By John O’Hara, President, NICE EMEA

The need for flexibility has never been more acute in the contact centre and customer service environment than today especially for those in Banking and Finance. With the transition to mass remote working due to COVID-19, businesses and employees alike are having to quickly adapt to this new mode of operation. At the same time, they also need to manage the upsurge in demand for service from customers seeking answers or wishing to take action due to financial distress.

Employees are having to adjust to working from home (WFH) and manage more complex requests while thinking about their health and safety and that of their families. Businesses are also quickly adapting to support the demands and needs of both their agents and their customers while complying with government directions and protecting their revenue.

Customer service success and loyalty are influenced by the ability to continue to provide a high-quality service. Here are five steps you can take to empower your customer service teams and protect your brand’s reputation in times of change.

1. Establish a solid foundation

When faced with the challenge of transitioning your agents to a WFH environment, the best way to quickly achieve business, as usual, is to deploy a true cloud-native solution. This will give your agents access to all the systems and information they need, wherever they are. Cloud platforms can also be scaled up or down to meet changing customer demands in real-time, providing the levels of agility and flexibility required.  Of course, you need to ensure that your approach is UK-DPA and GDPR compliant amongst many other necessary security measures.

But it’s not all about the platform – ensuring your agents have a proper and secure physical setup is also key. Even if they’ve been at home for a few weeks, providing them with an achievable ( and affordable) checklist – including a room with privacy, a tidy work-space with a proper chair, and a robust internet connection – to help them create an effective working area could make a big difference.

2. Build a transition plan

Some employees are great in-office workers but may be challenged to work as efficiently in a remote environment. To help agents adjust to and effectively operate throughout this new way of working, schedules will need to be more flexible. They must allow agents easy access to request shift changes as needed to help relieve the pressure. Forecasting and scheduling tools are therefore becoming more necessary to manage this in real-time.

Preparing agents to deal with an increasing number of complicated customer interactions is also crucial.  As an example, agents must be provided with guidelines to work effectively and empathetically with under pressure small businesses to evaluate loan requests under the recent UK Bounce Back Loan scheme. Also as the crisis has caused a dramatic increase in the number fraud attacks, your agents need to be prepared not just to address questions on how customers should address them but also what to do in case they face one themselves.  Things that might seem obvious to you might not come as naturally to less experienced team members. Any transition plan should, therefore, include tips on how to deal with more challenging situations to provide agents with the support they need.

3. The value of visibility 

In today’s turbulent times, productivity is as important as ever because it essentially indicates the quality and pace at which your customers are receiving service. However, it’s much harder to assess agent performance or provide support when they’re working remotely. To provide much-needed visibility, deploy solutions that allow you to understand how agents are interacting with customers and get insights on their level of engagement. With teams under increasing pressure, there often won’t be time to manually identify great examples of customer service or understand individual challenges. AI-based Interaction Analytics, as well as Desktop Analytics solutions, can help you identify positive examples – as well as bottlenecks, and potential problem areas to focus on.

The Banking and Finance area is of critical importance during the current crisis as it provides support to the large population who may not be completely comfortable with digital tools (e.g. online access, mobile apps) and prefer in-person interactions.  Analytics can assist in this area by identifying challenges and highlighting areas of improvement agents can focus on.  Agents must also take care to make sure they are using the right disclaimers and capturing consent – especially as they are processing reliefs packages or delaying loan payment.  Analytics can help ensure this.

What’s more, analytics should automatically analyze 100% of the interactions and then interpret and predict the behaviours of customers and agents. This approach enables contact centres to focus on specific areas for improvement such as agents displaying customer empathy and as well as measuring customers loyalty. Analytics is a critical element in every work environment; from at home, to hybrid as well as in the office.

4. Support agent performance

Agents need to know that they can find support when they need it. This will relieve some of the natural anxiety triggered by working alone in a home environment. Rolling out collaboration tools to encourage peer-to-peer conversations between agents will ensure your team members have someone to talk to, without placing added pressure on you or your team leaders.

Giving your teams access to the same subject-matter experts they had in the office can help them feel supported, while robotic process automation (RPA) allows agents to self-help. RPA tools can provide real-time guidance on questions that agents previously relied on others for, or in instances where paper-based policies and procedures haven’t yet been converted to digital knowledge banks – thereby reducing the risk of mistakes being made. An example where this approach can add tremendous value would be evaluating consumer requests under the new UK mortgage payment holiday.

This can make all the difference in situations where team leaders are redeployed to handle customer questions on the frontline. RPA can prevent other agents from feeling under added pressure when supervisors have less time available, by answering questions in real-time that they might not be able to alone.

5. Maintain employee engagement

Keeping your team motivated during these uncertain times is vital. The best way to do that is to conduct frequent surveys to get feedback on how they are feeling and the challenges they need help addressing.  This can include a better understanding of child or elderly care challenges as well as financial challenges they may be facing.  Taking action on those results while maintaining confidentiality is critical.

Also, encourage a work-life balance – make sure your agents are logging off on time, and tackle loneliness through online interactions that don’t centre only on task-based or performance-based conversations. Consider giving regular awards and recognition to those who produce great outcomes. Incentives could include flexible working hours, as well as a team or company-wide recognition.

Gamification is also becoming increasingly popular as a motivational tool, providing remote workers with tangible rewards as an incentive. Finally, AI-driven personalized training modules can help keep agents engaged and excited about their responsibilities and progression.

Ultimately, maintaining long-term visibility, performance and engagement when agents are working remotely are essential. The changes we’re seeing now may define a new normal, meaning the approach businesses take during this difficult time could have long-term ramifications – both in terms of retaining the right people and fostering customer loyalty. To succeed, focus on the tangible changes you can make now to support employees when working from home. This will empower them to continue to provide high-quality,consistent customer service and protect your brand for the future that will come in the Banking and Finance industries.