Even small businesses can achieve massive feats when people go the extra mile with their productivity. But you cannot expect it to happen by itself as employees tend to go slack when not supervised or motivated. The decline may be deliberate or unintentional, but low productivity always hurts the employer in more than one way.
As a business owner, you will need to invest in your team and drive them to achieve more with less. It may take some effort, but there is no other way to boost people and get your business ahead. A positive mindset and motivational approach give you a good start, but they are not enough to boost your workforce. You need to realise that technology is the driving force that makes a real difference, and investing in it is non-negotiable. Let us explain how you can leverage technology to build a productive workforce for your business.
Empowering with flexibility
Flexibility makes people productive, and it is all the more crucial in the remote work era. The right technology solutions empower your team to work from anywhere and anytime. You cannot expect to survive and thrive without implementing these solutions. They enable workers to connect and collaborate with each other and the clients, no matter the constraints of location and time. A flexible workforce aces on all fronts, including productivity. They also feel motivated because a flexible approach breeds trust. Let them work their own way, and they will give extra effort to do their best. Moreover, it is no longer a choice for businesses in pandemic times. Learn to live with flexibility, and productivity will grow organically.
Automating time-tracking
Employees often lose track at work because they get distracted or take extended breaks, sometimes unintentionally. The problem seems like a small one, but the implications of lost time are far-reaching. Thankfully, you can rely on apps to automate time-tracking to keep an eye on people. They are significant right now as people work from home and there are more chances of wasting time when away from physical supervision. Once you have these solutions in place, employees become more conscious, and you can save hundreds of work hours every month. They can even help employees to keep a check on their performance and do their bit for the employer. Time-tracking apps are a small investment that takes your business a long way.
Simplifying small tasks
When it comes to making your workforce more productive, you must start at the most basic level. Consider investing in technologies that simplify the smallest of the daily tasks at work. You can provide relevant tools to handle these tasks. Just imagine the problems employees can face when they have too many temporary files on their work devices. It sounds like a small issue, but the extra files can slow down the system and hamper the workflow significantly. Eventually, it will affect their productivity too. A simple cleanup tool can resolve the concern in minutes and get devices back to work seamlessly. Choose simple tools people can use without help.
Bolstering employee engagement
A happy workforce is bound to be more productive and efficient. So employee engagement is a worthy investment for any business. You can invest in engagement apps and gain in the form of a positive impact on work output. Several organisations are already leveraging gamification solutions to engage teams and foster healthy competition among people. As employees invest extra efforts to gain points, their productivity gets a boost. Similarly, feedback solutions go a long way in enhancing the engagement of the workforce. They let people know where they stand and how they can improve their performance with the adoption of the right measures.
Ramping up training initiatives
If productivity is your top priority, you need to have effective training initiatives for your team. The idea is to enhance their skills over time so that they deliver more and better. Once again, workplace technology can play a significant role in employee training. You can leverage high-end learning management systems to train through simulative technologies. Many businesses are also using simulative apps that leverage Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to deliver lifelike learning experiences to the employees. Remote training is another area where technology emerges as a saviour right now.
Building a productive team should be a priority for every business, even if it takes effort and investment. It becomes all the more crucial at this point when organisations need to optimise resources and cut down costs. Technology takes you a step ahead with the initiative, so you must pick the right solutions to empower your workforce at the earliest. You will soon realise that technology pays for itself, so the investment is worthwhile.
Gen Z (age 4-24) represent a fundamental break with every generation in human history – they've never lived in a non-digital world. Their attitudes are different to older generations, giving us a sneak peek into the future of human behaviours. Motie Bring, General Manager for Global eCommerce at Worldpay Merchant Solutions,
Gen Z’s stature, spending power and influence will grow as they enter the workforce and their predecessors head into retirement. As the generation whose behaviours will reshape commerce over decades to come, their importance to global retailers cannot be ignored.
Organisations need to implement both immediate and long-term strategies that ensure they’re being heard, with attention to three key areas.
Be Personal and Authentic
Rapid urbanisation, population growth, and the rise of mobile and online commerce has fundamentally changed society’s notion of individuality. Shoppers have swapped in-store experiences for the speed and convenience of shopping online. But, more recently, we are seeing Gen Z consumers placing a renewed focus on the individual and rekindling the one-to-one roots of commerce. For this demographic, one size doesn’t fit all: Gen Z are looking for personal experiences that fit their values and lifestyle and keep them excited.
Fused with the data that makes personalisation possible, technology is powering the possibility of one-to-one customer experiences in the digital age. Mass consumer culture doesn’t sit well with a generation that is immersed in individual expression. Retailers are moving away from talking to segments to focusing on people.
According to findings from the newly released Worldpay from FIS 2020 Global Payments Report, 60 percent of Gen Z believe that it is important for brands to value their opinion. 35 percent feel their favourite brand understands them as an individual.
Gen Z have a healthy sense of skepticism and so it is critical for brands to be authentic. Learning how to navigate the world in the era of “fake news” and having their digital lives saturated with messages of questionable quality and authenticity makes Gen Z discerning critics. They recoil from brands that fail to adhere to their values.
According to findings from the newly released Worldpay from FIS 2020 Global Payments Report, 60 percent of Gen Z believe that it is important for brands to value their opinion.
Provide a Mobile Friendly Experience
Brands seeking to earn the favour of Gen Z will need to cater to their payment preferences. Like the generation itself, Gen Z’s payment preferences are more digital, more social and more mobile-focused than any other generation.
Gen Z uses digital services and mobile wallets more frequently than their predecessors. Over half use digital wallets at least once a month, three quarters use a digital payment app from financial service providers and others, while 79 percent use peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps at least once a month. Digital access in the United Kingdom is very high: internet penetration in the country is one of the highest in the world at 95 percent of the population, according to the Worldpay from FIS 2020 Global Payments Report.
Accepting a range of smartphone-based digital wallets is vital to serve a generation that has largely bypassed using plastic cards as a payment method. Tailoring the right mix of digital wallet acceptance is key. Although globally recognised brands have proportionally large share, digital wallets are resisting homogenization with local and regional alternatives thriving around the world.
Innovate for a Hyper-Connected Generation
Gen Z isn’t instinctively drawn to the same banking, payment and investment tools as their parents’ generation. They want financial products and services that deliver practicality and convenience. Gen Z consumers are also savvier on what companies can deliver, and increasingly expect the same level of experience regardless of whether they are shopping on Amazon, ordering a pizza, or liaising with their financial service provider.
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From peer-to-peer services that are increasingly being accepted for business-to-consumer transactions, to direct debits; from checking to satisfy recurring payment arrangements, to purely digital banking services: Gen Z is ready and eager to engage with cutting edge financial services and payment innovations.
Alternative financing options that emphasise shorter flexibility—such as “buy now pay later” services find themselves fitting with generational need. According to the Worldpay from FIS 2020 Global Payments Report, these trends are on the rise in the United Kingdom: these payments are expected to grow 39 percent annually and are on course to double their global market share by 2023.
Establishing meaningful connections with Gen Z is a long-term approach, but one that requires focused attention. Merchants seeking success must explore how they can formulate and implement strategies with appropriate care, yet with the urgency that Gen Z increasingly expects.
About the Data
Figures quoted are taken from data published in Worldpay from FIS 2020 Global Payments Report unless otherwise stated or referenced. For research methodology, please refer to page 128 of the report.
Four out of five businesses will use chatbots by 2020, 85% of all customer interactions will be handled by them and they will generate $600bn in revenue in the same year, according to a recent Oracle survey. This week Chris Crombie, Product Manager at Engage Hub, believes now may well be the best time to start investing in chatbots.
In just under two years’ time, chatbots – conversation-mimicking computer programmes that provide your customers with an instant, personalised response – will be ubiquitous. Driven by innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) and the insatiable desire to enhance and personalise the customer experience.
Simply put, chatbots are one of the clearest concrete examples of how the “AI revolution” is impacting on the business landscape and on the day-to-day lives of millions of consumers worldwide.
Consumers happy to chat to bots
Consumer familiarity with chatbots has increased over the last decade, a result of our familiarity with things such as self-service machines in supermarkets and interactive IVR.
With the latest advances in AI technology pushing new boundaries, it’s easy to see why many are claiming that 2018 is set to be “the year of the chatbot”.
That’s because, for any company that has an interest in offering a great customer experience, the potential benefits of enhancing customer satisfaction and responding to customer’s needs in a faster and more efficient manner by using chatbots are immense.
Plus, new messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat and traditional SMS are proliferating, which means millions of new opportunities to reach customers and communicate with them using the communications channels they utilise and like the most.
Understanding innovation in AI, Machine Learning and NLP
To understand the latest chatbot innovations, it’s necessary to have an understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Artificial intelligence is the theory and development of computing technologies that can perform tasks that previously required human intelligence. Mainly relating to speech recognition, visual perception, decision-making or language translation.
As an extension of this, Machine Learning is the application of AI technologies in ways that use data to learn and improve automatically, without being given explicit instructions. While NLP is the branch of AI that helps computers understand human language as it’s spoken and written to be able to understand intent.
The computer chatbot uses AI and NLP to imitate human conversation, through voice and/or text. So, in addition to the above-mentioned text-based instant messaging systems, voice-controlled chatbots are becoming increasingly popular, both in the home and in business contexts.
Amazon Alexa, for example, has proven to be an immensely useful consumer technology over the last two years in terms of its educational benefits, teaching consumers about the ease-of-use of voice controlled tech and helping them to feel comfortable and happy using it.
Test chatbots properly, to boost business
So that’s a brief overview of the key technologies and the commonly-used acronyms behind chatbots. Yet the key thing you need to know if this: when implemented correctly, chatbots are a demonstrably fantastic way to increase engagement with your customers.
So, what’s the secret of rolling out chatbots in a way that resonates well with your customers and doesn’t risk you losing sales?
As with any new technology, rigorously test it out internally before you let your customers start to use it. This is particularly critical with chatbot applications, as the bot will start to learn from your team, which helps to ensure that it knows how to deal with a wide range of the most common customer questions, complaints and enquiries.
Thorough testing will ensure your chatbots work as efficiently as possible, giving the correct information to customers as rapidly as they demand it.
All of which means that you will gain a clear competitive advantage, future-proofing your business by improving the customer experience whilst also delivering operational excellence.
Connecting you to your customers 24/7
Businesses in all verticals, particularly finance, retail and logistics, and businesses of all sizes – from small start-ups through to global enterprise – need to be investing in the latest chatbot technologies in 2018 to stay ahead of the curve.
And in today’s market, enhancing the customer experience is all about providing a high quality ‘always on’ service to deliver the information that they need, on demand, 24/7.
Credit management has a vital role to play within any business. Its primary aim is to ensure customers pay their outstanding balances within the pre-agreed timeframes. When implemented effectively, it helps reduce late payments and improve cashflow, in turn driving a more positive liquidity position for the business. Below Martin de Heus, VP of Direct Sales at Onguard, explains for Finance Monthly.
All of this is fundamental to the work of the credit manager. Unfortunately, however, credit management departments don’t always believe their job also entails keeping the customer happy. Whereas sales and customer service departments might be trained in the arts of charm and diplomacy, credit management teams are more likely to value persistence and tenacity. After all, organisations want outstanding invoices paid as quickly as possible.
The issue is that the role of the credit management department also needs to be about maintaining positive customer engagement. Sales and customer service departments will have done their best – with the help of various tools and technologies – to get to know the customer and ensure their satisfaction. Maintaining this positive relationship is generally much trickier if the customer falls into debt.
It’s a delicate situation. The wrong approach may negate any early groundwork and jeopardise a potential long-term relationship. Nonetheless, these customers are in the credit manager’s portfolio for a reason: experiencing payment difficulties, in arrears or have already been transferred to a collections agency.
The organisation wants to keep Day Sales Outstanding (DSO) as low as possible, however the customer still expects to be treated well and with respect. Respectively, how can organisations create a positive customer experience despite these payment difficulties?
As credit managers are aware, the reasons for non-payment differ greatly between customers; there is never a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Some may be experiencing temporary difficulties. For example, an understaffed accounts department with a high workload might mistakenly overlook an open invoice. While some always pay late as a matter of policy, and others are genuinely facing cash-flow problems.
Because of these differences in circumstances, all these will act favourably to a personalised approach.
Today there is technology available that monitors each customer’s order to cash journey and this will segment customers, assessing who the customer is, what they need, what the risks are, their payment behaviour and how they prefer to communicate. Automated reminders, processes and actions can be created based on these segments. Consequently, communication with a customer who always pays late will differ from those with the customer who simply forgot to pay an invoice. This functionality provides customers with the attention they need, while at the same time, giving credit managers more time to focus on exceptions.
Because this software provides insights on the entire order to cash process, all stages of the journey can be optimised and KPIs achieved. This may include lowering the DSO, optimising cash flow, improving the ability to focus on the core business and focusing on a positive customer experience. It also gives a fully integrated overview of the cash flow forecasting and outstanding debts.
In short, a positive experience and the lowest possible DSO can co-exist – and a credit management team can focus on the customers’ needs and requirements. After all, with the right care and attention, a late-payer can suddenly transform into a loyal customer – and one that pays on time.
Against the backdrop of transformative technologies and the latest regulations, Graham Lloyd, Director and Industry Principal of Financial Services at Pegasystems, identifies for Finance Monthly what types of challenges financial services will have to navigate in their journey through 2018.
Successful social media – The growing discrediting of social media content and its practices comes at an awkward time for banks. The last thing they need is association with anything that could contribute more mistrust to their profile, but they cannot afford to ignore a powerful channel with such reach and strong links to here-and-now impact. It will be interesting to see how banks learn to handle social media with success.
Evolving customer engagement – Social media is just one element of customer engagement and there are far bigger issues on the horizon – digestibility, cost and effectiveness. Data mining is now so huge and its outputs so great that we should perhaps be referring to ‘big insights’ as there are so many of them. For most players, the problem is how to work out which insights to leverage within whatever time and budget constraints prevail.
Time to tackle trade finance – With trade finance risk-weighting kicking in properly in March 2019, we are entering the home straight for finalising the necessary business changes. Most players will presumably look to offset some of the costs of introducing capital requirements in this hitherto largely unweighted portfolio by seeking greater productivity/process efficiencies.
The truth is out about challengers! – Thus far, challengers and Fintechs have been portrayed as somewhere between a benediction and a panacea. The great generic USP – “we’re not a traditional bank” – has helped them weather all sorts of issues from low take-up to sub-optimal IT to almost-but-not-quite products, with scarcely a hard question asked. But the honeymoon period may be drawing to a close, and even in combination, they have still to take any serious market share away from big/traditional banks.
Possibilities of PSD2 – In the final run up to PSD2, there are sizeable revenue opportunities for a bank positioning itself as the ‘destination of choice’ for PISPs (Payment Initiation Service Providers). These new players will gravitate towards the banks offering a higher service standard and the least hassle, as the effects will flow through to the PISPs’ own customers and their expectations of security, certainty and convenience. Banks stand to recapture not only some of their own lost transactions, but also some which have flowed out of their competitors.
The world of banking, perhaps more than any other industry, has undergone significant change in recent years. As technology, strategies and partnerships progress, we’re beginning to see new avenues of growth such as gamification, which according to Karen Wheeler, Vice President and Country Manager UK at Affinion, may hold the key to enhanced customer engagement for the banking sector.
The digital revolution has transformed the way people interact with their banks, within-branch visits falling as the rise of mobile banking has led to customers being able to manage their finances whenever, and wherever they are. And this trend is set to continue, with new figures from CACI revealing that mobile transactions are set to rise by around 121% between 2017-2022, and the average branch visits dropping from seven to four by 2022.
Traditional providers have also been faced with the uprising of challenger banks, which are striving to capture the attention of millennials with their agile, digital offerings. The territory of the high street stalwarts is being encroached on by the likes of PayPal and ApplePay which have disrupted the payments market, traditionally an area which banks dominated.
To stay relevant and encourage loyalty in an increasingly competitive industry, banks know they need find new ways to engage with their customer base. With today’s consumers never far from their smartphones, and moving fluidly between digital platforms, could gamification be the answer in the quest for greater engagement?
Gamification explained
Gamification originates from the computer games industry, and aims to engage with the principles of basic human psychology. In particular, it involves an understanding of what motivates people, how we want to be rewarded – and what will make us play again. Or, for banks: stay loyal. At its core, gamification has a human centred design; optimised for feelings, motivation, insecurities and engagement.
Some of the aims of gamification include: driving a level of competition within users that results in increased usage and engagement; tapping into the human need for esteem and self-actualisation to increase the levels of motivation; playing on the human desire for power in an attempt to drive users to log back in and increase their status; and evoking similar reactions to those elicited by gaming by releasing chemicals which invoke feelings of excitement, euphoria and pleasure.
So, what does this mean in practice; how can gamification be used within the customer experience?
Bringing gamification to life
There are normally a number of different mechanics used in gamification which include points (normally the main method of currency in a gamified system, as they play on the human urge to collect resources), and rewards, when a user earns points which can be translated into a ‘currency’ for exchange of goods and services (whether real or virtual), and gives the user something to work towards.
Building on the idea that we are all naturally seeking power and status, badges are also used to symbolise accomplishments and play on the human desire to show competence, and leaderboards are used to recognise achievements and promote friendly competition between users.
In recent years, gamification has evolved from its traditional rewards-based platform, to one fuelled by sophisticated data-driven capabilities which allows businesses to offer personalised, user-centric experiences. This is no surprise when you consider the way we now live our lives; the proliferation of devices, apps and social media channels means our expectations of the digital customer experience are high.
How can banks use gamification in the customer experience?
Gamification is actually not a new concept in banking; it has always been part of their set-up and is now growing, driven by customer behaviour and digital capabilities. Back in 2011, Gartner predicted by 2015, more than 50 percent of organisations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes. With this date now far behind us, how accurate was this prediction?
Back in 2013, Spanish bank BBVA led the way with incorporating gamification into the experience it offered customers. The provider analysed how its customers interacted, and found that many felt more secure in going to the branch to complete their transactions. BBVA Game was launched to encourage customers to use its digital platform; with the ultimate aim to improve their customer retention and online customer experience.
The game allows people to make account enquiries, pay bills and carry out different kinds of transactions. Where the gamification element comes in to the mix is that, with each completed transaction, the users will earn points. There are also challenges and missions for users to undertake, with medals and badges being rewarded – which can then be shared to social media.
What can traditional banks learn from challengers?
BBVA has also invested in the development of Atom, the digital bank leading the charge for challengers. In a clear sign that Atom wants to its customers something different, it acquired software company Grasp, which specialises in games and virtual reality development, to build its digital platforms. Atom claims to “celebrate your individuality in every way”, by allowing its customers to choose a logo, name and colours to personalise the app experience.
By allowing customers to adapt the interface to suit their preferences, Atom is tapping into the psychology of taking control by allowing customers to make their banking experience truly unique. European bank OTP banka Hrvatska has also recently announced impressive results from its new gamification platform, with 16.1% more clients signed up for mobile banking services and the number of clients using prepaid Mastercard increasing by 12.8%.
The future of gamification
Banks have to work hard to keep customers loyal, so changing the perception of banking away from a boring necessity to something more engaging is essential if they want to maintain their relevance and value in people’s lives. Gamification should be seen as a route to engagement; a part of the customer journey, not something separate.
Gaming creates positive emotion, drives social relationships and fosters feelings of accomplishment, by combining banking with fun, personalised and reward-based games.. This shift away from ‘banking as a service’ to ‘banking as an experience’ gels with the gamification model, and is one we can expect to see financial providers – both new and old – capitalise on as the digital revolution marches on.
With more than 25,000 team members across North and Central America, Europe and Asia, TELUS International is a global business process outsourcing (BPO) provider that delivers contact center, information technology and advisory solutions across a range of industries.
Marilyn Tyfting is TELUS International’s Chief Corporate Officer, where she is responsible for driving ambitious company growth by fostering the best corporate culture and employee experience. Here, she talks to Finance Monthly about how corporate culture can be a key competitive advantage and differentiator while fueling both top and bottom-line growth.
Why do you think corporate culture is being increasingly heralded as a key competitive advantage, especially when it comes to customer service?
Culture is difficult to define. It's what energizes us or drains us, motivates or discourages us. It’s also notoriously hard to measure. How do you calculate the "vibe" you get when you walk into an office or company headquarters?
So unsurprisingly, culture - corporate culture in particular - has always been a “buzzword”, but it has not been an integral part of strategy discussions for most companies over the years. Nowadays, however, with customer service being identified as a top brand differentiator for consumers – in many cases, even more so than a product or service - companies are re-focusing their efforts on what it takes to deliver an exceptional customer experience. And, corporate culture is at the core of it all. A strong corporate culture is the foundation of employee engagement, which inspires better customer service that drives improved performance metrics and in turn, increased top-line growth. Culture is a key ingredient in the simple equation: happy, engaged employees = happy, engaged customers.
Why is TELUS International focused on creating and fostering a unique and inspiring corporate culture?
Corporate culture is one of the most important elements of a company because we experience it every single day, whether it is positive or negative. With this perspective in mind, we knew from day one that we wanted TELUS International to be a different kind of contact center provider – one that proactively put people first by providing long-term career opportunities, supporting personal and professional growth, championing diversity and investing in the communities where our employees live, work and raise their families. We care about our team members, it is an integral part of who we are as an organization. And in return, our team members care about and connect with the customers they serve.
With culture being an intangible concept in many ways, how have you been able to measure your success in this regard?
We’ve put the tools in place to measure our culture on an annual basis through a survey administered by Aon Hewitt, called Pulsecheck. For 2016, we achieved an industry-leading 81% engagement score. Pulsecheck essentially measures our team’s willingness to say great things about us, their likelihood to stay with the company over the long term and their motivation to do great work on behalf of our clients.
We also have some of the lowest frontline attrition scores globally - 50% below the industry average in most regions. Having more tenured, engaged agents serving customers leads to higher Net Promoter, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Likelihood to Recommend scores, as well as stronger financial performance for our clients and our own business. We call this the Culture Value Chain, and it’s the foundation of everything we deliver. And, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan, we’ve proven that we can directly correlate our corporate culture with our company’s remarkable growth – adding over 5,000 employees in each of the past two years and growing our revenue year-over-year by 33% in 2016.
As a BPO provider, how do you balance bringing to life the corporate cultures of your clients’ brands while instilling the TELUS International culture across the organization?
To develop and sustain a successful outsourcing partnership, we believe that the relationship must be based on aligned cultures and a shared value system first and foremost. From there, our low attrition rates and longer-tenured agents are an incomparable advantage that help us to better understand, absorb, and sustain a client’s brand promise in an outsourced model. We also pride ourselves on being agile and innovative - always good attributes in a business partner!
For example, when we first engaged with a new client in the fitness wearables industry, we worked with them to provide each agent on the account with a health tracker and encouraged them to use it at work and at home. The result of our efforts created ‘super agents’ who were more personally connected to the brand and who had a deeper understanding and knowledge of the product, enabling them to better relate to the customers they were serving. They also enjoyed health benefits and greater camaraderie with their teams.
In an industry where contract renewals can be challenging, what role does your culture play in inspiring long-term partnerships with your clients?
Our culture enables us to be innovative and agile, to quickly scale global workforces, to develop very strong training, quality and coaching programs, to implement attrition reduction initiatives and to incorporate Lean Six Sigma into operations. On top of this, we have become experts in their businesses and feed product design and support ideas back into their internal teams. These activities go above and beyond the typical outsourcing relationship to enhance our service delivery and make us more productive.
In the case of one of our fast-growing tech clients, we’ve helped them achieve consistent 95% month over month CSAT scores and attrition at less than 2% month over month - well above their company targets. With service delivery results like these, our agent community has increased from a hundred to more than a thousand to accommodate their growth, and we remain their highest performing vendor partner over the past six-plus years.
As companies grow quickly, corporate culture can suffer. How will you ensure your culture continues to thrive as you execute plans to more than double the size of your business by 2020?
With nearly 20 sites in seven countries, as we continue to grow, we are constantly weighing growth decisions against our ability to ‘keep the inspiration as we grow the institution.’ For example, we’ve been exceptionally successful with acquisitions over the years, integrating businesses in Asia, Central America and Eastern Europe since 2011 by carefully selecting and investing in companies whose values are aligned with ours, in teams who welcome and celebrate diversity and in leadership that leads by example. Careful partner selection is key for us, and that mentality carries over to how we hire and develop new team members, assessing cultural fit as a part of recruiting new employees and investing in developing leaders who bring our values and culture to life every day.
As a thought leader on corporate culture in the BPO industry and arguably, across all industries, what’s next for TELUS International, as you continue to evolve and improve your culture to further differentiate yourself in the market?
As technology continues to evolve at an unrelenting pace, including the exponential growth of Internet of Things (IoT) - connected devices - digitally savvy consumers are becoming the norm. This is forcing the nature of customer service to change.
Agents need different skill sets in order to meet more complex, often sensitive support requirements. We have already prepared our frontline agents for the “tech-savvy” consumer in many ways, but we’ll continue to invest in their training and development to ensure they have the requisite skills and knowledge to keep pace with customer demands.
We will also increase our focus on security and privacy training so that, as our team members gain access to more confidential customer information, via smart home systems or personal health monitoring devices, they are equipped to continue to provide the best service. As customer support becomes more complicated it is even more important that we invest in data analytics, machine learning, and knowledge management to ensure that our agents are supported with easy access to information so they can focus on the human connection with customers. Investing in our team members in these ways supports our aspirations to be the best brand ambassadors of our clients’ unique products and services, and it helps us differentiate ourselves from our competitors when it comes to putting customers first.
Customers have never had more choice when it comes to selecting the providers, brands and services to help them manage their lives. Nowhere is this truer than in the banking industry, but what takes precedence in that choosing, logic or emotion? Here Karen Wheeler, UK Country Manager at Affinion analyses current trends and provides Finance Monthly with a detailed outlook on this key customer conundrum.
We’re witnessing a global trend of consumers faced with a vast number of providers, all vying for their attention with big-budget advertising campaigns and attractive offers such as cash incentives to switch current accounts. HSBC for example has been offering £200 ‘golden handshakes’ to new customers throughout March. But although banks are competing desperately to retain their customers, the arrival of new Open Banking APIs are set to make it easier than ever for customers to switch banks, with the first stage of the implementations having gone live this month.
Moreover, the traditional landscape of high street banks has also been disrupted in recent years with the emergence of FinTechs able to adapt quickly to incorporate the latest in digital innovation. Consequently, it’s never been a more challenging time for banks to attract new customers and keep existing ones loyal. When you consider how integral banking is to everyday life – in the UK, the British Bankers Association revealed customers logged onto banking apps 4 billion times in 2015 – it’s crucial that providers understand not only how consumers like to engage with their services, but the factors which influence their choice of bank in the first place.
A global view of customer engagement
With this in mind, we recently commissioned global research with Oxford Brookes University to uncover what influences customers to choose their banks – as well as what makes them stay. The aim of the study was to develop a comprehensive model that maps the path a customer takes from their first interaction with a brand, to the point at which a company has become a meaningful part of a consumer’s life.
The Customer Engagement Model can help banks understand the rational and emotional attitudes of their customers which can then inform the development of product propositions, marketing programmes and user experiences to increase their connection with the customer. The evolution of customer engagement is not linear, but dependent on a complex mix of motives, attitudes, experiences, and satisfaction – all coming together to influence the customer’s overall assessment of the products and services they choose and buy.
As well as banks, we investigated customers’ relationships with their mobile phone provider and favourite retailer to compare how engagement varies by industry. Perhaps unsurprising given its association with leisure time, retail came top for customer engagement, with banks in the middle and telcos lagging behind.
So, what do banks need to understand about how customers form their brand perceptions, and how can they build on this to enhance engagement and, ultimately, promote feelings of loyalty and advocacy?
Emotional versus rational – which is more important?
The study shows that the journey of customer engagement begins with a very rational decision but, as we move further towards commitment and loyalty, emotions play the bigger role and achieving engagement becomes more difficult. It seems the rational part of the decision-making process is crucial to the initial stages of investigating, considering and comparing providers (where are the branches located? How do the interest rates compare?) – but emotional factors are also critical.
For banks, in the battle of ‘head versus heart’, it seems the heart wins – the influence of family and friends were revealed to be the most important factors when it comes to customers choosing a financial provider. In fact, banks were the highest-scoring industry in our study for customer recommendation to family and friends. Consumers perceive their relationships with money to be important and, consequently, care about where they put their money and pay close attention to what banks say and communicate.
Banks do not skimp when it comes to investing in their marketing and advertising campaigns - it’s estimated that US financial institutions will spend $9.08 billion on digital advertising this year, up 12.1 per cent from 2016. But our study found that, crucially, family influence is surprisingly more powerful than advertising when customers are deciding where to bank, with more than half of customers (55%) following their parents and other relatives. Therefore, this ‘hand me down’ mentality could mean the difference between having a customer for life – or not at all.
Why does customer engagement matter for banks?
So, why is it important for banks to understand the emotional components of the decision-making process? Our research showed that customers exhibiting the highest scoring levels of engagement are consistently emotional in nature and the lowest scoring statements are rationally driven. Critically, the most engaged customers are more likely to stay with a brand for longer, spend more and recommend to family and friends – the primary aim of any bank.
Advocacy is the highest point in the evolution of the path to customer engagement, but the most significant in terms of customer value because it can only come from a customer who is completely immersed in the relationship. It is also the hardest outcome to achieve as it is dependent on the overall experience, interactions and perception the customer has built of the business up until that point. Satisfaction and trust are boxes banks need to tick before customers will think about recommending them to others.
The power of the customer marketer should not be underestimated as an invaluable tool for banks when it comes to attracting new customers. This means they must nurture their relationships with their existing customer base, but also look to extend influence in their lives to build engagement and hopefully secure loyalty and recommendation. In an industry where the customer’s heart wins over their head, advocacy should be the ultimate goal for banks.
