ABOUT ALPHA BANK ROMANIA
Active in the local market since 1993, ALPHA BANK is one of the most innovative and performing banks in Romania. In the two and a half decades of activity, ALPHA BANK ROMANIA has made an important contribution to the development and modernization of the Romanian financial and banking sector through the new services and products launched and the quality standards set in the field of customer interaction.
Continuous improvement of customer interaction is a critical priority for financial and banking institutions. However, in order to increase their efficiency, the Bank’s Contact / Call Center departments need high-performance technologies and solutions, integrated and adapted to the specific requirements of this environment and also the internal rules of each organization. Process automation, error elimination and a few seconds gained on each call ensure more satisfied customers, more transactions completed and, consequently, additional revenue.
SECOND STAGE OF THE PROJECT: NEW FEATURES FOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT SERVICE
After the remarkable results obtained by using the application for telemarketing and telesales activities, in 2020 Alpha Bank decided to expand the functionalities of this application, in order to improve and expand the customer support activities.
„We needed an improved platform to help us ensure the level of service needed by the growing customers’ demand. At the same time, we aimed to reduce the response time to customer requests, increase the overall call quality and have a higher response rate from the first interaction. In this context, together with our partner Datanet Systems we identified and implemented a modern solution to improve our services, much appreciated by the bank’s customers”, afirmă Eliza Erhan, Head of Contact Center, Alpha Bank România.
STAGE II PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Following the analysis of the bank’s business requirements, Datanet Systems created a new version of its contact center campaign management application that extends the functionalities in the following directions aimed at optimizing inbound traffic:
- Communicating to customers the estimated waiting time and activating the call-back option. Through this feature, customers who call the Customer Support department are informed of the estimated time until the call is answered by an operator. Additionally, they can choose to be contacted later, in case the waiting time exceeds a certain level, by simply pressing a key. Thus, the bank is now able to adjust the loading peaks by timing customers who do not have an urgent request. The module automatically checks the availability of agents and directs the deferred request to one of the agents assigned for callback activities. A telephony dialer automatically initiates communication with the customer when the agent becomes available. The system allows the personalization of the activity according to multiple criteria: time intervals, available agents, and workload.
- Automation of surveys for customer satisfaction measurement. The platform automatically selects 10% of the customers who called for customer support and call them back for an interactive registration, inviting them to participate in an opinion poll. Customers are called on the same day, and the survey is conducted by automatically playing prerecorded questions and asking for answers from the dial keys. The survey also includes a typical Net Promoter Score assessment of the customer support interactions (measuring the customer’s intention to positively recommend the provider to someone else). The obtained results allow the evaluation of the agents’ activity from a qualitative point of view and comparative analyzes.
- Extensive management reports. For the new functionalities, Datanet has configured a series of management reports on the criteria relevant to Alpha Bank. Thus, the supervisors of the Customer Support department have a clear image of the activity volume, the workload of the agents, the response speed, and the requests resolutions. These reports are easy to share within the team, by defining in the system a set of individual access rights.
- Advanced planning features. The platform allows defining the individual and team holidays with a coverage of one year, so that the IVR automatically transmits the corresponding messages to customers. It is an easy-to-use feature and does not involve assistance from the IT department.
- Knowledge management InfoPoint. For the internal use of the Customer Support department, a knowledge library has been developed, based on an intranet site. The agents have access to information about products, services, questions, and common situations grouped into different categories relevant for their activity. Thus, the answers to the requests are aligned more quickly with the bank’s procedures and the contact center agents can easier find out the available solutions for the clients’ problems. This module is managed by a supervisor, for ensuring the compliance with the bank’s internal rules.
- Dynamic management of work breaks. For the telework regime, Datanet has added in the platform functionalities that allow automatic and correlated setting of agents’ breaks. The platform allocates the required time, as defined, and displays the status of each agent. Thus, people work as a team, even if they are physically in different locations, and the team’s performance is better coordinated.
- Visual interface optimization for contact center agents. The agent web interface is based on Cisco UCCX software, in which Datanet has integrated multiple useful additional information in the form of Cisco agent desktop graphics (called Cisco Finesse widgets). This way, the Alpha Bank’ agents have direct access to various applications and functionalities in a single web interface that simplifies their activity and contributes to increasing the efficiency of their work.
BENEFITS OF THE PLATFORM’S EXTENSION
Alpha Bank has expanded the features of the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express platform both to increase the efficiency of the Customer Support team and to improve the quality of customer relations.
Evaluations show that after deploying the new version of the software application, the Customer Support team constantly answered 80% of calls in the first 30 seconds.
The new features have led to increased operational efficiency, allowing the Customer Support department to manage more teams working remotely, with the same resources for supervision. This is possible because agents have access to information, experiences and good practices through which they find the necessary information themselves and, on the other hand, supervisors have easy access to the monitoring and alerting tools, which simplifies tracking the activity of each agent.
Another important result is the increased quality of the offered resolutions. The team analyzes and identifies customer requirements and adjusts the approach according to each interaction. Each customer is unique and has a specific situation, and the platform through the information provided helps each solution offered to reflect this approach. In addition, the ability to quickly question customers and obtain valuable feedback, allows Alpha Bank to constantly adjust the services offered and make the most inspired decisions to increase the quality of interactions.
