The Customer Service Perspective

Customer Satisfaction is an elusive target; once almost in hand it drifts higher on ever increasing levels of expectations. Customer Service leaders in the Banking sector understand the challenges of enabling customers to come first. That means ensuring that the ways you communicate with those customers is relevant, timely and via a route they prefer. To do this, staffs need the ability to compose, send out and retrieve customer documentation quickly and efficiently whilst working within tight customer service and contact centre budgets.

And with customers increasingly looking for smart delivery mechanisms for their correspondence, the supporting technology landscape has to be robust enough to manage significant volumes of information and be capable of capturing records of all interactions ­ whether written, e-mail, self-service, SMS, etc. - accurately and updatable in real-time,

It is critical that customer service staff has the knowledge and visibility of all customer interactions so that they are able to respond to requests and queries authoritatively and accurately in any customer correspondence they issue. Working with the client to react to market fluctuations with timely advice promotes a healthy client relationship. Achieving this needs a 360⁰ view of the client portfolio, supporting information and assured correspondence delivery via the primary channel of the client’s choice.

Equally, providing staff with greater empowerment requires a degree of control of what can and cannot be reflected in any such documentation issued ­ for the protection of customer, staff and the services’ organisation. It is clear that the early adopters in enhanced Customer Communications Management solutions such as from Icon UK are rapidly realising increased organisational performance and customer engagement metrics.

Challenges

Customer interfaces have changed markedly over the last decade with service operations in many organisations depending heavily on accurate, timely and complete customer correspondence being available at a single point ­ whether for self-service, call centre dialogue or other event driven customer action. Customers now expect a level of personal service that puts them at the centre of the interaction with their providers. They get upset with inaccuracies in letters, lack of quality service, restricted choices and missing/inconsistent information.

The Customer Services challenge is to meet or exceed customer expectations for personal experience, speed and via their preferred communications channel(s). Satisfying or delighting customers is a tricky business. Signs that it’s not all going to plan include:

• Levels of customer retention are less than they should be
• Customers demand for multi-channel choice and communications preferences are unfulfilled
• Contact Centre and associated staff are fed-up with systems limitations and attrition and motivation are concerning
• Keep being told service is inefficient and time per contact is unacceptable.

Being able to communicate with customers in an effective and relevant way, whilst remaining within budget, is a key challenge. Documentation must be clear, unambiguous, well presented and technically correct (and certainly not misleading). This requires careful design and drafting, with systems that provide maximum re-use of existing approved content and the flexibility to allow staff to appropriately personalise customer interactions. It also requires a clearly auditable path from the writer to the reviewer.

Many in the Banking sector have core legacy systems that are many years old. Whilst these may be capable of producing accurate documentation, this is in older styles. Presenting a dated look-and-feel does little to enhance reputation or engender new business.

Against the backdrop of these challenges, customer service leaders in this sector need to an enterprise software tool that will tackle these issues. Whilst under the watchful eye of regulators, legislators and influencers [such as the BOE, FSA, HMRC and BBA], if these issues are not dealt with promptly and satisfactorily not only is the organisation’s reputation and customer confidence at risk, but there may be fines or even a loss of operating licences. The Icon Suite of capabilities delivers powerful solutions for enhancing customer service, meeting customer self-service targets, reducing delivery costs and meeting corporate standards.

How Icon Helps

Icon Suite offers Banking organisations the opportunity to address all these challenges in one solution platform. Practically every type of document can be flexibly constructed from pre-approved templates, incorporating powerful re-use and multi-lingual features. Structured, Interactive and On-demand output types can be produced and include Proposals and Quotations, Order confirmations, Policies, Statements, Customer Self-Service, Correspondence and Agent Communications, etc. (see ‘Uses’ on Banking Overview).

Different modes of customer engagement are supported across all media types. Through deploying this platform, with transformational change and operational services where required, we help organisations change the way they engage with customers. Customers benefit from highly personalised, flexible and positive experiences they are pleased to recommend to others. Icon provides many forms of industrial strength enterprise document solutions.

Icon solutions offer:

1. Greater control of quality and template usage in multiple types of interactions improves quality, leading to less money wasted dealing with errors
2. Efficient tools for contact centre staff allowing higher value-add activities per interaction, helping customer satisfaction and retention
3. Customers are able to choose channel preferences and can be steered to the most cost-effective channels
4. Staff delighted with system ease of use (following training) leading to fewer staff issues and greater loyalty
5. Time taken per communication is reduced allowing savings or re-direction of effort to high value-add areas.

Icon UK can assist in the all areas related to improving customer communications including:

Companies that engage Icon find they can understand what customer communications are really costing and translate this into a compelling Return on Investment case. By investing in the right solutions they can improve content and policy control, increased customer loyalty and achieve top-quartile performance in customer communications management.

Reduce the effort for staff to produce high quality personalised communications, enable customer self-service on all channels and achieve your Customer Satisfaction targets. Some of the world’s largest and leading Banking service organisations use our technology solutions. Call us to find out how we can help your organisation.