3 Reasons to Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers

By Kelly Wilson - Sep 19, 2018

In todays digital era, consumer needs have evolved. It’s no longer a matter of “if” banks will become fully digital, but “when.” The prospect of a digital transformation in the financial services industry does not necessarily mean the end of all traditional customer experience channels, like contact centers. In fact, using technology to improve the communications channels that are already in use and familiar to your customers is a great way to ease both your client base and your staff into the future of banking technology.

As the first touchpoint for many appointment-driven businesses, 75% of organizations view the customer service provided in contact centers to be a key differentiator between competitors. Is your organization’s contact center providing your customer with a positive experience?

Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download Coconut Software’s Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience.

According to a study done by Cornell University, the financial services market tends to leverage larger contact center operations compared to other industries and is lagging behind in implementing contact center management software. While many banks and credit unions depend on contact centers as a channel for scheduling appointments with customers, many have little to no visibility into contact handling process efficiency. Unfortunately, this sluggishness to modernize the back-end is resulting in customers waiting, and waiting on the line as contact centre agents try to assist them while navigating archaic processes on the other end of the line.

As you look for ways to transform your contact center, it is important to highlight areas that could be made more efficient by implementing digital tools. For example, lengthy contact handle time, poor customer experience and high operational costs are all issues that likely plague your contact center and affect your organization as a whole. Enterprise appointment scheduling is one type of contact center technology that can help improve contact efficiencies, reduce operational costs and improve the customer experience. Here’s how.

Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers With Appointment Scheduling

Decrease Call Handle Time

The number of calls that contact center representatives can accommodate in a day is a key success metric that impacts many other areas of the business. For appointment-driven financial services organizations, more completed phone calls equal more appointments and more revenue for your branch locations. And yet, 23% of companies still do not measure call handle time in their contact center. Long call handle times lead to long hold times for customers waiting in the queue, and 80% of customers drop off the line after being placed on hold for over 1 minute.

One of the ways you can make significant inroads in increasing call handling efficiency is by implementing an enterprise appointment scheduling solution. Implementing a scheduling solution creates a more streamlined appointment scheduling process that allows your contact center representatives to accommodate more calls in a day. This can also contribute to improving the customer experience by reducing the amount of time customers have to spend on the line with your organization, just to schedule an in-person appointment. Additionally, by speeding up the appointment scheduling process you can schedule more appointments, driving more revenue to your organization’s branch locations.

Improve Customer Experience

57% of companies can relate improving customer experience levels to revenue growth. For appointment-driven businesses, the contact center is the first point of contact between your organization and its customers, and so it absolutely must deliver a positive first impression.

If you are an appointment-driven business and your contact center schedules the majority of your appointments, it is crucial that the customer information collected at the time that the appointment is scheduled is passed on to the advisor meeting with that customer. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer, that already had to go through the tumultuous process of scheduling an appointment, to show up to an advisor that has no insight into their needs. However, 54% of customer information collected at the time the appointment was scheduled is not relayed to the customer-facing advisor.

An enterprise appointment scheduling solution can be integrated across all channels in your organization and allows for information that is collected from one customer-facing channel, to be stored on one platform that can be accessed by another customer-facing channel. This means that your organization can capture additional information at the time of the appointment scheduling by adding custom questions integrated into the scheduling process. The answers to these custom questions can then be accessed by the customer-facing advisor, enabling them to better prepare for their upcoming appointment with the particular customer and tailor the appointment to their needs.

An additional benefit to implementing a scheduling solution into your organization’s contact center is that it allows you to add new touch-points to the customer journey that will reduce the appointment no-show rate, as well as make your customers feel valued. Your customers will be sent a confirmation email reminding them of the service, date and time of the appointment they just scheduled as well as any additional information they need in order to be prepared for their upcoming appointment. Additionally, SMS and email reminders can be sent out to customers reminding them of their upcoming appointment, reducing the chances of a no-show. Customers will appreciate these additional touch-points as we live in a busy world and it is easy to forget the commitments that they have made, and it makes them feel looked after and that their scheduled appointment is valued.

By integrating your contact center channel into other customer-facing platforms in your company you can drive more revenue into the organization and provide customers with a premium experience.

Decrease Workforce Costs

Forrester recently reported that call volume is expected to increase over the next 12 months and 46% of global contact center decision makers project their contact centers to grow by 5% to 10% to accommodate the increase. Many organizations are pouring more of their resources into increasing rep headcount in their contact centers to manage the call volume, but this is not a sustainable solution.

Implementing an integrated scheduling solution that allows you to serve your customers more efficiently by speeding up the appointment scheduling process in your contact center. And, by speeding up the scheduling process, you’ll be able to accommodate the heavier call volumes without having to hire more representatives.

Another cost that comes with a complex contact center appointment scheduling system is the lengthy onboarding process. According to the same Cornell University study, the financial services industry has the longest contact center representative on=boarding period, which is about 6 weeks. And, 37% of employee churn occurs within first 6 months of service, with 15% of that occurring during training as roles become increasingly complex. Plus, on-boarding new employees is expensive as you have to take established staff away from completing their regular tasks in order to train new hires.

Implementing a solution that reduces the employee on-boarding process in your organization reduces the amount of time that trained staff have to spend away from completing their job, and reduces churn.

Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers – What Next?

Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download our Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience for an in depth look on how to make it as smooth as possible for everyone involved, and how Coconut Software can help get you there.

Looking to boost revenue and deliver a premium experience to your clients? Schedule a consultation with Coconut Software to learn more about how our appointment scheduling solutions can get you there.