
2. Channel Neutrality
3. Analytical Depth
4. Real-Time Capabilities
5. Seamless Integration