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Simple to set up. Easy to use. Powerful integrations.
Get free accessConsumers have lots of options for banking and other financial services, and a financial services call center streamlines sales and support operations. In many ways, the customer experience is driving transformation within the financial services industry. With a call center, your financial services institution has greater ability to gather information about your customers and get to know them better. Having more information allows you to personalize their services and provide wise counsel about their finances.
Banking and finance customers are looking for convenience, speed, and expertise when choosing the firms they choose to do business with. Whether your finance company is a bank, credit union, mortgage company, investment firm, brokerage, or insurance company, a call center will help you serve your customers in ways that inspire brand loyalty.
Why Do Financial Services Firms Use Call Centers
Financial institutions have been making their way back to a healthier place since the financial crisis of 2008. Many people aren’t as trusting of financial institutions after the media reported serious incidents of fraud. In an effort to regain their customers’ trust, financial institutions are pulling out all the stops to offer new features and improve the customer experience to acquire new customers and retain their existing customers.
Financial institution mergers and acquisitions are on the rise, and that makes things more complicated for finance companies. Also, neo banks, which are banks that provide services only on the internet or using mobile apps, are disrupting the traditional banking industry, as they increase competition for banks and credit unions.
Financial institutions exist primarily to help consumers with their financial needs. For financial institutions to remain sustainable, they also have to make a profit. With such major changes going on in the financial services industry, a call center is a cost-effective way for banks and other financial institutions to meet their customers’ needs and meet their own goals and objectives at the same time.
Financial services customers want to be able to access and manage their money when they want to, often outside of normal business hours. Financial services companies can leverage the benefits of automation and software to serve customers for extended hours. A call center also makes it possible to serve customers in any geographical location in the world.
On that note, laws vary in different states and countries. A valuable benefit of call center software for financial services is that you can easily set up a call center in a particular location and staff it with call center agents who have familiarity with regulatory and compliance matters in that region.
Large financial services institutions that have multiple physical locations have the advantage of redundancy if there should be a natural disaster in one of those areas. All they have to do is forward the calls to one or more of their other call centers, and there’s no disruption in service for their customers.
The Role of the Financial Services Call Center
In simple terms, financial services companies play an important role in helping people manage their money. With few exceptions, anything your financial services company can do for customers in person is just as easy to do with a financial services call center.
Trained call center agents can help your customers with a wide variety of common transactions like making deposits, withdrawing money, checking their balances, and paying their bills. Mortgage companies, lending institutions, and investment firms can also leverage a call center’s features to assist their customers efficiently. Certain types of transactions require assistance or monitoring by a certified financial services professional. At times when a customer really needs to speak to a person, call center software can route them to the most appropriate person to help them in a single transfer.
Overall, the role of a financial services call center is to provide a better customer experience and to help your business operate more efficiently.
The Benefits Provided By a Financial Services Call Center
A cloud-based phone system also offers voice calling features that let you know that a customer called, so you never miss an opportunity to serve them. With features like voicemail, call queue, and queue callback, you can be sure to serve customers as efficiently as possible.
With the right call center software, banks and other financial institutions can also use interactive voice response systems (IVR) and automated call-routing features to automatically direct customers to self-service options.
Because call center software is cloud-based, it allows you to set up toll-free and international phone numbers to give you a global presence and to serve customers anywhere in the world.
For the purpose of making inbound calls or outbound calls, the power dialer feature makes it easy to dial phone numbers in rapid succession. Pop-up windows bring all customer account information right to the call center agent’s screen. When they’re speaking to a customer, all the customer data is right at their fingertips.
Your financial services company also enjoys many additional benefits of financial services call center software.
Here’s what you can expect:
Helps you keep up with customer service demands.
Saves on IT costs–your call center software provider takes care of most of them.
Routes customer calls to other offices that offer different financial services.
Allows call center agents to communicate with customers using multiple communication channels.
Allows you to record calls for greater context and review.
Gives you the ability to establish a local presence using your own toll-free and international numbers to give you a local presence.
Allows you to rely less heavily on staff by offering self-service options for customers.
Prevents your business from shutting down if a natural disaster occurs.
Makes it possible to make more calls in a shorter period of time with features like the power dialer and click-to-dial.
Gives you access to dashboard analytics to assess metrics like call volume, average call times, productivity, and much more.
Gives you the flexibility to set up a virtual call center and use remote or distributed teams.
Allows you to leverage a full-featured contact center.
Best Practices to Improve Financial Call Center Performance
Once your call center is up and running, you want to do your best to improve the performance of your call center agents.
Here are some best practices to get you started:
Recruit and hire good quality talent for your call center and train them well.
Set up workflows to route calls to people who have the right certifications to help callers.
Use a cloud phone system that works with software integrations to connect your digital tools seamlessly.
Take advantage of the desktop notification feature to notify call center agents of incoming calls.
Leverage cloud-based phone features such as power dialer and IVR to help you meet your goals.
Use the live feed to monitor your call center activity and scale your call center or make adjustments quickly.
Use insight cards to get the call history and greater context behind the call.
Leverage call queue, queue callback, and voicemail to get to customers as quickly as possible.
Monitor your call center activity to ensure call center agents are complying with all financial laws and regulations.
The Role of VoIP Integrations in Financial Services Call Centers
VoIP integrations are software applications that work in tandem with cloud-based phone system to give your call center greater capability and functionality. VoIP technology eliminates many manual processes, allowing your call center to work more efficiently. With the benefit of software integrations, you can switch seamlessly between various tools and sync information between them.
Let’s take a look at how some VoIP integrations can enhance your financial services call center:
Gaston–Automatically records and transcribes phone calls for later review.
Zapier–Automates workflows for financial services.
Plecto–A tool that helps you visualize metrics and KPIs to assess productivity in your call center.
Front–Automatically logs calls into the voicemail inbox of your choice.
Intercom–Creates tickets for missed calls and voicemails and assigns outgoing calls to a call center representative.
Slack–Creates channels to gather all your call information in one place.
Voxpay–Allows call center agents to accept payments confidentially.
EvaluAgent–Easily evaluates calls so you can give immediate feedback to call center representatives.
Nicereply–Automates sending surveys to help gauge customer satisfaction.
Companies in the financial services industry have a lot at stake. When they’re successful, it improves the overall economy.
Banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, insurance companies, and other businesses that make up the financial services sector have to find the balance between providing a good customer experience and doing what’s best for the business. With a cloud-based phone system and VoIP integrations, you get the additional benefits of flexibility, scalability, and reliability. You’ll save money on hardware, equipment, and maintenance. Call center software for financial services companies is effortless to set up, and it’s even easier to use.
These tools will help your financial services company to remain competitive and set the stage for sustainability and a profitable future.
Published on February 3, 2021.
