With a predicted 450 million banked customers across Africa by 2022 – and approximately 40% of those preferring to use digital channels¹ – the African financial sector is gearing up to enable efficient and effective customer service into the digital future.

Through the use of Intelligent Automation (IA) and virtual assistant technologies, banks are reducing the costly burden on their call centres, freeing up customer service agents to focus on higher complexity queries. But, finding the right IA solution can be the difference between success and failure in a digital-first customer experience model. 

You’ve got a digital self-service channel, but it’s underperforming. Now what?

When your customers can’t access the platform or aren’t happy with what it provides, you need an overhaul. Without one, customers will be forced down a manual path, resulting in high-volumes of low-complexity queries being filtered through call centres. As we know, call centres are expensive, and in an economy where cost-reduction is key to profitability, this simply isn’t good enough. 

In an economy where cost-reduction is key to profitability, ineffective digital channels simply aren’t good enough

Step 1: Solve the right problem

Understand your customers’ needs. This will help you pinpoint the goals for a digital-first customer experience. Through customer surveys and interviews you can create a prioritised view of customer needs. This, coupled with business needs, will direct your technology selection. 

If you’re operating across geographies and markets, make sure you have a clear view of cultural, business and regulatory distinctions. For example, a sentiment analysis tool needs an understanding of language and cultural nuance to be effective and accurate. This will also help you identify common requirements across markets. With a view of this in hand, you can pragmatically select – or create – a solution that meets your most critical needs.

Step 2: Understand your customer journeys

Take an insight-led approach. Use existing data from customer complaints, customer survey and interview feedback, and current query processing turnaround times to get a clear picture of the status quo. Define and map the current customer journey, and use this to work out what can – or should – be improved.

Use existing data to create a sense of the status quo and use that to inform your approach

 Once you’ve got a working minimum viable product (MVP) or prototype, get a group of customers to participate in rapid user testing. Test the user interface, the look and feel of the platform, user preferences and experiences, and get an “outside-in” view of how your customers engage with it. This is a key step to ensure no assumptions are being made around user experience. 

Identify any shortcomings in the existing technology landscape. This will help when outlining a conceptual architecture, data and integration requirements, access and security, and licensing and procurement needs required to deliver an effective IA solution. 

Until now, the margins banks enjoy have been largely protected from Africa’s worsening cost-to-income ratio, but that protection will not last forever. To be a leader, act now, create leaner and simpler processes to support a digital-first  customer experience.

References:

McKinsey & Company: Roaring to life: Growth and Innovation in African retail banking. (2018) M. Chironga, L. Cunha, H De Grandis & M. Kuyoro