Jeremy Thomas, Regional Vice President of Sales for ANZ at Backbase, on using the latest technology to optimise the end-to-end customer journey.
How and where to incorporate AI into their operations has become the $64 million question, for Australian businesses of all stripes and sizes.
Financial services organisations are at the vanguard of the adoption wave – unsurprisingly, given early adoption is baked into their collective DNA.
Those that get AI right have much to gain, from reduced overheads to a greatly improved customer experience.
The latter is very often the key differentiator between banks offering very similar products, facilities and terms. When deciding where to deposit, borrow or invest funds, consumers and businesses are choosing to deal with suppliers that offer fast personalised service, at each and every one of their customer touchpoints, from online portals to old fashioned branches.
Taking a big picture approach
Smartly harnessed, AI makes it possible to deliver these high-quality customer experiences, quickly, cost effectively and at scale.
From enabling customer service agents to access relevant data within seconds to speeding up loan approvals by automating aspects of the application process, there’s no shortage of opportunities for future focused providers to innovate and optimise.
Identifying and tackling these opportunities in piecemeal fashion is, however, a decidedly sub-optimal approach and the surest way not to deliver the consistent, seamless service customers are seeking.
Rather, what’s likely to result is a fragmented hotchpotch of ostensibly automated solutions which have the potential to frustrate and irritate customers who are seeking outcomes and answers.
Battling with basic bots
Most of them will have seen this movie before and not liked it the first time. When interactive voice response systems and chatbots first arrived on the scene, they carried with them a promise of heightened efficiency, courtesy of the fact they could enable customers to ‘self-serve’ as and when they chose.
The reality, however, was somewhat different. While capable of handling simple, repetitive tasks, these basic bots were all too easily stumped by complex queries and customer enquiries that deviated even slightly from the scripts they’d been programmed to follow.
As a result, customers became all too familiar with the experience of waiting on the line for long periods in the hope of connecting with human beings who could resolve their enquiries, becoming increasingly irritated the while.
Undertaking superficial automation of discrete tasks and processes is likely to have a similar effect – the initial appearance of digital progress, followed by disappointment and disgruntlement.
Forcing customers to trek into a branch or contact your call centre to resolve an enquiry or progress an application is the antithesis of a good customer experience in today’s times.
Make it enough of an ordeal and they may even decide to embark on a comparison exercise which sees them decamp to a competitor that’s serious about service, and willing to invest in systems that eliminate, rather than amp up, the friction.
Getting smarter about AI
Fortunately, there is a smarter, more strategic way to adopt AI, one that harnesses the power of data to boost productivity, reduce operational costs and deliver smoother, more streamlined customer journeys across the board.
Known as progressive, or journey-led, modernisation, it centres around the concept of identifying friction throughout the enterprise and eliminating it steadily, journey by journey.
The right tools make doing so a straightforward proposition. That’s where AI-powered engagement banking technology comes into its own. Choose a platform that enables you to unify fragmented data into a single, unified customer view and your branch employees and customer service agents will be able to offer more personalised and relevant advice during in-person interactions.
And your organisation will be able to progress its AI transformation journey in an orderly, iterative fashion. Composable, pre-integrated customer experience capabilities and out-of-the-box journeys which incorporate agentic AI technology will allow you to deliver responsive, high-quality experiences efficiently and cost effectively, across all your channels and touchpoints.
Building a stronger future for your banking business
In 2025, delivering a superlative customer experience isn’t optional – it’s everything. AI-powered engagement banking software can help you to do so in a way that’s smart, strategic and cost effective. If staying ahead of the competition counts, it’s technology that belongs at the heart of your ICT stack.
