We’ve all heard the old saying “money talks.” Well when it comes to customer loyalty and retention, good customer experience talks much louder. Approximately 40% of financial services and insurance (FSI) companies struggle to keep up with changing customer expectations and behavior.* The truth is, there are a lot of companies with similar products and services, but that doesn’t mean that differentiation is impossible. So, what’s the solution? For FSIs large and small, customer experience is becoming the key competitive differentiator and the best way to deliver an impactful experience is to empower customer-facing employees to do their best work. Artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling these employees to create remarkably better customer experiences, resulting in customer loyalty, advocacy, and overall growth.
Here’s how:
Increase employee productivity -- How much of your employee’s time is spent searching for answers to questions? Do they ever have to put customers on hold or even step away to get additional help? AI helps provide front-line employees real-time guidance so they can spend less time looking for information and more time solving problems. An AI-powered chatbot, for example, can be listening in the background of a conversation helping point employees to the right data, solutions, and processes to resolve customer issues faster than ever before.
Deliver a consistent customer experience - Imagine being a customer and having a loan officer, supervisor, and member services rep all tell you a different answer to a simple question you had about a loan payment? Leveraging a centralized, AI-powered knowledge solution ensures every employee has access to the same, updated information, so no matter who your customer speaks to, you can be assured that employee responses are both consistent and accurate.
Accelerating employee training and onboarding - Like any industry, employee turnover is inevitable and can be costly. But, not training new employees correctly or in a timely manner could be much costlier by hurting relationships with current customers. When it comes to FSI’s there is a lot to learn, whether it is something simple like the process for checking an account balance to all the nuances associated with mortgage loans. AI can support on-the-job training by helping new employees answer questions confidently, correctly, and much quicker than they could before.
Improving employee satisfaction - As a customer, how many times have you been told “I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer?” Customers want solutions to their problems and employees want to be able to deliver those solutions as efficiently and effectively as possible. AI assisting in the background helps minimize those negative moments – making employees job easier, less stressful, and overall more enjoyable.
Identify knowledge gaps - Do you know all the questions employees are getting asked? Do you know what’s easily answered and what’s not? Realtime insights allow knowledge managers to keep up to date on frequently asked questions and gaps in current resources. This allows them to strategically improve or add content where needed.
*Econsultancy/Adobe, Digital Intelligence Briefing: 2017 Digital Trends in the Technology Sector, May 2017