As a regional bank or credit union, you have something remarkable to offer your customers. You know your customers by name and understand that their financial goals are truly unique. You also have deep knowledge of the community you serve, providing customers with critical insights and giving back to those in need.
These deep community ties can make choosing a community bank a no-brainer for your customers. However, running a financial institution at the heart of your local community isn’t without its challenges. If left unchecked, CX challenges can potentially balloon into major headaches for both customers and contact center agents.
Below, we go over some of the most common CX challenges regional banks face and how you can mitigate them.
What are some of the most common CX challenges regional banks face?
Community banks and credit unions are under enormous pressure to meet rising customer expectations. Some of the most common customer service challenges for regional banks and credit unions include:
- Legacy contact center systems that create friction in the customer experience
- Low rates of digital adoption
- Lack of a customer relationship management system (CRM)
- Digital tools that create friction for agents and customers
We go into each of these problems, as well as potential solutions, below.
The problem: Legacy contact center systems create friction in the customer experience
The truth is that legacy contact center systems often cause businesses to hemorrhage money. Outdated technology can make it difficult for agents to navigate routine requests, leading to a poor customer service experience.
Approximately 96% of U.S. banks and credit unions have less than $10 billion in assets. This means they lack the in-house development staff required to integrate third-party tools with legacy core providers.
As a result, agents have to navigate three to four disparate third-party systems per call just to handle routine requests like travel exemptions. This creates a major productivity drain for agents. A survey found that agents spend almost a third of their time on manual tasks due to disconnected tech systems. This is time that could be spent on other things, such as helping customers.
The consequences of legacy contact center systems include longer wait times, which can potentially lead to higher customer churn rates. It can also lead to increased maintenance and infrastructure costs. According to Atera, legacy technology can eat up as much as 80% of a company’s IT budget. Addressing this issue head-on can help eliminate headaches for both customers and company leadership.
How to solve it: Ensure you have a strong knowledge base
So, what can your regional bank or credit union do to prevent legacy technology from negatively impacting agent productivity and the customer experience? A critical first step is to use AI-driven, dynamic knowledge bases as an effective workaround. After all, most regional banks cannot easily force direct integrations with their core systems.
A better approach is to strategy should focus on replacing outdated, manually keyword-tagged file shares (like older SilverCloud setups) with intelligent platforms that unify search and automate procedural workflows. This helps create unified customer journeys across web, app and branch and makes information easier to find.
The knowledge base can serve as a single source of truth, providing consistent answers across platforms and leading to a more unified banking experience for customers. In turn, this can help your bank improve average handle time (AHT) and other critical contact center metrics.
The problem: Your bank has low rates of digital adoption
Many community banks and credit unions struggle with low digital banking adoption rates. Regional banks often serve a middle-aged or older customer base that exhibit lower digital adoption rates, driving up to 50% of inbound call volume for routine self-service tasks like checking account balances. In fact, over half of community banks’ customers are over the age of 52.
The obvious solution might seem like rolling out tools for digital deflection. But unlike their larger competitors, this approach doesn’t work for community banks, and could potentially backfire. That's because close customer relationships are the foundation of success for community banks, rather than competing on price. Ruthlessly forcing digital adoption risks alienating customers, potentially impacting your customer retention rate. This can be especially true for older customers, who may not feel as confident using certain technology such as apps or self-service tools.
How to solve it: Take a “guided support” approach to customer interactions
Rather than focusing on digital deflection, frame your regional banks' contact center upgrade strategies around guided support to help customers gain confidence in using digital tools.
An older customer base may be more leery of digital channels such as mobile banking apps. Stress to agents the importance of providing patient, step-by-step walkthroughs of the bank’s white-labeled app or other digital resources. Explain to them that the goal is to educate the customer and help them gain confidence in using the technology for future support interactions.
To help agents do this successfully, advocate for equipping them with digital banking simulators and emulators. These interactive tools simulate your mobile banking experience, products or app, allowing agents to provide customers with tailored, step-by-step guidance. This allows agents to provide the caller with a tailored, relationship-driven customer experience.
The problem: Your bank lacks a centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform
Many regional banks still operate with a major gap: the complete absence of a centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This forces your bank to use a highly manual support model in which the contact center lacks a shared customer history with local branches, making it difficult to efficiently track customer interactions or perform warm transfers.
CRMs are software or tools used to analyze customer interactions and foster customer retention. It hosts all this information in one centralized location. Without a CRM tool, your contact center agents lack the necessary context from previous customer interactions, which forces customers to repeat themselves, potentially creating unnecessary friction in the customer experience.
Additionally, a lack of centralized information means agents may have to search across multiple tools to resolve customer support tickets, which can affect key contact center metrics such as average handle time and net promoter score (NPS).
The solution: Adopt a unified CRM to streamline your regional bank’s operations
Adopting a unified CRM can help instantly modernize a regional bank or credit union’s operations. An upgraded CRM infrastructure is a critical step in leveraging contact center automation to improve agent efficiency and the customer experience.
A unified CRM allows agents to deliver a more personalized customer service experience by enabling them to see data from previous support interactions, allowing them to provide more timely and relevant service.
A strong CRM also benefits your business by allowing agents to tap into potential upselling and cross-selling opportunities. It’s much more effective to sell to current customers versus prospective ones. In fact, research shows that businesses have between a 60% and 70% chance of selling to existing customers, whereas the chances of selling to a prospective customer fall between five and 20%. This means a strong CRM can also play a vital role in improving your company’s sales efficiency.
Get ahead of these CX challenges to streamline the customer experience
Community banks and credit unions can create a hyper-personalized customer experience that’s unmatched. This can be a critical differentiator from larger brand names.
However, there are some common CX challenges that can hinder your bank’s ability to provide the customer service your customers expect, such as legacy technology, low digital adoption rates and a lack of a unified CRM. However, by taking proactive steps such as ensuring you have a strong knowledge base, a unified CRM and offering guided support, you can reduce friction and create a more streamlined customer experience.
Looking for more tips on using AI in your financial services contact center? Check out our e-book on the future of banking support. Grab your free copy today.
