When COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020 forced businesses to close physical locations, demand for digital options soared as employees shifted to working from home and customers sought alternative means of interaction. Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) organizations made major changes to their processes and technology to address the initial crisis. Contact centers were 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 has followed.

Frost & Sullivan surveyed decision-makers in the BFSI industry to discover their investment plans over the next year. This study uses an integrated 360-degree research methodology to provide insights from end-user organizations, IT decision makers, and influencers. Not surprisingly, the pandemic had a significant impact on investments. Insights from the survey:

•     Traditional pain points for contact centers (such as being seen as cost centers or operating as silos) seemed to wane as BFSI organizations handled the surge in contact volume to maintain their position as trusted partners.

•     The availability of new channels to improve the customer experience means that security capabilities across the organization must be improved.

•     BFSI organizations are adopting the cloud to benefit from new technology, flexibility, and reduced upfront costs.

•     BFSI organizations need to evaluate the optimal balance of the way they work/collaborate across teams and interact with customers. Key considerations include ensuring the stability, reliability, and security of their operations; training agents/supervisors on new applications; and persuading customers to use new interaction channels.

•     BFSI organizations are improving employee retention by providing flexible work locations/remote work options, creating a fun environment/corporate culture, empowering employees with solutions that allow better decision making, implementing a career growth strategy, and improving employee training and development programs.

Channels covered: voice, email/web form, social media messaging apps, social media apps, mobile apps, SMS, chat with live agents, virtual agents, video chat, video teller/kiosk, and interactive voice response

Technologies covered: conversational artificial intelligence and virtual assistants/bots, quality monitoring, collaboration tools, performance management, flexible APIs/communication platform as a service, eLearning for agents, proactive customer care, gamification, and augmented reality.

This study is valuable for solution providers to better understand what each BFSI organization seeks in delivering an excellent customer experience and BFSI organizations to benchmark themselves against the competition and other industries.

Author: Krishna Baidya