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Ask IT leaders these days what their biggest challenges are for 2024 and it’s likely that improving customer experience will be a key objective. And even though this is nothing new – in fact, it has been going on over the past decade, accelerated by the pandemic and significant global macroeconomic developments, businesses across industries have intensified their efforts to deliver high-quality customer experience (CX).

And while making predictions is generally a mug’s game, it’s fairly certain you will see over the course of 2024 a shift in the industry for firms to expand their focus beyond the conventional CX parameters to enhance customers’ overall perception of their firm at every touchpoint, many of which are now digital. You are also going to see further integration of traditional collaboration, communications and contact centre technologies into services that can not only drive collaboration across your business functions, but also drive benefit within the operations of your company by being fully focused on your customers.

The IT industry is increasingly getting the bigger picture on this. Businesses are rapidly seeing that CX and employee experience (EX) can be crucial differentiators and key drivers of their performance. Industry leaders are working to the principle that successful brands will need to differentiate themselves on customer experience and not necessarily on the traditional pillars of product, price and availability. That is to say, how does a brand make you feel and how is it delivered in a fully omni-channel business environment.

These sentiments are also being recognised at board level. A study from NTT – the IT infrastructure and services company’s 2023 Global customer experience report – observed that CX remains a top C-suite priority, with 95% of organisations now having a named C-suite executive responsible for this business area while EX has risen in importance to become a top-three priority for CEOs.

NTT also found that CX has now been proven to foster long-term customer trust and loyalty while having a measurable effect on the bottom line, so it has become a priority for C-suite executives and therefore garnered investment in technologies that support the organisation’s CX strategy at every touchpoint, in both the contact centre and the broader business.

Some 92% of CEOs interviewed for the report saw CX improvements as potentially being able to directly impact their net profit, with EX up 91%. This has elevated CX to board and C-suite level, with 95% of organisations now having a specific C-suite executive responsible for CX, up from 75% in 2021. Yet NTT cautioned that there was clear room for improvement, as over 80% of organisations agree that CX and EX are currently a weak link for them, leading to a negative impact on their business.

Additionally, it showed that once organisations want to strengthen their CX, they consider enhancements that include developing an EX strategy that incorporates technology and goes beyond staff well-being, moving to cloud-based CX and EX platforms, and deploying AI and machine learning. The latter two are really where a lot of action has recently been and will be in future.

Avaya has named Walter Denk as its new worldwide channel leader with plans to enhance partner programs and channel support following the company's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.

Denk is a five-year Avaya vet previously serving as vice president of Avaya's Germany Small and Medium Business Group. He will be responsible for creating and executing Avaya's partner strategy, architecture and policy management of its Avaya Edge Partner Program.

Denk said he would lead Avaya's channel charge which is comprised of more than 7,000 solution providers worldwide.

[Related: 10 Innovative New Networking Products That Are Turning Heads]

"With the launch of the Avaya Edge Channel Program and a number of exciting innovations announced over the past few months, partners are well positioned for success with Avaya," said Denk, in a statement. "Our partners play a critical role in Avaya's future, and as the global head of channel sales, I'm committed to driving the programs and support that partners need to excel in serving their customers, delivering world-class customer satisfaction scores, and increasing revenue."

Before joining Avaya in 2012, Denk held positions in sales and marketing at Deutsche Telekom, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Longtime Avaya veteran Gary Levy was promoted to head of U.S. channel sales. Levy has been with the vendor for more than two decades in various account manager roles. In 2010, he was promoted to director of east channel sales.

Over his Avaya career, Levy established a number of programs that built tighter relationships between Avaya and its channel, according to a release.

On Jan. 19, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company confirmed it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a move its CEO Kevin Kennedy called "the best path forward." Partners said the filing was a solid first step to getting the company back on track.

British banking and insurance holding company NatWest Group serves 19 million customers across 12 banking and financial services brands via its network of call centres. To deliver the best possible service to customers while also protecting their data, NatWest relies on cloud-native biometric security solution Nuance Gatekeeper to monitor incoming calls and verify individuals’ identities.  

The Nuance solution streamlines the verification process. This allows contact centre agents to identify customers through natural conversation, removing the need for them to ask specific questions or request security codes or secret answers, and helping to verify customers quickly.  

NatWest Group is just one of many financial services organisations investing in Microsoft-powered technologies to empower customer service workers to work more efficiently and productively.  

“Contact centre agents who are properly trained on company policies and equipped with the right tools are able to deliver improved customer satisfaction and efficiency,” says Chris Caile, director of product marketing at Microsoft, and former director of solutions marketing and intelligent engagement at Nuance Communications, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2022.  

At the same time, customers have grown accustomed to personalised service in other industries and expect no less from their financial services providers.  

“As consumers, they are all similar,” explains Caile. “When issues arise with their bank, investment or insurance company, they call customer support and expect great service from the agents. Contact centre agents are the frontline to millions of customer interactions every day. Agents who lack the training and technology to instantly – and correctly – assist customers run the risk of hurting customer satisfaction and the business.”  

A study commissioned by Microsoft found that some UK customers are waiting for an average of eight minutes and 27 seconds to speak with a financial services representative when phoning a call centre. This is 25.35 times slower than the industry’s optimal standard for call centres, which requires agents to answer calls within 20 seconds, as reported by callcentrehelper.com. Caile suggests that financial services organisations should develop approaches to better engage and empower call centre agents for improved productivity.   

“Beyond traditional employee onboarding and training for contact centre agents, the leading financial institutions look closely at their technology strategy and ask themselves if they have siloed departments or data that prevents agents from serving customers,” says Caile. “If so, they need to work with a technology provider to find a solution that will successfully surface the right data to agents at the right time.  

“Other considerations include how to effectively gather and share information with context from different departments, encouraging agent collaboration, and ensuring that customer data is secure and has the right biometric authentication at the frontline to build confidence that the customers are who they say they are.”  

For example, public finance organisations are using Nuance Gatekeeper to authenticate callers. The Australian Tax Office has significantly enhanced agent productivity by using the Nuance solution to validate the identities of Australia’s eight million citizens whenever they call its contact centre. “The office’s previous authentication process required customers to provide personal details or have the correct documentation available,” says Caile. “This was time consuming for contact centre agents, amounting to a total of 75,000 agent hours annually. We’re helping to reduce every call by an average of 48 seconds, allowing agents to get on with assisting citizens.”  

Partnering for enhanced productivity  

To provide frontline financial services staff with the contextual data they need to serve customers, firms need to streamline their information retrieval processes. They must also implement advanced technology solutions that enable seamless access to real-time customer information.  

An open architecture enables banks to interact with their data better, according to Dmitri Sedov, global head of data intelligence at London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), who explained how LSEG and Microsoft aim to reshape the future of finance at global financial services event Sibos in September 2023. Sedov highlighted how the two firms will deliver intelligent analytics solutions, available in Microsoft 365, to help financial services organisations Improve the customer experience. In addition to developing artificial intelligence-driven self-service solutions to reduce incoming calls, banks will be able to unify their data by connecting with counterparts through Microsoft Teams and having access to data intelligence via Microsoft 365 Copilot.  

According to Microsoft, Copilot combs across an employee’s entire work data, including emails, meetings, chats, documents and more, along with the web, to provide a comprehensive view of their world. “Like an assistant, Copilot gets to know the employee, their job, and how they like to communicate," says Caile. “Copilot then saves time in areas such as summarising a meeting, searching for information and drafting emails. Contact centre agents should see improved efficiency with real-time coaching and prompts for the next best action, freeing them up to engage with customers.”  

One bank benefiting from Microsoft 365 Copilot is the United Overseas Bank (UOB), which is trialling the solution to increase the productivity of 300 of its employees. As part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program, UOB has begun to use the generative AI-powered tools to streamline processes for staff working across departments such as branches, customer service, technology and operations. The bank is already using Copilot capabilities to summarise documents and email threads in Microsoft Outlook and understand data in Excel.  

Alongside Nuance, LSEG and UOB, Microsoft has partnered with over 50 technology solution providers to empower workers in the financial services sector. Trade Ledger, for example, has developed a new AI-powered application, powered by Microsoft Azure, to provide financial services organisations with data quickly and effectively. Users will be able to ask simple natural language questions and the copilot will transform them into queries about the business and respond with the answers that they need.  

Leading by example  

Microsoft is using its own technologies to support its own customer service agents too.  

“Microsoft employees use the Microsoft 365 suite of applications including Outlook, Word and Excel to be more productive,” says Caile. “Additionally, Microsoft operates one of the world’s largest customer support teams with tens of thousands of support engineers. Its customer engagement is built on Dynamics 365 Customer Service.”  

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps employees to deliver faster customer care by drafting contextual and personalised answers to customer questions, and by providing an interactive chat experience over knowledge bases and case history. For Microsoft’s Customer Service and Support team, which assists more than one billion customers worldwide, the Copilot tools reduce the average handle time by 12 per cent to provide faster case resolution without peer assistance. This allows agents to spend more time on particularly difficult cases.  

Beyond AI-powered tools, continuous training enables financial services organisations to empower and engage their staff.  

“Ongoing training ensures employees stay in sync with changing customer and market conditions as well as company policy changes,” says Caile. “For contact centre agents, this is about ensuring their individual desktops surface the latest policy, product and offer update. AI-powered coaching also supports skill building by proactively offering insights into how to handle each situation, enabling the employee to both assist the customer and expand their knowledge.  

“For supervisors and executives, AI-powered technology delivers the latest dashboards and views into queue performance, agent effectiveness and call resolution. This allows them to understand where agents are struggling to meet customer expectations and to Improve processes.” 

Partner perspectives 

We asked a selection of Microsoft partners ow they are using Microsoft technology-powered tools to help financial services organisations upskill employees and boost productivity. 

“Avaya builds on Microsoft Azure to equip financial services organisations with AI-powered solutions that increase workforce productivity and upskill staff,” said Giselle Bou Ghanem, senior director and product marketing lead at Avaya. “By integrating machine learning directly into agent workflows, Avaya transforms customer service representatives into highly efficient ‘bionic agents.” 

“Crestron Desk Scheduling solutions make it easy for financial services organisations to effortlessly transition to hot desking by enabling remote workers to book a space via software on their laptop before they come in to the office,” said Toine C. Leerentveld, director of product management for cloud and controls at Crestron. “Meanwhile, office-based employees can reserve a space by using the compact touch screen or quickly scanning a QR code, with highly visible LED status indicators displaying which desks are available to save them valuable time.” 

“ITSCREDIT provides an omnichannel platform that prioritises the digitisation of credit processes, offering flexibility, rapid time-to-market and complete control of the entire credit lifecycle,” said Paulo Pinto, chief technology officer at ITSCREDIT. “Our entire development is based on Microsoft technology, and they believe that leveraging modernised services such as the cloud, Azure AI and machine learning, security, and compliance tools, are crucial for financial institutions.” 

“Modern businesses are refocusing their attention to meet employee needs by integrating automation technology,” said Andy Birkey, marketing communications specialist at Metafile Information Systems. “Financial services organisations are providing a comprehensive, automated accounts payable solution that works seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365, such as MetaViewer, to empower their workforce, leading to significant gains in productivity.” 

Read more from these partners and others in the Winter 2023 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription. 

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