The future of seamless experiences: Drive contact center excellence in financial services with Microsoft

Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and just get started. So welcome, everyone to today's webinar. We're very excited to talk about something that's really a game changer for the financial services industry and and really every industry. Today, we're going to be diving into the future of seamless experiences. We're going to tell you about how you can use Microsoft technology to elevate your financial services contact center with AI. And Microsoft has really brought a true differentiated solution to the market, and we're excited to show you that today. So imagine this, a client or a member is calling in with a complex banking question, following up on a web chat as well as a previous call. So they've attempted to reach your bank multiple times. They get a new agent. Right? And the agent is empowered by having everything at their fingerprint, tips in one window. So from taking the call through Dynamics contact center in the customer service workspace to having the history of the timeline of interactions with that member, summarized by Copilot at the top of their screen. So that agent is getting brought up to speed quickly on the call. On the right hand pane, the agent has everything they need in their knowledge base that is quickly, proactively surfacing Copilot through Copilot articles for that agent, based on the conversation that's being transcribed in Dynamics contact center. They're doing all of this in the same window. They're able to resolve the case quickly for the customer. Just think about what that could do, for for KPIs and to the bottom line of your organization, you know, all while driving what we know is super important, which is a differentiated, strong customer experience. Not to mention, this is all supported by Microsoft security standards. These comply with the regulatory requirements of the financial services sector that we see often with our clients. So to summarize, one platform, one vendor, extremely secure with embedded AI, really the most differentiated solution on the market today, and that's what we're excited to present to you. So with that, I'm going to just start with introductions. Hello. My name is Cassie Hausman. I am one of the hosts for today's webinar alongside Andre and Ian from the Microsoft, Financial Services team. We are also joined by Carl Phoenix from my organization. Carl and I represent TTEC Digital. We're a partner that has been leading transformations of contact center and customer experience, with banks, credit unions, financial services companies for over forty two years. We have truly been doing this longer than any other partner globally. We were actually originally founded as Teletext that, tells you more about our contact center history. We are a go to partner with Microsoft across these areas. They've asked us to join them and partner on this webinar today. We look forward to having a great conversation today. Definitely put questions, feedback, anything you want in the chat. Would love to have the opportunity, obviously, to engage with everyone after the call today as well. At the end of the webinar, we are going to be, telling you about a tool around AI that you can start leveraging today. So definitely stay tuned for that. But before we dive in, I do wanna do just a quick overview of the agenda. We're going to be covering the the three following areas, current state of digital innovation and future trends in financial services, examples of successful innovative implementations, and, of course, we have to show you a live demo of this differentiated product in the market, by showing you a customer journey supported by Dynamics three sixty five from self-service through case completion. Before we dive in, I do want to say happy early Valentine's Day, everyone. I wanna remind you that you do have time to still overnight flowers to a loved one, a mom, a dad, a significant other. So definitely, get that done because as we know, that's the most important thing in life. Right? But with that, I am going to pass it over to Andre and the Microsoft team. Thanks, Cass. I guess I'm wearing right colors here. Yeah. But, good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you may be. My name is Andre Giese, and I'm a global black belt for CCaaS at Microsoft. And I focus on the financial services industry throughout North America and Latin America. I'm going to cover some of the more exciting trends that are shaping the future of contact centers, particularly within this sector. And as we navigate through twenty twenty five and beyond the landscape of customer service is going to drastically evolve. Now, first we go into the case for change. According to Qualtrics, business globally stand to lose four point seven trillion in consumer spending due to poor customer experiences, which is a testament to the profound impact of the service quality to the bottom line. Service excellence is not just a nice to have anymore. In this hyper competitive space, it is an essential pillar of business success with a profound impact on your customers and your bottom line, but there's a clear gap between what is possible and what is typical. Think about the last time that you contacted your bank or your phone company or your favorite streaming service. What was that experience like? Did you wish you were different? For many customers, the service experience can be quite disappointing. Customers prefer to self serve when they're able, but instead they encounter primitive chatbots that can't respond to basic questions or they're taken through a maze of automated menus on the phone. They want flexibility to reach out in the channel that's most convenient to them. But instead, they'll get a different answer depending on the channel and often feel like they're starting over, so they hesitate to switch. And when they finally bypass all the menus and get a human, they're stuck waiting on hold, they're transferred multiple times, and they're forced to repeat their query again and again. Now these gaps aren't just inconvenience. They are costly missteps. With self-service deflection rates lingering below forty five percent, businesses are missing the opportunity to efficiently resolve issues and having overreliance on the human agents who are already overwhelmed, and they lose time looking up customer information, searching for answers, and while the customers are waiting on the line and growing frustrated. Now most organizations find themselves in extremely challenged situation when it comes to serving their customers because the technology has been added in piecemeal fashion over the years, and now these systems work in silos and so is the data. There's not a unified view of the customer information that can be shared across the organization, and different channels are managed independently across different vendors with multiple applications, and they're seldom kept in sync across the entire customer journey. A seamless customer experience is imperative, and it can be worth at least as much as a superior product or an efficient process. It builds customer loyalty. It reduces costs. It makes employees happier, boosting revenues significantly. So what are organizations doing about it? Where are they focusing on nor should they be focused on? These are some of the trends that we have observed along with, industry analysts. I'm gonna start off with self-service. Customer expectations are now higher than ever. And if banks and financial industries fail to meet them, they're gonna jump ship to another provider, especially with fintech that the competition is really focused on CX. Each second that passes with the customer put on hold is lost business for the bank. Now in many cases, that call isn't going to generate additional revenue, but it will impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. Again, they prefer self-service over talking to a human. And with the evolution of AI technology, you can now provide that level of service using generative AI that do more than just basic intent or FAQs. Bots that can actually transact on the behalf of the customer. So ultimately adopting these bots across digital and voice allows you to contain basic customer requests from agents, but you get to mine that interaction data. Talk times in financial services are generally longer than the industry average. And even though some banks have robust digital ecosystems, you still have customers calling for very basic needs. So containment here is a primary focus for cost savings. When we talk about the agent leg of the call, the experience here is probably the area of CCaaS that's undergoing the most innovation at the moment. The complexity of service in financial institutions require agents to have instant access to detailed information. With the rise of self-service options, mobile banking, online banking, comparison sites, contact centers need highly skilled agents, which is becoming harder to come by. And that's where generative AI is being applied, to make every agent the best agent. So the top platforms are leveraging next best action functionality, transcription, and sentiment analysis. And the reason for this focus is because, like I mentioned before, these talk times are higher than average, but also in many cases, they're more costly. So the opportunity to drive a strong ROI in this area is very high. Coupled with being a regulated industry, quality and accuracy are key metrics, which can both be supported by these tools within these platforms. And nowadays, personalization isn't enough. We need hyper personalization. We need to show each customer that you remember the last time the last time they call, the last interaction, transaction, or claim because you're gonna earn their trust and boost customer retention. And they're also expecting it again. Fintech providers have stormed the market with efficient systems and seamless customer support experiences, which in comparison, traditional financial institutions are lagging quite behind. Also, the contact center provides an unfiltered voice of the customer, highlighting friction across any touch point. An issue with the transaction, an issue with an app at a branch, it's going to percolate its way through the contact center. What is through social media, email, chats, or calls? You need to understand where in the journey the customer may be the moment that interaction, the phone call comes through and deliver individualized service interactions. If you just sent your customer an SMS alert and they call, the IVR should greet them based on that intent and route them accordingly. Again, this personalization isn't just about making customer feel valued, but it's a key driver of customer loyalty, which leads to greater lifetime value for the bank. When we go back to their Qualtrics research, sixty percent of customers say they would buy more and spend more from a company that treated them better. As we move to connected experiences, the topic of omnichannel has been on the roadmap ever since there were two channels to talk about, but it many companies still struggle to achieve this either through their technology or the processes that are in place. In fact, only half of contact centers steer their customers to a particular channel proactively. And those only three quarters use right channeling to proactively steer them, and the others just do static based approaches on lowest cost and shortest wait time, which doesn't promote the best customer outcomes. CCaaS platforms continue to improve in this effort. They're taking ownership of channels and tying them together with the data platform. If you have access to the data in a true customer three sixty, you can allow them to navigate freely across channels without detracting from their objective, without creating necessary friction or dissatisfaction. In the next five years, achieving consistency and transparency across these channels will be crucial for personalized experience and consistent service. A great example, I'm a customer of a financial service provider. I utilized their Apple. I was traveling one day, and I don't know if my location may have triggered this, but they said my account was locked and instructed me to call to resolve this issue. I found that to be interesting because it's steering me from an app to a high touch, high cost channels, but I did. And I was greeted by the IVR. When I provided a reason for my call, the IVR routed me to the right intent, but also authenticated me through biometrics. It offered me the choice to resolve my issue through a digital channel. I said, sure. No problem. So I received a text message with the link to the web app of this entity where I easily authenticated again, unlock my account, reset my password. This whole process, this whole journey took less than two minutes, and I touched four channels. It was extremely seamless, pain free, but also memorable. And it added trust in between myself and that organization because I know they're securing the processes. And guess what? It's the story that I now repeat. So that interaction, it could have been seen as a a a a friction. Hey. Your account is locked, became a satisfaction event. Now back to the presentation here. Right? When it comes to the last pillar is a shift that is happening in the contact center, which is transforming them from being a purely cost center perspective. Right? Organizations that are prioritizing customer retention and loyalty, and they're investing heavily in these experiences are nurturing long term relationships, and they're transforming their contact centers into brand engagement centers. According to recent reports, ninety seven percent of customers will say that they interact with contact centers influence their loyalty to the brand. I think that example that I just mentioned is a case with this. And many are willing to pay or spend more for a good experience. It's like a premium credit card with high annual fees in the hundreds of dollars. Customers pay because of the value and the elevated experiences they get out of them. One bank that undertook a customer experience transformation concluded that the lifetime profitability of a satisfied customer willing to recommend a bank to his or her friends, think the NPS promoter, was five to eight times greater than one that had a negative perception, the detractors. Think about high net worth customers that are interacting with your with your institution and can be offered unique experiences. They can be transferred to specific agents that can deliver high touch meaningful but also revenue generating engagements. And that brings us to our position where we believe the artificial intelligence and more specifically generative artificial intelligence will be the single most impactful area that is gonna change how you serve your customers. For the last forty years, service delivery method has been much of the same. Support services log in, look at cases, look at history, asking teammates for help, trying to get information they need to support the customer. But today, we're starting a new era of AI that brings us one step closer to bridging the gap between the human and the AI agent. And this next generation of applications and experience are about to change for everyone that supports customers, transforming the way the service is delivered through new levels of productivity and efficiency. But that's just not Microsoft's stance. Industry analysts have the same outlook. When you combine data, analytics, and automation, you're poised to not only mitigate service costs, but also deliver substantial value internally and to your customers. Over the past few years, AI has been adopted at breakneck pace because it was the thing to do, and leaders felt pressured to implement it throughout their business to keep up with the competition in and the fear of missing out on this transformation technology. I'm sure maybe you can look inwards into your own organizations and how it may have been implemented. And in some cases, we've seen there were some hasty, poor implementations. But now things are changing. The technology is maturing, how and where it's being implemented is being rethought. Well for us, we recently released Dynamics three c five contact center, which represents the next big step in the capabilities that Microsoft has been investing heavily for years. The idea here is that this is a complete contact center as a service solution built for the edge of generative AI. It is a copilot first solution that brings intelligence and automation and efficiency to every engagement channel, and it was built to work with any existing CRM. It allows you and your customers to interact wherever they prefer and go beyond just basic automated replies. You can deliver conversations that are natural, contextual, and personalized for each customer. You can boost accuracy and results by linking self-service to the knowledge sources, websites, and business applications your contact center already uses, further extending their value. And you can achieve higher efficiency and happiness with autonomous agents that can respond to new issues as they arise and keep your knowledge base up to date. But the human is still there, and not every request is simple enough for self-service, and those are gonna require the human touch. And when that happens, these reps are ready and confident to help. We're aligning the load for the service reps by ensuring they are working on the right case, routing inquiries to the most suitable rep based on customer sentiment, intent, rep skills, and availability. Think of it as the right agent for the right customer at the right time, every time. We also provide a three hundred sixty degree view of the customer case that and suggest a resolution from a single pane of glass, and we empower them with real time AI assistance through Copilot and autonomous agents, but also connecting them with the human experts to quickly resolve complex cases when needed. And lastly, we have the supervisors who are the backbone of service. It's crucial that they have the data to monitor, analyze, and improve customer service for for the customer and the business. For them, we delivered AI power analytics and insights in one easy to view dashboard to help optimize and scale operations. KPIs, AI generated insights on cases, reps, and topics all allow supervisor to understand the overall state of the business and the support experience. We're also highlighting topics to generate the highest volume, but also those are emerging with the fastest velocity, helping them identify gaps or areas of improvement. And it's all embedded in d three sixty five so they can make these informed decisions. And lastly, before I hand over to Ian here, I wanted to share some exciting news in case you haven't heard. We recently announced autonomous agents back in October that help business transition from outdated systems to AI driven processes. AI is today's ROI and tomorrow's competitive edge. In customer service, we have two groundbreaking agents that are designed to revolutionize how contact centers enhance customer experiences through both self-service and human assisted service. We have the customer intent agent that continuously learns from past and customer and current customer interactions across every channel, ensuring that your self-service options are always relevant and up to date, and the customer knowledge management agent, which keeps knowledge articles fresh by analyzing case notes, transcripts, and summaries from human assisted cases to extract valuable insights. Now together, these agents are transforming customer service, making interactions smoother and more efficient. But this is just the beginning. Our goal is to roll out even more agents in the coming year, giving businesses the tools that they need to stay ahead and future proof their operations. Now, I'm gonna play a brief video here of a demo of these customer agents and then I'll hand it over to you for the demo. So thank you. Copilot agents can help contact centers improve customer experiences, drive efficiency, and reduce costs. Let's see how the customer intent and customer knowledge management agents work in tandem to enable evergreen customer self-service and assisted service. I'm a senior service rep and I've just received an escalation for an issue that was not on our radar. As I work, the customer intent agent is continuously learning from me. How to identify and resolve this and other complex customer issues as they arise? It discovers new intents from customer conversations across all channels by analyzing case notes, transcripts, and summaries, mapping issues to corresponding resolutions that the agent maintains in a library. In parallel, a customer knowledge management agent ensures knowledge articles are kept perpetually current, automatically identifying opportunities to update existing articles or draft new ones based on the discovered insights. The agent autonomously drafts and publishes the content. And since I have oversight, all I have to do is approve the update. Now the next time a customer reaches out, our self-service tools like chatbots and IVRs are ready, dynamically armed with the latest intents and knowledge content. No manual updates required, which means fewer escalations for me. And when I need help diagnosing a customer issue, Copilot is here for me too. Proactively surfacing prompts fueled by the customer intent agent and providing me with the latest guidance harnessed by the customer knowledge management agent. Okay. Thank you, Andre. So my name is Ian Entenberg, and I'm a technical specialist for contact center and customer service. So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna take a look at the, the contact center and customer service workspace. I'll go through and show you some of the latest AI innovations that Microsoft has put into the solution. And so typically, at the start of the day, you have a contact center agent comes in, says, okay. What cases do I need to work on? And they come in here, and you can see here you can take a look at what are my high cases, low cases, normal cases. If I wanted to start out and look at the high cases, I can simply do that, drill down into it, take a look at my cases that I need to work on, and what we'll do is we'll just click on this particular case. And what I'd like to do is show you how Microsoft has put Copilot into the flow of work of a customer service representative. What happens is that the customer service representative can use Copilot to increase, the speed at which you can serve your customers. So this was a case that, was originated automatically from a phone call that came in, and what you can see here is the description of the case was auto generated by, Copilot. Copilot took the conversation that the agent had with the customer and automatically added that to the description field of the case itself. The other thing you'll notice here is the Copilot generated summary. So what Copilot will do is it will look at the case, and if I click on it here, and it will go in and it will summarize the case itself and present that to the customer service agent. So what this does for you is it enables the customer service representative to get up to speed more quickly without having to read through all of the notes. Likewise, we have highlights here for the different conversations that have taken place within the timeline. When I click on that, it gives me, the bullet point items so I can quickly get up to speed. The other thing we have here is the actual phone call that took place, along with the transcript. So when I click on the transcript, as a representative, I can see the actual conversation that has taken place with the customer. Here it is and the conversation originally initiated with a bot and the customer asked to talk to an agent. The question was, well, how do I increase the wire transfer limit? It looked like the conversation, the agent actually provided the answer, but, regardless, you can click on any point of this, and actually play in the recorded audio. Transfer. Is there a limit for the amount of funds that I can transfer? Right. So you're able to quickly get up to speed. The other thing you'll notice too is if I open Copilot here, and this is really where we talk about having Copilot come into the the flow of work. What you're going to see here is that CoPilot will go through and recognizes the actual intent of the customer's question. In this case, it recognize, okay, well, how do I increase the digital wire transfer limit? Then it provides the representative with the answer. I didn't even have to type anything into Copilot. It's automatically recognized the intent and then provided the answer back to me. Okay. So assuming that we've taken care of, our, our high priority cases and reviews Copilot, to assist us in that process, saving us time, what we can then do is go take a look at our inbox. And so I might go through and I might wanna respond to some of these emails. So just select this one, and we'll close our Copilot for now. What you're going to see here is the representative going through and responding to our customer inquiries that were sent in via email. What we can see here is Copilot in the process. Now here's the email that was sent. I already clicked Reply and says, well, how do I download a copy of my ten ninety nine diff form? I can't seem to find it. And so now typically without Copilot, what I might have to do is go and research through our knowledge articles. If I didn't know the answer, I might have to reach out to, our back office experts and ask them. But here we have a number of different ways that Microsoft has included Copilot into the process. If I click on, well, let's just resolve the customer's problem, Copilot will, draft the response. You can see that here. So it goes it looks at our internal knowledge sources or your internal internal knowledge sources as a company. It's not going out on the Internet. It's pointed only to, the knowledge, the sources of knowledge that you want it to. Right? Your internal. And then it will pull from that, and then it will write the email, for you. So think about the time savings. Right? You know, it it reduces the amount of time you actually have to search for the answer, but then it also writes the email for you. So typically it might take me, I don't know, fifteen or twenty minutes or so to research an answer and write the email response. Here Copilot does it for you, instantly. The other thing you can do is you can adjust the e mail. If you wanted to adjust the tone, you could do that and make it shorter, longer, a bit more friendly or formal, and then you can update the e mail. You can also translate the email into a different language if you wanted to. Translate it back, show the original, and then send it off. Okay. So what I'd like to do now is show you a conversational IVR video of what an experience would look like as a customer called in, had a conversation with the IVR, and then speaks with a customer service representative. So I'll go ahead and share that. And, Andre, if you're able to start that, phone call, let's see if we can get that connected while I'm showing this. Here we see a customer interacting with one of those conversational IVRs on the voice channel. Good morning, Joe. Thanks for calling Northwind. I see you chatted with us about an order yesterday. Are you calling about that? Yes. Can that order be expedited? Just to confirm, would you like to expedite the order with the tracking number ending in three three seven seven? Yes. I've expedited your order. It'll now be delivered in two business days instead of five business days. Is there anything else I can help you with? If I do change my mind, how long do I have to return it? For Trailmaster x four, the return period is ninety days. Is there anything else I could help you with? Yes. I'd like to increase the credit limit for my Northwind credit card. Let me connect you with an agent for that. Okay. Okay. So here's the, incoming call from Andre. So Andre is on his phone, and he just called. And as a, customer, service representative, I'm going to accept that call. We can see our conversation panel off to the left here. We can pause the recording. I can put it on mute. I can show the transcript. So what we have here is real time transcription. So as we're, speaking, as a representative speaking with the customer, the transcription is is automatically put into the panel, and I can use summarization here. I have Copilot summarize I need help with increasing the wire transfer limit for my credit card and my bank account. You could see that. And then we can also utilize Copilot. The intent is recognized. This is while we're on the call. What is the process to increase a customer's wire transfer limit? It pulls the answer for me, to increase the wire transfer limit. The customer can request a verbal approval. Default transfer limit is ten thousand dollars, but it can be increased. So, this is something we can do to to increase the the speed at which we can service our customers. The other thing we can do is, we can, utilize, Teams to chat with our back office experts if we wanted to. We could open up a Teams conversation with the embedded Teams. We can connect that conversation to this particular conversation record, or we can also do a Teams call if we wanted to do screen sharing in addition to this. We have the customer here. We can see the customer, who's the customer, their contact information, along with their phone number, any conversation details. This is a voice call comes in queue, and any existing or recent cases that this customer has. If we wanted to, we could also click on the customer and look at additional information. We've got additional details here, Which communication channels, does the customer prefer? We can do, additional information, connecting to your, back office systems to bring in a three sixty degree view of the customer itself. We can translate this conversation if we wanted to. And so what I'll do is I'll hang up this call, and then also I'll show you the, omnichannel historical analytics that we have in place. So as a supervisor, if you wanted to view, the voice channel, and look at the analytics for that particular channel for the voice conversations. The report will show here. Now one of the interesting things that I I like about this particular report, is that it shows you the incoming conversations. Of those incoming conversations, how many were actually engaged with the representative, what was the abandon rate, the actual speed to answer, CSAT, as well as sentiment. If the customer is if you have a happy customer or unhappy customer, the system is able to look at the sentiment. Then you have the voice metrics. What's the average talk time? What's the average talk to listen ratio? That is how much does the customer talk versus how much does the representative talk? The talking speed, the switches per conversation, longest customer monologue, you know, you know, how often how long does the customer speak, versus how long does the representative speak, and those metrics are are captured in here. So we can also do that with the bots, take a look at our bots and see what are our copilots doing in terms of being able to deflect, the conversations before actually getting to, the service representative. And those, those statistics those analytics will will be contained in here. So here you can see total of, seventeen bot conversations, zero were actually escalated. So the bot engaged seventeen times, the abandonment rate was five point nine percent, and you're able to to do view the details in here. Alright. So that's what I wanted to show you today in terms of the what Microsoft is doing for, including AI into the contact center and customer service, journey. And so what I'll do is I'll turn it back over to you, Cassie. Awesome. Thank you, Ian. And if anyone has questions, please feel free to throw those in the chat. We also did put the video that Andre showed a link to that in the chat as well. So please check that out with audio when you have a minute. Andre, did you want to share the final slide? Awesome. Okay. So feel free to take out your phone and scan this. We do have an AI assessment, regarding contact center that you can take. This is a great way to start to explore AI, how it can be leveraged in your contact center, as well as exploring additional outcomes and things that you can, achieve with AI. So please take the assessment. In addition, we would love to offer a complimentary session with the people on the call today at Microsoft, as well as your friends here at TTEC. We would love to continue the discussion, learn more about your organization, your current state and contact center, some of the outcomes and strategic initiatives that you have, how you're leveraging AI today, and if not, can we help you with that strategy? Happy to have a conversation just to continue the discussion, but we do appreciate everyone's time today. Again, happy early Valentine's Day. Go buy those flowers for your loved ones. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much everyone.