How AI Contact Center Technology Enables Customers To Take Greater Control of Their Financial Well-Being
🗓️April is Financial Literacy Month and virtually every credit union, bank and insurance company makes at least some effort to promote the concept of financial literacy. It’s not just a marketing campaign (although there can be significant revenue benefits) but it’s also a social message. No doubt your organization stresses the responsibility to serve not just your customers, but the communities where you do business.
So…what’s your approach? And what are the goals? What are you hoping to accomplish, and why is it so important?
There are plenty of different strategies and rationales for promoting financial literacy designed to benefit customers—all of which make sense and encourage financial wellness:
- Teaching basic money management skills
- Helping people make smarter financial decisions
- Enabling customers to understand investment risks and potential opportunities
- Reducing the burden of debt on families
But what we’ve been learning is that there’s a different approach your organization should be considering–one that is practical and beneficial both to your customers and your bottom-line:
Digital Self-Sufficiency = Giving Customers Control
Everyone associated with your contact center should spend some time focusing on this question:
What can we be doing differently–during the exact interactions we’re doing right now with customers–that could help at least SOME people become more confident in their ability to monitor and control their finances online?
Not every phone call or digital interaction is a “financial literacy” moment, but some are.
Too Many Customers Still Call Us For Everything
Why is this still so true? Despite AI contact center technology like GVAs that can handle routine interactions, most companies are still getting way too many phone calls.
Consider your own personal life. How many phone calls do you have in a given day, compared to how many text messages, emails and other digital communications? For just about everyone under 35, digital is probably 90% or more, sometimes 100%. And even for people well older than 35, the ratio for most of us is still skewed very heavily toward messaging versus calling, right?
There are 3 reasons why so many customers are still using the phone as a primary channel for communicating with financial institutions:
- “That’s the best way, cause it’s the way I’ve always done it”
- “I’m not comfortable with digital interactions”
- “I like the human touch”
We now know that all 3 of these reasons are easily addressable. Your job is to demonstrate to phone-first customers that they simply aren’t true any more.
How Can A Phone Call Become a “Teaching Opportunity?”
❓TRIVIA QUESTION: What percentage of customers who are calling you right now–in your phone queue–are calling from a smartphone?
ANSWER: We don’t know exactly, but it’s a huge majority. What we do know is that less than 2% of American households rely exclusively on landlines. That means it’s fair to say that just about everybody who’s calling you is calling with a screen in their hand.
When a phone rep can add visual context with CoBrowsing and observe and guide a customer looking at your website–compared to just communicating verbally–it changes the entire interaction. In some situations, that customer will immediately become more digitally self-sufficient. For example, a customer may call asking for help with a loan application, and with CoBrowsing, the rep could show them resources on the website or even help them start an application. Now, that customer is familiar with available resources and knows how to self-service next time. CoBrowsing can turn every phone call into an opportunity for education, leaving customers empowered to take greater control over their money. THAT is a powerful tool to drive financial literacy.
When To Turn Phone Calls Into Digital Interactions
Of course, it’s situational. But we now know the exact situations in which it makes sense to invite a phone-calling customer to use their screen as part of the interaction.
It’s a simple formula that every phone rep ought to have pinned up in their cube:
Yes/No? Is this customer who I’m interacting with now calling about something they could have easily resolved online without having to call?
If Yes, invite them to log into their account (using the screen they’re holding) and take them on a guided tour. “Let me show you something that you can do very easily, that will allow you to access all your financial information any time you want!”
The exact issue types and situations of these “teaching moments” will vary based on the degree of digital functionality your company already offers, but typically these are issue types involving repetitive tasks customers do many times–checking balances, making routine transfers, accessing statements, basic account maintenance.
When your phone reps are getting a call about any of these kinds of issues, it oughta trigger a big “green light” to invite the customer to look at their screen–as the rep transitions from service provider to teacher.
What About Customers Who Don’t Want to Use Their Screen?
That’s fine. No one’s forcing anyone to do anything. And in some cases, a customer may be in their car or holding a child and can’t look at their screen at that moment. No problem. It’s simply an invitation, and if the customer prefers to just talk, the call is handled exactly as it would have been.
The % of customers who WILL accept an invitation to look at their screen isn’t 100%, but maybe the customer who declines this time, will be more open to the idea next time. This is a perfect example of the old adage, “It never hurts to ask!”
The Lesson of Unified Interaction Management (UIM)
Modern AI contact center technology makes it easier than ever to identify these teaching moments and guide customers toward digital self-service options with context. When companies unify all forms of voice, digital and AI into one ChannelLess® platform, it doesn’t matter whether a customer goes online first, or calls on the phone—you can now seamlessly transition them to whatever mode of communication and collaboration is best suited for their exact need, with context! The traditional barriers between “phone calls” and “digital interactions” have now been removed.
Given the ubiquity of smartphone usage, it seems a unfortunate to miss so many opportunities to help once-reluctant customers become more digitally self-sufficient.
Being in control of one’s own finances is the foundation of financial literacy. If that matters to your organization, you need to become even better at teaching your customers how to take full advantage of all the digital and self-service options you’ve invested in. That’s critically important in today’s digital-first world, and no one should be left behind.
By leveraging AI contact center technology within a unified platform, you now have the power to give your customers power they never had before.
Ready to see how our ChannelLess AI® Contact Center Platform can help your organization promote digital self-service and financial literacy? Schedule a demo today and discover what Glia can really do for you.
