Financial brands looking to self-service customer engagement

Financial services organisations are planning to implement web-based customer engagement and self-service channels to improve customer service and reduce cost, according to new research.

Aspect surveyed 150 senior business and IT decision makers in financial services and found one in five are planning to implement instant messaging/web chat and/or online self-service in 2013, according to the findings.

According to the survey, 56% see improving the customer experience as a primary business goal whilst 68% intend to reduce cost by implementing new technology. In other areas of technology, 51% of respondents cited compliance as a main priority, followed by data security (46%), said the report.

However, 60% of those surveyed cited the restrictions of CAPEX investments as the biggest barrier to adoption.

The research also showed that organisations are getting better at squeezing additional value out of the contact centre through customer interaction. According to the findings, whilst only 17% of contact centres currently use voice analytics, it is one of the fastest growing technologies with a further 13% planning to implement it.

Peter Nicol from Aspect said: “Understandably for financial services organisations, compliance, security, privacy are all top technology concerns for respondents. It’s a complex compliance landscape for contact centre managers; not only are they dealing with Ofcom rules on handling sometimes thousands of customer interactions a day, but also data protection laws and industry-specific regulations such as those from the Financial Services Authority.”