Workforce Management Featured Article
BFSI Companies Are Turning to the Cloud to Improve CX
In the past, many companies seemed to view their call centers as a necessary evil: cost centers that gobbled profits. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditional pain points for contact centers – such as being seen as cost centers or operating as silos – seemed to wane as companies handled the surge in contact volume to maintain their position as trusted partners. Companies began viewing their call centers as critical tools to keep their heads above water.
According to new research from Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), this has been particularly true for banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) organizations. The study, entitled, “Customer Experience at the Core of Digital Transformation in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance, 2022,” found that BFSI organizations are adopting the cloud to benefit from new technology, flexibility and reduced upfront costs.
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, contact centers were already busy far beyond capacity, and investments in self-service channels and the cloud accelerated. Plans for longer-term sustainability also had to develop to fend off new market entrants and improve the employee experience in response to the “Great Resignation” that followed. The demand for digital options soared as employees shifted to working from home and customers sought alternative means of interaction.
This ushered in a powerful need for 21st-century technologies, such as conversational artificial intelligence and virtual assistants or bots, omnichannel quality monitoring, collaboration tools, performance management, flexible APIs/communication platform-as-a-service, e-learning for agents, proactive customer care, gamification and even augmented reality. The goal for call centers has been to find an optimal balance of the way they work/collaborate across teams and interact with customers.
But, while financial and insurance call centers are benefiting from the adoption of the cloud to access new technology, flexibility and reduced upfront costs, new needs have arisen. The availability of new channels to improve the customer experience means that security capabilities across the organization must be improved.Edited by Erik Linask
