Remember banks and building societies?

They used to sit between shops on busy town streets.

Customers used to go inside to carry out various financial transactions and interact with real-life cashiers.

Joking aside, it feels like banking is second only to retail when it comes to sectors that have been turbo-charged by the recent digital revolution.

Today, many of us – Gens X, Y and Z in particular – do all of our banking online, increasingly via smartphone apps that put control of our cash in the palm of our hand.

As a result, the number of physical banks is slowly decreasing as inexorable digitisation simplifies once-complex processes and brilliantly automates more and more aspects of our daily lives.

Convenience, speed, security: all are at the very heart of that new financial services model.

For providers (and their channel partners) of the technology upon which it all depends, it is an ever-evolving market packed full of opportunity.

As is always the case, some are more on the money than others.

“Today’s banks must keep up with the evolution of technology and enable their customers to benefit from it,” says Christopher Chrcek, Head of CPaaS for Enterprise at leading global digital provider Syniverse, whose smart ‘all-in-one-place’ communications platform helps financial services organizations do just that.

“The modern customer wants to access all of their banks’ products and services through any channel or medium of communication they prefer and at times which suit them.

“Many do not want to have to go into a physical bricks and mortar bank. Many are happier communicating with a chatbot at, say, 2am. From the banks’ perspective, they need to be able to sell those same customers new products and services and build brand loyalty and trust.

“All of that is now possible digitally – the smarts of the platform through which it is all delivered plus the quality of the user experience are powerful differentiators.”

Via the Syniverse solution, banking customers are able to go online and connect with a chat bot that is capable of resolving up to 70% of their issues; be routed quickly to an expert customer service agent where appropriate; and have all transactions and interactions securely validated.

Clever AI enables the solution to capture and analyse customers’ preferences and behaviours and suggest actions, products or services they may be interested in.

And low latency means urgent messaging relating to, for example, fraud alerts or the issuing of one-time passwords is guaranteed to be delivered quickly and securely.

“The connected and unified communications platform has helped turn contact center agents into organisations’ star performers,” says Chrcek.

“That’s because the platform is increasingly where all of the rich customer interaction is happening and where more and more of the selling is happening.

“When an agent is able to resolve an issue with the customer, trust is built up. That relationship then provides the agent with an opportunity to position another new product.

“Online banking is now an everyday part of everyone’s life and people do it all via their mobile phone which is almost constantly in their hand.

“Banks understandably value their customers and work incredibly hard to not only recruit new ones but also retain existing ones. We support eight of the 10 largest financial institutions in the US – they come to us because of the quality of service that we can help them deliver that our competitors cannot.”

It seems that, far from having fully-matured, the market for the digitisation of financial services still presents many channel opportunities for growth.

Pick the right partner and you’re likely to be in the money…

For more information on how Syniverse can help your and customers’ business digitise and thrive, click here.

 

 



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