The Voice of the Future
How speech analytics technologies are changing our daily life and the entire banking industry
The pandemic and resulting global crisis have brought about unprecedented changes in the reality we are familiar with. Over the course of just a few months, people’s lives, habits and preferences drastically changed. The string of lockdowns around the world has led to a massive shift in online activity, and what was once a convenient alternative has become the only link with the outside world.
As a result, many industries, even such conservative ones as the banking sector, were forced to change or die. However, bankers are well-versed in numbers, so they see the benefits of quickly updating procedures if the situation calls for it. Before our very eyes, banks are undergoing a complete rebirth and will very soon become one of the most high-tech and user-friendly industries.
Customers now prefer online banking, so in the next three years, 25% of bank branches across Europe (about 40,000 branches) are expected to close. It is also predicted that over the next three years, 70% of procedures for opening an account, making a deposit, and applying for a consumer loan will happen digitally.
Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas Fortis, Commerzbank, AIB Group, and many other European and American banks are undergoing large-scale reorganization and business optimization in the new environment. While banks are leaving some of their branches open to act more as window displays for passersby, they are simultaneously developing digital channels and new online products.
Those who don’t do the same will miss out on the best time to optimize costs and improve customer service. No matter what happens, you should not expect that everything will return to normal.
The experience of the Ireland-based AIB Group shows that customers aged 65 and older who previously didn’t want to switch to an online service turned out to be the fastest-growing group of users of digital channels.
Call centers are at the forefront of this new world. Banks now almost entirely depend on them for interactions with clients, as well as understanding the current situation, problem areas, and feedback on their product offerings. The cost of a mistake is high: if it’s too complicated to communicate with a bank, and/or it takes a lot of effort to get service, the client will simply go to another bank.
Meanwhile, call centers operating in an old-fashioned way turned out not to be ready for the new challenges, and all banking institutions, one way or another, are forced to solve a whole new range of problems:
- Inability to increase the staff of the call center in proportion to the increased influx of calls
- Inconsistency of outdated processes with new realities
- Increased stress levels for both customers and operators
- High turnover and quick burnout of call center employees
- Delay or lack of analysis of information to and from the call center
Clearly, these new challenges require banks to innovate and rethink their approach as soon as possible. Today, one of the best solutions for collecting and analyzing the entire set of data circulating through a call center is speech analytics technology. Modern solutions are able not only to instantly digitize all the dialogue but also to analyze it in many ways.
There are different speech analytics solutions on the market. Similarly, the Ender Turing Conversations Analytics solution allows you to process 100% of calls and chats within a few minutes after the end of the conversation and create transcripts. Digitized conversations can be used for monitoring, searching calls for specific content, and further analysis based on a wide range of parameters.
The difference is that Ender Turing provides the complete readable dialog with options to listen to the particular part of a conversation. While analytics module tags calls by the desired categories and displays real-time information in the form of graphs and dashboards with calls scoring in the view of the agent efficiency, compliance risks, escalations to a higher service level, and even a possibility to drill down to the root cause.
As a result, it’s easy to visualize the main performance indicators of not only the call center but also the bank as a whole.
Here are some of them:
Average Handle Time (AHT)
This is the time from the moment the operator answers the call until the moment when they finish working with the current inquiry. AHT is one of the most analyzed KPIs in call centers, as it is directly related to customer satisfaction and operator performance. For example, if AHT rises sharply shortly after a new product is released, Ender Turing Conversations Analytics can help determine if the issue is related to product quality or insufficient product instructions.
Silence Measurement on Long Calls / Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)
By measuring periods of silence during long conversations, speech analytics can help identify agents who need additional training or topics that need additional information available. Conversations Analytics will identify the topics and issues that operators deal with most often so that they can be added to the knowledge base and quickly accessed when needed. In addition, prolonged silence can indicate technical delays and failures in the call center. Reducing silence periods lead directly to costs saving.
Reduced Risks
Non-compliance with rules is another important issue where speech analytics can help. Conversations Analytics will not only ensure compliance with regulatory requirements but also reduce the risk of fines and penalties. Each call will be assessed to determine the relative risk, and flagging violations will allow you to immediately eliminate them, whether they’re related to privacy protection, wording compliance, or profanity and other risky language.
Rapidly updating information, understanding customer needs, and effective problem solving are no longer just an advantage, but a prerequisite for surviving in modern business. It’s no longer a question of whether or not to use the latest technologies. The top banking organizations soon won’t be the ones with the longest history or the largest number of branches, but the ones that use cutting-edge innovations and add value to their business in the long term. Both businesses and customers benefit from this approach, which means that a beautiful and successful future awaits us all.
