Banks and financial service institutions are under a lot of pressure to deliver fast and timely customer service. Customer expectations for banks have shifted to mirror those they have for other service providers. As a result, fast, accurate customer service is critical to staying competitive and reducing customer attrition. So, how can banks deliver the experience modern financial services customers demand?
Digital banking simulators can be a critical tool for helping banks meet rising customer expectations. But what exactly are digital banking simulators, and how can they benefit your financial services contact center? Below, we go over what a digital banking simulator is and how it can benefit both your agents and your customers.
What is a digital banking simulator?
A banking app simulator, or emulator, refers to virtual devices and tools that emulate the customer experience. These are interactive tools that simulate your mobile banking experience, products or app. With the rise of mobile banking and remote work arrangements for agents, these emulators are becoming a critical tool for optimizing your financial services contact center.
What are the benefits of using digital banking simulators?
Digital banking simulators let agents see exactly what your customers see as they navigate their mobile banking experience. This can make them a critical tool in crafting an effective banking customer service strategy. This technology can help your bank or financial institution to:
- Respect the customer’s privacy
- Improve average handle time (AHT)
- Optimize your first call resolution rate (FCR)
- Improve agent performance
- Create a better self-service experience
We go into more detail about each of these below.
Respect customer privacy
Privacy is a big concern for banks and customers alike. Simulators can help contact center agents carefully balance providing timely customer service with security, especially when handling sensitive financial information.
Digital banking simulators can help you and your agents walk that careful line. With emulators, your agents don’t have to ask customers to share their screen, something they might be reluctant to do with their financial data (and with good reason). Agents, too, don’t have to worry about accidentally exposing customer data to bad actors.
Virtual bank apps eliminate the security headache by allowing agents to see exactly what customers see when they log in to their accounts or apps. It’s important to note that this is a simulation of the customer experience. Since there is no screen sharing, they aren’t viewing the customer’s actual account or personal information. It’s simply a simulation that replicates the customer experience in a controlled environment.
This can help give your customers peace of mind knowing their privacy is being respected. In turn, it can also eliminate one more potential opportunity for bad actors to steal sensitive information.
Improve your contact center’s average handle time (AHT)
Average handle time (AHT) is a critical metric for gauging the success of your contact center. The faster your agents resolve issues, the happier customers will be.
In general, a good average handle time across all industries is six minutes. However, you want to try to lower your AHT as much as possible. Reducing AHT has numerous potential benefits, such as improved net promoter score (NPS) and reduced customer churn. So, how can your bank or financial institution take steps to improve your AHT?
One key tactic to consider is adopting digital banking simulators. These tools can help reduce average handle time by empowering agents to resolve customer support tickets more quickly. This is because the agent can see a simulation of exactly what the customer sees. This can help them diagnose an issue more quickly and provide more accurate troubleshooting. It can also streamline communication between the customer and the agent by eliminating the back-and-forth as the customer tries to describe what they see over the phone.
Optimize your first call resolution rate (FCR)
First call resolution (FCR) is your contact center’s ability to resolve a customer’s issue during the first interaction. Optimizing your FCR can be a critical step for improving your customer retention rate. Research shows that more than two-thirds of customers would have stayed with a company if that business had resolved their customer service issues within the first interaction.
Digital banking simulators can play a key role in improving your first-call resolution and, in turn, customer retention. Since agents can see a digital simulation of what the customer sees, they can more easily diagnose the customer's issue. This also allows them to provide the customer with clearer step-by-step guidance for ticket resolution.
With fewer repeat callers, your contact center’s call volume decreases. This can lead to potential cost savings for your financial institution. It can also shorten wait times for customers in the call queue, which can help improve customer sentiment and potentially reduce your churn rate.
Improve contact center agent performance
Digital banking simulators can also help improve financial services contact center agent performance. The quality of your customer service directly impacts your reputation, not just with your current customer base but also with potential future customers.
One in 10 dissatisfied customers tells over a dozen people about their poor customer service experience. That means poor agent performance can not only impact your customer retention rate, but also your customer acquisition. That’s why taking steps to improve agent performance is so important for the success of your financial institution.
Digital banking emulators can help agents provide more accurate customer service, leading to faster ticket resolution. It can also facilitate clearer communication between the customer and agent by eliminating the guesswork and back-and-forth. Not only can this lead to higher agent confidence, but it can also improve the agent's NPS score.
Improving agent performance can also potentially help improve customer acquisition. That’s because customers who have a positive experience with a business will tell half a dozen other people about it. For these reasons, digital banking emulators can also help streamline the agent onboarding process, shortening training times so your agents can hit the ground running.
Create a better customer self-service experience
According to the American Bankers Association, 55% of customers say mobile apps are their preferred way to manage their bank accounts. Digital banking emulators can help improve customer self-service by letting customers interact with a simulation of their device or software.
These days, customer self-service is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have for your business. Yet, many businesses struggle to provide effective automated support. More than two-thirds of customers say they can’t resolve an issue independently using a company’s current self-service offerings. This means good customer self-service can be a critical differentiator for your bank or financial institution.
Many traditional self-service models tend to use lengthy FAQ articles or other text-based self-help. However, these can quickly become outdated and aren’t optimized for learning. 65% of people are visual learners, so text-based formats don’t present information in a way that’s easy to digest for most customers. It can leave them unsure of how to proceed, increasing the risk for frustration and potential churn.
This is where digital banking emulators can help. Because digital banking simulators provide a digital representation of your apps or other products, customers can see exactly what they need to press and where it’s located. This can streamline the customer self-service experience, which in turn can help improve your digital banking adoption rates. Additionally, as more customers have positive self-service experiences, they’ll learn to seek out self-service channels, which can help lower business expenses and contact center call volume.
Leverage the power of digital banking simulators in your financial services contact center
Customer service quality is becoming a critical differentiator for banks and financial service institutions. Digital banking emulators can help improve your contact center’s operations by maintaining customer privacy, boosting agent performance and optimizing several critical contact center metrics. All of this can potentially help your bank with improving agent onboarding, increasing customer retention and driving digital adoption among your customer base. For these reasons, digital banking simulators are a tool your contact center may want to consider adding to its tech stack.
Are you looking for more information on improving your banking customer service? Download our free e-book, which features original research from banking professionals. We dive into the most common issues facing financial services contact centers and practical ways to scale support while reducing customer churn. Download your free copy today.
