Mitel’s Head of Financial Services discusses how a solid CX strategy can drive revenue.
A solid customer experience (CX) strategy will not only ensure that customer expectations are exceeded in the digital era, but will also improve business processes and drive revenue. In today’s environment, where customers are demanding even more from digital platforms, a superior digital customer experience is a must if you want to maintain a competitive edge.
What does customer experience mean today?
For financial services institutions, customer loyalty is no longer enough and the era of customer experience has begun. By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to Walker, a customer experience consulting firm. Businesses must prioritise a more personalised, responsive experience that puts the customer’s needs first.
Research carried out by Econsultancy for Adobe reported that 40% of financial services and insurance organisations found that keeping up with changing customer expectations and behaviour is a ‘key challenge’. The study also found that 63% of financial services organisations ranked customer experience as their main priority.
Heightened customer expectations have transformed the dynamics within FS institutions, shifting from physical to digital, and from transactional to experiential. Customers now expect a seamless experience, regardless of the channel through which they choose to interact.
The importance of personalisation
There is no ‘average’ customer. We all want to do business with companies who understand our individual needs and are willing to tailor the experience to meet those needs. Banks and insurance companies must build on their customer data and transform it into meaningful, actionable information to drive both engagement and loyalty.
Experience has become the product, with users wanting a customer experience on their own terms. Just as Netflix has transformed media consumption, Apple has also successfully delivered on CX. From the packaging and customer onboarding, to the level of customisation via iTunes and the app store, Apple has realised that personalisation via mass customisation is now the expectation.
Users want to be able to switch from one channel to another – be that from web chat, to a phone call – without having to identify themselves again. For example, if web chat cannot resolve their issue, customers want to bypass traditional IVRs and continue the interaction with a live agent without any requiring further ID&V validation. Each part of the communication journey should be seamless, with agents having full transparency of the customer’s history.
Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in contact centres
As more artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is applied to the data collected via customer interactions and their needs are anticipated, the customer experience improves. It’s all about aligning technology into the right work flows.
Contact Centre AI integrates with existing contact centre technology, building AI algorithms and analytics based on customer and advisor communication. The result is a highly personalised, intuitive customer service experience from the first interaction.
When customers interact with their financial services advisors, they want a personalised experience through the communication channel of their choice. A cloud-first approach enables Financial services providers to support the digital consumer, providing seamless digital self-service supported by AI, Chatbot and natural language self service.
How Google and Mitel deliver AI
The optimal CX strategy must be real time, customisable, omni-channel and multi-platform. Understanding how consumers use their products and reacting to that information enables organisations to predict over time what delivers the best customer experience. It’s what Netflix calls the ‘flywheel effect’.
With 45 years as an industry leader, Mitel understands the need to deliver technologies that create a more intelligent customer experience. Cloud technology improves our agility and global capabilities, which is why Mitel is making every solution cloud-capable for their end users.
Mitel has partnered with Google to create smarter contact centre AI solutions, powered by Google Cloud’s AI and machine learning technologies. You can now improve the customer service experience in your contact centre through call automation, AI-powered assistance to human agents, and powerful analytics.
Mitel’s CloudLink gateway connects customers’ existing Mitel investment, whether on premises or via the cloud, to the Mitel CloudLink platform. The platform is an open API first architecture, for rapid development and maximum customisation, bringing the intelligent customer experience to SMBs and enterprises alike.
AI – are you ready?
Mitel understands that technology is the enabler, automating and streamlining customer communications with omni-channel capabilities. They provide a secure, available service from UK data centres and offer customers flexibility and agility, enabling them to choose how they progress on their digital journey.
Daisy is the largest Mitel Unified Communications provider in the UK and a Mitel Platinum Partner, delivering communications solutions to our customers in the financial services sector.
About the author:
Tim Nash is Head of Financial Services at Mitel.