For most customers, banking is a part of everyday habit. Going to the ATM for ready cash, using debit and credit cards for purchases and monthly bill payments, transferring money to family and friends, the list is long. Customers share a relationship with their bank that runs for years, and sometimes through life. With countless transactions taking place each day meeting customer expectations with finite people at the other end is challenging.

Why do you need a call center for banking 

To overcome these challenges automation of processes is natural. Banks often earmark 15%-20% of their annual budget to meet the requirements for banking operations, a 2019 survey by McKinsey revealed. Surprisingly, only a fraction of the total budgetary spend is on call center operations, despite providing a steady value in meeting customer’s needs. During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Citibank said that its average wait time to get to a call center representative was sometimes 3-4 hours, while another global banking website plastered— “Extremely long wait times if you call us,” on their website. Call centers provide a personalized customer experience, which digital channels cannot match.

It’s time that banks position call centers as the experience centers, akin to major retailers. The competition for banking is not only from its peers but also new entrants such as those in the digital payment space, wealth management, etc. Today, the customer wants personal attention and personalized products. Realizing this early on, Singapore-based bank DBS spent some S$10 million over the last five years to be increasingly more personalized in handling customers’ needs that are typically associated with a call to the customer center.

Advanced call centers and dialers for the banking sector  

Banks typically have high call volume where each minute is precious. They require automated processes to cut down idle time and call drop rates due to this advanced customer call centers have adopted what is called as —auto dialer. A software that automatically dials telephone numbers from a list and connects either to a live agent or plays a pre-recorded message. They eliminate the task of manually dialing individual phone numbers, enabling representatives to focus on content and delivery of their message. This in turn helps agents to increase their agent productivity by a whopping 200%-300%. For banking needs, this makes it a viable commercial solution.

Let’s have a look at the most popular auto dialers suitable for the banking industry:

1. Predictive dialer

A predictive dialer is an automated dialing system for outbound calls that dials multiple numbers from the customer contact list. The dialer can automatically cut time-consuming tasks such as calls being directed to voicemail, no phone response, busy phone signals, unusable or disconnected numbers, and so on. If the call is answered by people on the other end then, the dialer connects the call to an appropriate agent.

It is an effective tool for banks to use in their day-to-day operations. One of the ways, banks can use the functionality to create an automated customer service system for customers.

2. Preview dialer

It lets agents view comprehensive details about the customers before calling them.  It helps in driving better conversion rates through personalized communication and informed guidance. Agents feel empowered, which improves operational efficiency leading to zero downtime.

3. Progressive dialer

Progressive dialer, as the name suggests connects to the next customer after the agent completes the previous call and is available to talk to the next customer in line. It helps to reduce call abandonment in the process making it an efficient solution for communication with premium customers.

Among the three, a predictive dialer is the most advanced and sought-after outbound calling solution.  As an industry-leading VoIP software maker, HoduSoft’s call center solution HoduCC features the most advanced predictive dialer in the industry which can also be easily deployed. Let’s see the key features of HoduCC’s predictive dialer:

1. Outbound call monitoring 

HoduCC’s predictive dialer features automated dialer technologies useful in outbound settings for high volume call flows in banks.

• Answering machine detection: Helps to manage the call volume by moving on to the next customer in the list when the dialer detects an answering machine.

• Voice Recording: Banks deal with sensitive financial information which makes the voice recording tool an important aspect for the purpose of compliance and regulation besides monitoring the agent productivity.

• Caller ID: The auto dialer features a call ID for easy identification of calls.

2. Marketing and outreach

HoduSoft’s predictive dialer has inbuilt features to help banks maximize their marketing and outreach efforts.

• Campaign management:  With the use of dialers, banks can easily upload the lists of customers for target campaigns.  Agents save time when the pre-fed call list is available, readily. It also aids in scheduling calls and managing the leads identified.

• CRM integration: Most of the banks use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software today. HoduCC call center solution can be fully integrated with popular CRMs available in the market, making it a powerful tool for campaign management.

 3. Reporting and analytics 

Fitted with powerful algorithms, HoduCC can generate reports and analytics useful for the banking industry in analysis and number crunching.

• Custom Report generation: Banks can select parameters to generate custom reports for specific needs.

• Real-time analytics: With real-time analytics, it becomes easier to understand ongoing activities and assess agent productivity.

4. Remote Agent 

Real-time analytics makes it easy to make a decision based on KPIs which helps in improving remote agent productivity.

5. User-friendly UI/UX

The simple interface of HoduCC makes it easy for customer service agents to use the software, cutting down the bank’s time on training and knowledge transfer process.

As an ideal partner for banking needs, HoduCC has many add-on features to transform the customer call center into a true experience center. Reach out to us now to understand why organizations in over 34 countries trust us. Call us at +1 707-708-4638 or write at [email protected] to know more.

Sourced from: Hodusoft. View the original article here.