3 MIN. READ
According to a 2017 survey of banks in the Asia-Pacific, North America, and Europe, 80 percent of all customer interactions occur on digital. However, only 25 percent of sales (5 percent on mobile and 20 percent online) occur on digital channels. This shows that most sales in the banking sector require some level of human interaction, whether on the telephone or in branches.
So, although digital has transformed banking in many respects and most customers prefer to consume banking services through digital means, there are some that still value the human touch. Even those who use apps to access banking services often prefer face-to-face interactions for complex financial products.
Seamless Omnichannel Offering
As such, a banking call center or an in-house call center operation in your bank shouldn’t neglect the human side of the equation as they continue to make progress in digitizing the customer experience. To increase sales and maximize revenue, a banking call center must create a seamless omnichannel offering that leverages both human and digital channels. They must find the ideal combination of personal and personal interactions that match the predisposition of their clients.
Banks need to make the leap to an omnichannel approach that facilitates easy movement between channels and use data about each customer to enable cross-channel sales. Those that are yet to leverage the omnichannel approach are missing out on a major opportunity to improve and maximize their sales productivity.
To transition to true omnichannel distribution, a banking call center must develop the following capabilities:
- Using data-driven insights into sales journeys and customer activity to improve marketing personalization.
- Equipping a motivated sales force with the tools to operate in omnichannel environments.
- Granular customer data and advanced analytics for better targeting.
When applied to data generated by digital banking and customer transactions, advanced analytics can help increase the reach and impact of omnichannel sales. Advanced analytical capabilities enable banks to acquire insights into customer behavior and segments, ensuring precise targeting and accurate tailoring of value propositions and products.
By applying data mining techniques to customers’ online behaviors and spending patterns, banks will be able to identify those high-potential, high-value customers that bring in the larger share of revenues. Such customer behavior can be analyzed to optimize lead generation so that banks can focus on the right customers. Also, identifying granular behavioral clusters can help align and balance out sales, value generated, cost to serve and service levels.
Data-driven product development
Advanced analytics also helps inform product development. Tracking online customer behavior can help banks monitor the level of interest in a particular product or service or help indicate possible instruments that customers need to solve problems they encounter. For instance, banks with advanced analytics capabilities can help identify customer segments that are more likely to go to rival banks for a loan, enabling the bank to come up with differentiated products and services that will appeal to such a customer base.
Conclusion
Combining new and more granular data with recent advancements in analytics tech (such as non-linear machine-learning algorithms) can dramatically improve customer targeting and the prediction power of models. Integrating static customer profiles with high-frequency triggers and variables (gathered through real-time analysis of customer behavior) can skyrocket conversion rates.
Banks should also note that customers usually do not make purchasing decisions or respond immediately to a sales approach via direct channels. This means that human intervention must come into play before a purchase is finalized. As such, conversion rates may depend entirely on how well banking call center reps respond to the first contact.
According to an American Express research, good customer service requires representatives to be able to provide satisfactory answers to questions or quickly connect them with someone who is knowledgeable. As such, banks should ensure that they not only use digital channels to respond to inquiries but also deliver a timely and appropriate human response to customers as they progress through the buyer’s journey.
