From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: Process Assessment for a Superior Customer Experience

Contact centers in the last decade have become the backbone of customer satisfaction and established themselves as the key differentiator in several domains including banking. This is also gaining significant traction, with contact centers being customers' first point of contact.

As banks continue to enhance customer experience (CX), inefficiencies within contact centers, such as long response times, repetitive inquiries, and disjointed processes, can severely undermine customer satisfaction. With digital banking services growing and expectations evolving, identifying and resolving these inefficiencies is critical for maintaining customer loyalty.

Tech-led process assessments, which utilize advanced tools like process mining, task mining, and AI-driven analytics, can give banks the insights to streamline operations in their contact centers.

This blog explores how tech-led assessments can help identify inefficiencies in customer experience centers and drive significant improvements in the overall customer experience.

Challenges in delivering optimal customer experience

Before discussing how tech-led assessments can address inefficiencies, it's essential to understand the typical challenges banks face that hinder a seamless customer experience.

1. 1. High Call Volumes: Contact centers often struggle with high customer inquiries, typically caused by inefficient routing, slow internal processes, inefficient capacity planning, and a lack of proper resolution on other channels like chat, email, or self-service platforms.
   2. Long Wait Times: High call volumes with inefficient capacity planning often result in longer wait times, frustrating customers. This is experienced due to inefficient routing, slow internal processes, and a lack of agent empowerment among the few factors contributing to delays.
   3. Repetitive Queries: Agents often spend significant time answering the same set of frequently asked questions (FAQs), detracting from their ability to focus on more complex or high-priority customer issues.
   4. Disparate Systems: Contact centers primarily operate with fragmented systems that lack integration, leading to slow data retrieval, miscommunication, and errors. This disjointed structure results in a less streamlined experience for the customer and the agent.
   5. Inconsistent Customer Experiences: As processes aren’t standardized across various customer interaction channels (phone, chat, email, etc.), customers tend to have inconsistent experiences depending on the communication method they choose. This inconsistency can erode customer trust and satisfaction

How Can Tech-led Process Assessment Identify and Address Inefficiencies

Tech-led process assessments use data-driven tools like process and task mining to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and pain points within contact center workflows. These tools automatically collect task data, allowing banks to visualize the customer journey, pinpoint inefficiencies, and propose actionable improvements.

1. Process Mining for Workflow Optimization

Process mining analyzes the entire customer service workflow by reconstructing process flows using real-time data from call logs, CRM systems, and customer interactions. By providing a visual representation of how processes are executed, banks can:

1. 1. Identify bottlenecks: Long wait times or delays in customer handling can be pinpointed to specific process stages, such as document verification or escalations.
   2. Highlight inefficiencies: Banks can uncover inefficiencies, such as redundant steps or manual interventions that slow down case resolution.
   3. Optimize routing: Process mining helps optimize call routing by analyzing which pathways lead to successful first-time resolutions. This reduces call transfers and ensures customers reach the right agent quickly.

For example, let’s say a process mining tool reveals that call routing inefficiencies are causing delays. The bank can now redesign its routing logic to ensure inquiries are directed to the appropriate department, improving first-call resolution rates.

2. Task Mining for Agent Productivity

Task mining analyzes agent-level tasks, providing insight into how employees interact with various systems and perform day-to-day activities. By capturing user actions like keystrokes and screen activity, task mining can help:

1. 1. Identify repetitive tasks: Task mining can uncover time-consuming repetitive tasks that could be automated, such as manually searching for account information or filling out forms.
   2. Reduce manual intervention: By automating repetitive tasks, banks can free up agent time, enabling them to handle more complex customer inquiries and improve productivity.
   3. Empower agents: Task mining can highlight areas where agents need better training or access to more intuitive tools, leading to a more empowered workforce capable of delivering higher-quality customer service.

For example, a bank might discover that agents spend 30% of their time manually inputting customer data into multiple systems. Automating this task could save valuable time, allowing agents to focus on more critical customer needs.

3. AI-Driven Insights for Proactive Support

Tech-led process assessments can predict customer needs using AI-driven analytics, enabling more proactive support. With AI, banks can:

1. 1. Identify trends in customer queries: By analyzing past interactions, AI can predict the types of queries likely to come in and prepare agents accordingly.
   2. Offer self-service options: AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants can handle repetitive tasks, such as answering FAQs or guiding customers through simple procedures like password reset, freeing human agents for more complex interactions.
   3. Predict customer dissatisfaction: AI tools can analyze speech patterns and sentiment during customer interactions, allowing banks to identify customers at risk of leaving and take corrective actions to improve their experience.

Potential Benefits of Tech-Led Process Assessments

A thorough process assessment allows banks to clearly understand their current state of operations by mapping out end-to-end workflows and identifying inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and redundancies. It provides insights into how tasks are performed, where manual efforts are excessive, and which areas are prone to errors or delays.

This "as-is" analysis forms the foundation for targeted improvements, enabling banks to optimize processes and align them with business goals. These assessments help businesses pinpoint processes and workflows to:

1. 1. Reduce Call Handling Times: Tech-led assessments can reduce average call handling times by identifying bottlenecks and streamlining processes, improving customer satisfaction.
   2. Improve First-Call Resolution: Process mining can optimize call routing, ensuring customers are connected to the right department on their first attempt. Banks can achieve higher first-call resolution rates, minimizing the need for customers to make repeat calls, thereby improving overall satisfaction and reducing operational costs.
   3. Enhance Agent Productivity: Automating repetitive tasks through task mining gives agents more time to focus on complex inquiries, leading to faster case resolutions and a more empowered workforce. Agents can handle more calls and achieve higher satisfaction levels without burning out.
   4. Increase Customer Satisfaction: With improved efficiency, faster resolutions, and consistent customer service, the overall customer experience improves significantly. Customers appreciate faster, more personalized service, leading to increased loyalty. The first step in bridging that gap is a complete understanding of the current state of operations

However, manual process assessments are time-consuming and require significant effort, involving extensive documentation reviews, stakeholder interviews, and workflow mapping. These tasks demand substantial human resources, with teams sifting through large amounts of data to identify inefficiencies.

The manual approach also increases the risk of missing critical issues and is often slowed by fragmented information gathering from various sources. This can delay necessary improvements and tie up resources that could be used more effectively elsewhere. The high effort involved can lead to fatigue and errors, impacting the quality and accuracy of the assessment.

Cut Down Your Assessment Time with our Tech-led Assessment

With Coforge’s proprietary framework, ProcessGym, along with industry-leading tools Cognitio Analytics and SkanAI, you can get an accurate picture of your current processes with data-backed insights to redesign your processes for providing an enhanced customer experience.

A typical process assessment has the following workflow.

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Coforge Tech-led Assessment

Our domain experts & six-sigma practitioners will partner with you at every step of your journey to build a future state operating model that creates value for you while significantly enhancing customer experience.

Conclusion

Enhancing customer experience is no longer optional for banks; it is essential for survival in a highly competitive market. As customer expectations evolve, banks must embrace digital transformation, harness the power of AI, and focus on providing a seamless, omnichannel experience.

By adopting tools like process mining, task mining, and AI-driven analytics, banks can streamline processes, reduce call handling times, and empower agents to deliver exceptional customer service. In doing so, they not only improve the efficiency of their contact centers but also strengthen customer relationships, driving long-term success.