Delivering the Customer Promise in a Changing Business Environment

John O’Brien, Head of Digital & Direct Banking, Permanent tsb

John O’Brien, Head of Digital & Direct Banking, Permanent tsb

It is so important to always deliver for your Customer, but how do you achieve this at a time where there is so many economic factors at play and when Customer’s needs are continuously evolving, often in an accelerated way, pointing them towards holding higher expectations than ever before? Dealing with this can be challenging but if your industry is experiencing rapid change as well this will create significant strain not only on Customers and colleagues but also on the service and support you offer.

This is universal. Challenges like this are felt across many businesses over the course of time, however, the way you react and respond to them is critical if you are to convert negative outcomes to positive outcomes for your Customers. Being proactive in your approach, seeking out new opportunities while dealing with threats of problems before they even emerge allows you to maintain consistency and is key to successful management of an organisation in any industry.

Banking in Ireland has changed significantly since the 2008 Financial Crisis and the introduction of further digital enablement coincided with Covid-19 has seen considerable growth in online activity across a number of key areas, for example: app users, contactless payments, logins on both app and web – they all returned unprecedented rise in usage. This increase was reflected in an increase in our Customers choosing digital channels within the last 2 years while majority of our everyday lending applications were received online.

This shift in activity from the voice channel to online was reflective of Customers wanting to execute independent and seamless journeys in their own time with positive outcomes. This can be achieved only when Customers are confident and trust in an organisation that over the years has proved to be steady, ready and able to service their journeys digitally.

In an ever changing Banking landscape where banks have continued to exit over the last 10 years, the appearance of Covid-19 has fundamentally changed Customer behaviour, not to mention the challenge we faced with the weakened and retracted recruitment market. While these are considerable challenges to begin with, Banks are continuously refining their approach and offering for Customers, both - through a business lens but also a regulatory lens which have introduced enhanced Customer protection some which were new services. Like with any changes, these new adjustments are not always adopted easily by Customers in an initial phase of implementation. Their resistance or challenge in adopting can lead to surges and unplanned events occurring in your Contact Centre that will not always align to the supply of available resources. Also, as the digital adoption has increased the new forms of sophisticated fraudulent activity has escalated. This requires us to simultaneously combat such activities and provide Customers with a flawless digital experience. The new approach must be fast and collaborative but also coupled with the use of new technology to control the risk and fight the fraud.

" We are guided by what our Customer wants and needs and to support this we focus on bringing technology and people together to make every day easy so our Customer can do big things "

Dealing with events that cause surges are challenging and requires a reset in approach especially when it is deemed controllable. There are key components and capabilities required that must be built to support the introduction of any service, launch of any initiative or a new technology, especially where it’s expected to become part of the wider Customer offering. A number of questions must be asked before we release the change: How did we arrive at this point? How long is the surge expected to last? Could we have stopped this happening? How do we prevent this from happening again? What might be the short and long lasting consequences? Are we ready to respond to Customer demands proactively and effectively?

If you are experiencing the aftermath of incidents like this, regardless of what you do next, a dedicated team must be mobilised with a clear mandate to build out the required capability now and in the future, to communicate and introduce the required changes that will navigate, guide and return the Contact Centre back to the service level agreement that is expected by our Customers.

“We are guided by what our Customer wants and needs and to support this we focus on bringing technology and people together to make every day easy so our Customer can do big things”

There is no one universal solution to approach a challenge like this. Depends on the organisations maturity model, different businesses will hold various positions to address concerns and respond to Customers’ surge in demands, however the one common theme to building and executing real change is the data you hold.

Capacity Planning Model.  As most businesses will say, it is fundamental to any business to determine staffing versus call demand. However, with sudden economic changes likely to happen at any time the building of a capacity planning model to enable the business deal with surge and unplanned events ahead of time was the focus. We identified key components and deeper access points than ever before, which ranged from the inclusion of new data lines and new parameters that would support the business in creating a surge view for unplanned, scheduled and potential events. We were also able to expand our forecasting capability by using previous and current year outturns while allowing for adjustments for specific events that aligned to the availability of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE). Our forecasting during our next phase of change was managed ahead of time. The delta forecast and our performance aligned as it included the economic impacts of change expected and also assumed a level of digital adoption for new services and support.

Resource Augmentation.  Once our forecasting was completed, it found its way and reflected in our workforce planning model. This also helped us to realise that, given the unsteady recruitment market, we needed to look at other ways to ensure we have a sufficient, robust and flexible supply chain workforce. The successful on all fronts year 2022 proved that we did with the onboarding of new partners to the business.

Digital Adoption & Education. While the introduction of new digital services and offerings is not new, directing Customers, who for years got used to dealing with Agents on the phone, towards online services and ask them to acquire a new self-service routine is difficult, especially, if there are multiple clicks or the offering and the application of it is complex and not user-friendly. While Customers trust has increased considerably when it comes to online offering and most of them are now comfortable to self-serve for routine and repetitive activities, a clear and continuous communication is still required to activate Customers digitally. A number of capabilities to support this approach should not be underestimated - from using push notifications; improved Interactive Voice Response (IVR) routing and messaging; monitoring, navigating and managing social media and understanding its Customer reach; introducing interactive elements to a website; to using a webchat messaging channel and bot behind login to encourage digital adoption in a two way chat.

Being dependable and delivering on the Customer promise is critical to a business, but continuously meeting this promise while the business landscape internally and externally is changing, is much more difficult. Customers must know we listen to them and that we respond act accordingly. The business must systematically adapt their approach with improved data forecasting and evolve levels of flexibility to the business operating model. We also have to enable ourselves digitally beyond the current use that minimises journey drop-offs. While these three levers might not solve all businesses’ problems, it will provide the required and steady foundations that will allow the business to grow, build stronger and diverse offerings and resist headwinds that come with uncertainty.

Financial

Supply Chain

Digital Experience

Fraud