How Engaged Employees Improve Banking's Customer Experience

Many banking organizations have a “voice of the customer” program for capturing insights via surveys and such other signals as speech analytics and digital behaviors. Many have also implemented a “voice of the employee” program relying on similar signals. Yet few bring these together in a meaningful way.

They are missing an opportunity. Business units with top quartile employee engagement see customer ratings that are 10% higher compared to units in the bottom quartile, according to a Bain & Co. survey from 2016. The reason for this is an effect called the “promoter flywheel.” In this pattern engaged employees create better experiences, improving business results, which leads to more opportunities for the workforce.

Creating personalized experiences throughout the customer journey, and not just on digital platforms, is more critical than ever. But where can banking companies start? There are three areas where organizations can bring together customer experience and employee experience to drive improved business outcomes.

Staff Behaviors that Drive Consumer Experiences

The actions employees take, or don’t take, create your customers’ experience and determine how they feel about interacting with your brand. Technology exists today that allows companies to capture the “digital exhaust” from employees’ computers. Many organizations already have access to this technology through existing relationships. Digital exhaust is simply the activities that the workforce conducts on company laptops or PCs, including messaging and email.

Harnessing this data and analyzing it alongside customer experience data, banking institutions can start to identify which behaviors lead to the best CX.

Monitoring 'Digital Exhaust':

Some may view analysis of digital exhaust as spying on employees. But when used in a productive context, the analytics can be quite motivating.

And when leaders have access to such insights, they can better coach their teams for higher efficacy.

For example, a large U.S. mortgage player was able to identify the behaviors that salespeople should exhibit and provide sales leaders with the tools to coach and train their teams. These behaviors included not using messaging while on a customer call to ensure the sales person was present and in the moment for the customer.

Additional critical determinants of higher levels of satisfaction included how quickly the sales person built their network internally and with the client, and with whom they were spending the most time. For leaders, how often they were meeting with their team members one-on-one, how often they were meeting with other leaders and partners in the organization, and if that time is equitable were determinants of higher satisfaction scores. This is something you would not find in an employee or customer survey.

In addition, by analyzing internal and external networks of sales people based on who they were meeting with or calling, the company was able to identify opportunities to improve efficiency. Efficiencies were as simple as optimizing the meeting pace with the client and even internally.

Artificial Intelligence Measures Key Behaviors

Bankers can use AI-enabled tools to improve performance, in real time. Artificial intelligence tools can capture such factors as rate of speech for the customer and team member, negative or positive words being used, and speaker tone.

Using AI in this way can be delivered to the frontline employee while they are on the phone with the client, enabling improvement in mid-conversation. This creates opportunities to build rapport, trust and improved business outcomes. The AI can also bring up company policies or other needed information based on the conversation.

Improving Contact Center Interaction:

Quality assurance in the contact center is costly. Using AI tools, companies can listen in on and analyze all calls, not just a percentage of them, and deliver real-time feedback.

In addition, artificial intelligence can identify where and when a poor experience is being delivered, and spur measures to produce service recovery.

For example, a client may be trying to find information on a bank’s website regarding fraudulent charges. Customer’s online behavior such as rapid scrolling or spending inordinate time on specific areas of the website can trigger a pop-up asking if the consumer is having trouble and would like to speak with someone.

Such measures can not only re-engage a customer and avert a poor experience, but can also avoid escalated complaints. For example, if the AI suggests a connection to the contact center and the customer accepts, the AI can recommend a “next-best-conversation” based on the customer’s online behavior. Empowering the agent with this level of prescriptive insight, in real time, can help deliver a more personalized experience for the customer.

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Looking to Employees for Innovative Solutions

Most companies ask customers for feedback and stop there. But companies that ask their employees for suggestions can reap significant rewards. If you ask any frontline employee what needs to be fixed to improve the customer experience, they will likely have several suggestions.

Technology exists that allows companies to crowdsource ideas and give employees the opportunity to register up-votes on their favorites. When pointed at specific strategic goals or initiatives, this technology can be a catalyst for innovation.

For example, a top-five global bank used an employee crowdsourcing tool to solicit language that would train the bank’s Amazon Alexa skill for its credit card. When tens of thousands of employees respond with how they would ask Alexa about their credit card balance or payment information, you can build a lexicon quickly and efficiently.