Leading Global Bank Trusts eGain
Delivering superior financial services to corporate clients
When you provide core financial services to thousands of corporate customers around the globe, your customer engagement platform had better be capable of delivering superior, speedy, and reliable assistance. That’s why this more than a hundred-year-old global bank turned to eGain when it needed help managing an expanding customer service load within its business banking division.
Company
A leading multinational financial institution, the bank offers a comprehensive array of consumer and corporate financial services, with offices in more than 40 countries around the world.
Challenge
Faced with a rapidly expanding customer base and the need to boost productivity without increasing staff, the management began searching for specialized tools to help manage the business division contact center.
Businesses are always striving to increase efficiency. However, an even more practical impetus drove this process forward. “We were running out of space in the contact center,” said the Customer Service Manager at one of their major contact centers. “We were looking to increase the number of customers that an agent could handle, so we wouldn’t have to hire more agents. We simply didn’t have anywhere to put them!”
Solution
After reviewing a number of potential solutions, the financial services company chose eGain Knowledge + AI™, because, in the Customer Service Manager’s words, “It seemed easy to use, easy to develop, and capable of scaling to our company’s worldwide operations.”
Once in place, eGain’s AI-powered knowledge management software proved itself almost immediately. “Before we introduced eGain, we were using basic scripted software,” said the business stakeholder. “We weren’t in control of the calls, and our agents were all over the place. The customer was dictating the pace of the call, and we were solving problems by relying on information that agents were carrying around in their heads.”
Implementation
A critical component of the new knowledge management system is its integration with the company’s legacy customer database.
Information is updated centrally and shared by the bank’s CRM system and eGain applications. “That’s very convenient,” according to the contact center’s Technical Infrastructure Manager. “We can review calls by querying one database, which then contains something similar to an audit trail of the problem resolution process.”
Results
The bank’s customer service team quickly achieved gains in virtually every area of contact center performance. “When we introduced Knowledge, it put us in control of the call,” declared the customer service manager. “We dictated the pace of the call and were able to provide consistent answers to the customer. We went from solving about 70% of calls at first point to solving around 95% of all calls without requiring an escalation.”
Reducing wrap time
The company employs some 54 first-tier agents who handle around 2000 direct dial-through calls per day. After the call is completed, the agent enters a recap of the steps that led to the resolution of the customer’s problem. The time it takes to enter this information and proceed to another call is known as “wrap time” or “average handle time” (AHT).
With eGain Knowledge + AI, the average wrap time was reduced from three minutes to a minute-and-a-half, a 50% increase in efficiency. Previously, agents would take around 60 seconds to pick up incoming calls. Now they are answering 75% of calls within four rings. The Customer Service Manager is thrilled, “That’s fantastic, considering we’re dealing with corporate customers. These are far from simple transactions.”
Agents discover knowledge is a good thing
When eGain Knowledge was first introduced to the agents, some were concerned that the program would reduce the level of expertise required to perform their jobs and, consequently, narrow their career paths. Exactly the opposite happened. “eGain has, in fact, enabled us to broaden their skill sets. Instead of supporting one product, they are supporting four and even five products,” according to the manager.
In addition, the positive reception of eGain Knowledge by the contact center team played a key role in improving customer satisfaction scores. “Before the implementation, overall satisfaction with the help desk hovered around 89%. In the last survey conducted it was around 97%.”
Knowledge cases are structured so that agents can drill down multiple levels and quickly find the solution to a problem. “The more experienced an agent is, the more efficient they can be,” explains the technical infrastructure manager. “Ultimately, we’re working toward a system that will enable any agent to answer any question on any product.”
Proving the ROI: Doing more with the same
Since the implementation of eGain Knowledge + AI, the contact center administration has been able to show management a significant return on investment (ROI). “We operate a resource model that says for every ‘X’ number of customers you have to have ‘X’ number of full-time staff. Previously, that figure was one agent for every 680 customers. Now, the figure has nearly doubled to around 1150 customers per agent. In other words, over three years, the increase in head count has been negligible, while the customer base has nearly doubled.”
There’s also a decrease in the time it takes to train new agents on the company’s core product, Business Master. “It used to take 10 weeks,” said the customer service manager. “Now it takes four. We’ve also seen a reduction in the time it takes an agent to move into a specialist or second-tier category.”
The implementation of eGain Knowledge + AI has even impacted the criteria for hiring new agents. The technical infrastructure manager is no longer looking for people with technical skills, “Instead, we can focus on people with superior customer service skills. It’s easy to teach someone how to use the system, but it’s very difficult to teach someone the interpersonal skills required to be a successful agent.”
Future
Both the contact center managers express their enthusiasm for the changes brought by the eGain solution. “We’ve seen qualitative improvements amongst our team of agents, and performance increases across almost every operation,” said the head of customer service, while the technical head added, “eGain has become a valued partner and we’re looking forward to benefiting from that partnership for years to come.”
