Description
Join us and Atom bank on a journey through their CX priorities, transformation and future plans featuring Ben Evans, Customer Support Manager and Emily Callander, Configuration Specialist.
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Engage Customer Engagement Examples of Excellence podcast. In this episode, our host, Sarah Woolley, meets Atom bank's Emily Callender and Ben Evans. Ben is the Customer Support Manager at Atom bank and has been leading the customer support team for the last five years, with over 20 years experience in the contact centre industry. Emily is a Configuration Specialist at Atom bank and has been with the organisation for almost a year now. working in operational effectiveness, supporting with configuration changes on various systems, and implementing, testing, and launching enhancements. Our host, Sarah, is the Customer Success Manager at Kerv, who has been working with Atom bank for nearly two years to help them optimise their use of the Genesys platform.
Hi, Ben and Emily. Lovely to have you here today to chat about your digital transformation project. Really excited to learn a bit more about what you've been doing over the past couple of years. So, to kick us off could you just let us know a little bit more about Atom bank sort of who are you and what do you do?
Yeah absolutely so Atom bank: we are the the first UK app only bank. So we were the first one with the license back in sort of 2015. The bank was formed in 2014, we got our banking license and then we launched for customers in April 2016. We're based in the northeast of England so our HQ is in Durham and we employ around 550 ish. people so a very small fish in a very large pond um so our aim is to change banking for good for better for everybody um and we offer mortgages uh business lending and savings, um sorry award-winning business lending, don't miss that out oh no absolutely not absolutely not um. So the business has changed I've been here sort of nine years coming up and the business has changed dramatically over that time um both from a technological perspective and a people perspective. So obviously we we started the bank um in 2014-15 and we had a lot of various partners who we dealt with and over the years we've sort of streamlined that um one of those which been bringing Kerv on to manage Genesys uh in 2022. uh so we've been a Genesys customer for all of our time um in 2022 we moved over to that relationship with yourselves at Kerv. Um we are completely hybrid working. So we have people working from the office and at home. And we were the first UK company in 2021 to move to a full four-day working week.
I'm very jealous of that.
It is quite handy having that extra day off. But I think being a challenger bank, we were very open to change. We strive to have the best technology. We strive to do what we can for our people. So we don't sort of rest on our laurels. We're continuously looking for the next best thing to take our service, both from an app perspective, from our customer service perspective, to the next level. And that was the decision on bringing Kerv on, because we feel like you are going to help us do that.
Wonderful. Well, I know that customer experience is one of the main focuses, one of the main pillars of your business, and making sure that that's the best it can be. So what was the sort of top priority for those goals that you had when you started this journey?
For us, we need to be easy to do business with from a customer perspective. So for us within customer support, we are a complete omni-channel. So we deal with customers through app chat, through phone, email, and through our social medias. And we don't segregate the team. So we wanted to make sure that we have a small knit community that is in the team that customers can really speak to frequently if they feel the need that they can come back to. And however, they want to contact us they've got a channel of choice there so the whole premise of Atom is that we're delivering better value for customers and part of that operating model is that we have a small contact centre. We don't necessarily want to be a two/three hundred seat contact centre, we want to give that personal touch and so the priority when we think about customer experience is just that our customers getting value for money from us as a business, from us as a team are we quick and easy to do business with and can they get through however they want to through a channel of choice. So obviously for us, understanding our customers is paramount. So we do a lot of different things within the voice of customer space, one of them being demand capture. So every interaction that we have through customer support is captured the reason for contact. And that does a number of different things. So we take that data and we pretty much advise the rest of the company around what customers'pain points are. So then we go and change that, whether that be through a process, through the app journey, or through customer service. So the main priority for us is that simplicity and that first point of contact resolution because we want customers to come through when they've got an issue and have that resolved right there at first point. I think what makes us a little bit different from other contact centres is that part of my job is to to reduce the amount of contact we have coming through. So we want to optimise our procedures. We want to optimise the app so customers can really self-serve. So it almost seems like we're doing ourselves out of a job, really, because we want to lower that. But there will always be a need for customers to speak to a human, and that's where we're really comfortable with. So the goal was to make sure that we're easy to do business with, that we've got the relevant systems in place for our...
team to be able to service customers and to deliver world-class customer service. Wonderful yeah and i think that's something that I saw as well when I came up and visited your contact centre in in durham and those guys that are on site, is there's a wonderful atmosphere amongst the team as well people helping each other supporting each other um and just making sure that everyone can give the best um service to your customers and it's definitely a great atmosphere up there too. Yeah that's right as well like our agents are so passionate about helping customers and that's half the battle sometimes
Yeah, it's so important when you've got such a small team that they collaborate on a daily basis. And I think the length and breadth of knowledge that the team need to have is probably the largest within the business. So it's really important that we're sharing best practice, that we're giving feedback all the time. And the team are really on board with that. And I think where we see someone struggling with something, somebody will go over and give them a hand. And obviously we're using Teams all the time, et cetera. So I think since the... COVID days we've we've been a lot more collaborative because there's that need to help people at home as well as in the office.
Absolutely yeah so I guess diving a little bit more we've just started touching a bit on on the software and things like that so what kind of business outcomes would you say have improved the most since you started the journey with us here at Kerv and the Genesys platform too?
Yeah so I would say firstly just having you Sarah and Graham just there for our support um we can kind of pick up the phone, we can pop you an email and you always there to kind of give us a helping hand. I was down in London the other day for a meeting and Graham had dropped a message saying do you want to grab a coffee and we'll just have a catch up and just having that relationship really helps on the transformation journey. So yeah we've done a couple of things already we started with our customer surveys so we use CX index and we had a load of support from Kerv on that journey and project. And now we're getting kind of live view of our customers thoughts and opinions and that's all being facilitated through Kerv which has been amazing. We're getting we're getting like real-time reporting now so we can get that the thoughts and the voice of the customer straight away. We've also kind of used little parts of Genesys such as canned responses so we're helping to reduce our average handle time. And again, we had a couple of things that we had questions on and just reaching out to Kerv and logging it as a ticket and getting that help straight away. I know that Kerv really want to help and they're always there at the end of the email just to kind of get back to us and make sure that we're getting that support.
I think the customer service specifically, it was quite a long piece of work that we collaborated on. But I think as well as the customer having a portal to share their feelings and thoughts about the service or Atom in general, it's a real opportunity for the team to understand what customers are saying about them. It's been a massive hit since we launched that. And I speak to the team on a monthly basis and it's sort of, what do you think of the customer service and they all love it. It's all, they're all documenting the great feedback that they get from customers and using that as part of their sort of end of year appraisals, et cetera. But it also works on the other side of the coin where we understand what customers are saying about the service specifically, so we can go away and address maybe some of the parts that we need to develop or that we need to change. That has been a really big, huge success since we took that on earlier on in the year.
Fantastic. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that that's going really well. Customer insights can be a bit scary sometimes when you ask for that feedback and not knowing what's going to come back.
but obviously yeah you guys have fantastic service so i'm glad to hear that's going well. It is and i think we need to trust ourselves that we do deliver great service uh and sometimes I think everybody just sees a lot of the time as, oh, well, they've said something really nice. I was just doing my job. But that's where we need to get them to understand that they're fantastic at their job. And that's just another layer to say, to back that up. So it's really an eye opener for them that they come in and they work their shift and the impacts that they can have on each individual customer, I think that's sort of overlooked at times that you actually do have a huge impact on that customer's day. On that customer scenario depending on how you treat them. And I always like to say we don't hire robots. We hire people based on their personality. So we've got great people who can have great conversations with customers. It's almost like you're talking to your next door neighbour or a friend. And and really that's where the surveys sort of confirm that for them, that what they're doing is the right thing, the way they're talking to customers, the questions they're asking.
the resolutions are finding for customers are the right ones for them um so it's been it's been great i'm a massive fan. Me too, and it also helps to just plan ahead like we're getting that survey and and those responses now so we can see what we want to focus on next and the vision for the next six like 12 months and be able to plan our enhancements around what feedback we're getting through so that's been a massive help too
Wonderful. And you've led me really nicely into my next question as well, which is what is next? What are your key priorities that you're looking at over the next sort of six or so months?
It's been really difficult because there's so much that we want to do. We get so excited when we can do things.
We get carried away don't we.
We do. I think for me, one of the priorities is managing vulnerable customer experience. Obviously, it's got a lot of focus on since consumer duty came in sort of last year. But as a digital bank we don't see our customers day to day so it's not like you go to a branch and you can tell how somebody's feeling or whether they've got sort of things that they want to discuss. Um so for us it's making sure that having those relevant conversations with customers and identifying where where customers need our help. So from a contact centre perspective it's really making sure that our our guys are attuned into to the customer um doing the right thing we're listening we're learning from customers as well. So it's really important that the team are at a run point every day that they're coming to work and they're engaged and they're concentrating on those conversations with the customer. Um and we've got a few things in the pipeline how we want to we want to grow our team to be more susceptible to commentary to background noise all that sort of stuff and to understand how customers emotions can can drive the conversation. Um so that's one of our key priorities over the next six months. We always want to make banking easier we want to make it faster we want to make better value and that's where the demand capture comes in. Obviously anything a customer can do for themselves um saves the customer time uh it also saves us um in terms of in terms of cost having to build something new from from a back-end perspective um so it's really making sure we're joining all the dots up so customers can do things for themselves and we're exclusively there for when they need a hand. And again, going back to what I was saying about the surveys and our need to drive contact down, is that customers will always get stuck at some point. Technology will always fail at some point, as much as we don't want it to, but we're going to be there to help the customer and navigate through whatever issues they've got. And there'll always be a need for that interpersonal connection with customers. So it's really just refining moving forward from a customer perspective. I think we've got a lot of features that we want to implement through Genesys that will help us save time, will help the customer experience as well. And we want to grow the business, but we don't want to grow the size of the contact centre. So it's really important we get that right. And I think the features that we get through Genesys, the ones that we've implemented already and the ones that we're exploring will help us hit that sort of cost base where we're not spending, we're not throwing a load of money at it and we're not bringing in loads of new partners. We wanted a platform that we could configure, that we have that control over, and that will give us some features and benefits that will not only impact positively on customers, but the team as well. So I think it's been the last sort of... two and a bit years or coming up two years um i think we've we've got into our groove with that and we're making those changes all the time and Emily's been fantastic in coming on board as a configuration specialist and um because i'm not the most technical person so so I know what I want and Emily tells us how we can do it and then we go away and collaborate and obviously speak to yourself about it. So it's a real good team effort and I think we've got to keep that momentum over the next six months so we want to be doing the right thing for the customer through our partners such as Genesys and Kerv to get the most out of the product that we've got.
Absolutely yeah and that's what we are our main focus at Kerv really is we're always here to support. and we can do projects and we can do config changes and things but we also want to empower you to make those changes yourself so it's your platform you have ownership of it and we're just here to help. So it's yeah since you've come on board Emily it's definitely been really exciting as well asking lots of interesting questions about all sorts of bits of the platform and yeah
Picking something wonderful yeah it's nice and refreshing to just have that relationship so we can just delve a little bit deeper into things and think oh is that going to work for us, is it not, and you're always there to advise so it's yeah.
But I think it also confirms that it was the right decision to move from one Genesys platform to another, when previous iterations we've had to log tickets and have changes done and not had that control. So if we want to go away and build something within Genesys or try something out, we can in a really safe space. We can work out whether it works for us and works for everybody else. But we can do that ourselves. And I think that was the real draw to this. That with your support we could go in and almost play yeah play in that space and um which is a very dangerous word when you're in financial services, but it it gives us the confidence that what we want to do we can do ourselves. It works how we want to work it, we can test it and and really make sure that that's that's correct and then we can we can roll it out. And previously, we may have to wait six months to do one element of that where we can make those changes quite rapidly.
Wonderful. So you've touched on it a little bit, you know, starting to talk about that consumer duty and things like that. So in the sort of broader banking industry and CX, how do you think AI is going to change the space? How is it transforming the industry?
Yeah, it's so interesting that it just gets... AI is mentioned in nearly every other conversation at the minute and so i think that shows that it's not going anywhere and it's definitely here to stay so i think businesses that are using it safely in like controlled environments but also trust that the impact it's going to have is going to be positive. They're going to be the ones that are kind of ahead of ahead of the curve and seeing that kind of return on investment what in time that they're putting in. So yeah I find it intriguing anyways, I'm a little geek anyways and I want to know all about it but yeah I think it's hard not to get ahead of yourself with it but kind of knowing that it's there for a support is going to be transformational for the business. I read something the other day and it was saying that a third of people think that it's going to have a positive impact on customer service and I think it's interesting that it's only a third, what are the other two-thirds thinking? But I think it highlights the importance of like fully considering the use cases that we do apply AI to and making sure that we are considering not just tech teams but also operational teams and what impacts it could be having on departments and our customers. It's like I think that's the first point of contact you need to be thinking about when you're looking at AI.
Yeah, I think it's quite interesting, the Genesys approach as well to AI is there's a lot of focus in the features that they're introducing that are actually to do with supporting agents in terms of surfacing knowledge, helping them summarise calls rather than we're not feeding AI generated responses to customers because it's not really there right now. It's a bit risky. So it'll help source articles that you've written for your customers and things like that. But I think Genesys is looking at it in quite a sort of measured, careful way. It's not just gone. oh ai and shelved it everywhere it's really making sure that what they introduce is is useful and productive for both customers and agents which i think is a good way to go. And i think jumping on some webinars and stuff as well um that Genesys facilitate like there's always a webinar on AI or Kerv also like do little podcasts and webinars and things like that. It's just it's nice to have that contact and know like what what people are discovering with with use cases
Yeah, and I think everyone's in the same boat in terms of the security aspect of AI. So I think Genesys approach is the right one. Like you say, we're not feeding information outside to customers, we can use it for our internal procedures. And I think the feature of digital summarisation is a fantastic one. And I think that's definitely within our roadmap over the next couple of months to look at. It's more using it as support rather than your front door. And I think that's really important. And I think as time goes on and the security is more robust around it, that people understand it more, actually, there will be a lot we can get out of it. From an agent perspective, like you see using the agent assist, etc. will help everybody move forward. I was surprised at the one in three because I think it will do a lot of good. It's how you use it. And I think everyone's sort of at the point of going, right, what's the safest way to implement this? Which is the right thing to do.
So obviously you're quite a sort of digital contact centre really, digital bank, digital contact centre makes sense, so how important do you think that is to have that sort of contact centre model in the modern world?
I think it's really important, I think we can't remove it from from other channels. I think for us it's really important that a customer has a channel that they're really comfortable with and that they want to use first and foremost. I think when we look at things like chatbots, which we don't currently use it might be something that we do in the future, but it's for those really basic tasks I think our issue is is that we want to drive that we want the customer to do more so that they're coming through to us when they're having issues uh and i don't know whether chatbots will be able to navigate that as well as a as a person could. So I think having been in a digital world being a digital bank we do look at digital first um and for much larger companies obviously you can you can do a lot more. We're 550 people and we've got a contact centre of sort of 40 people so for us it's it won't reduce the volume as much because of the issues that we deal with um but i think as well as that from a digital perspective as well it really helps people with accessibility needs um that they may have had to use something else like an add-on when they want to talk to a company um whereas AI and in that digital side of things will help those customers that that struggle with with technology day to day. So it's definitely got its place. I think as we've discussed in the last question that the usage of that will grow um it's used it sensibly but it's definitely got a it's definitely got its place in in modern contact centres and I know a lot of people do use it in many different ways. Like I say as it grows and the capability grows and the security grows I think more people start coming into the fold so for me having having a telephone line is really important because people do like to talk to people. But we find that our chat channel has actually exceeded voice channel over the last sort of two or three years. When we first started this, it was much lower and year on year, the volume that we get through chat has grown. But I think the fact that there's somebody, there's a person on the end of that chat really, really has an appeal for customers. The amount of times we get the first message a customer comes through is 'are you a robot'? I said no no we're not a robot I'm a real human person and and that gives that gives customers the confidence that they're being listened to that the other person on the end of that chat um understands and can empathise and sympathise where needed. But that just shows that the uptake in technology over the years is grown and grown, so it's how do we how do we embrace that? How do we harness that moving forward? And do we need to change what we do in that digital space? So it's a it's from from a customer perspective digital will always be there. For us it's a channel of choice for the customer um and one that customers are adopting at pace so it's it's how do we how do we enhance that? How do we make it better for customers? How do we show them that we're a real person right when they come on? And if we need to, do we consider bots at any time?
So in terms of the sort of transformation that you're going through and that other sort of companies in the financial industry might be going through, what do you think the biggest shift is going to be in the next couple of years, sticking with that kind of technology digital space?
Yeah, I think it's just the tip of the iceberg at the minute and there's always new emerging technologies. Every other day I think there's a new company launching with some use of AI. Just kind of the industry embracing it is going to be where I can see it going. We can't be shying away from it because, like I say, it's here to stay. But I think there's definitely a generational shift with how AI is going to be used. And maybe I might be making assumptions here, but sometimes the younger generation might be more open to that. That use of AI when they need to get in touch with a company. So yeah, I think those kind of shifts are going to be what we kind of see and the kind of just companies embracing its use.
Yeah, I think you're spot on with that generational shift. I think there's lots of sort of memes and stuff at the moment, aren't there, about how millennials hate calling anyone and how they love to use a chat or yeah, an FAQ page or self-serve and not have to pick up the phone. Yeah I think over time that's definitely where a lot of the shift will come from I think you're quite right there. So for Atom bank specifically obviously we've touched a little bit about AI and and what you're sort of thinking of doing in that space with stuff like summarisation and having a look at that, um is there any sort of where else in your CX operation that you've sort of started thinking about AI and what you might do with it in future? So we've sort of we've dipped our toe a little bit in terms of using AI to summarise the feedback that we get from customers through our customer surveys. So we do have AI rules within Atom, and we've got a team down there who support us with that. And we've found that it's been really handy because obviously we get thousands of bits of customer feedback every day from the surveys, and being able to hand that over to the AI team and then push it through to come out with sort of emerging trends. What are the three things that we were really great at and customers love and are giving us great feedback on? And what are the three most mentioned developmental areas um and that's something that we hadn't considered actually when we when we started the customer surveys is what are we going to do with all this data? How do we process all this data? So it was almost it was almost uh like a coming together of minds where we haven't talked within the business around AI. And Emily sort of said, well, we could maybe leverage some of this. So we had a conversation with the team. And obviously what would take us hours and hours to troll through bits of feedback and data is done in 20 seconds. So I think for us, again, that's from a business perspective it's building the confidence, we can give it a little bit of information, see what it gives us back. How is it presented? What are the words that are used? All that sort of stuff. So we've started off really, really sort of cautiously to give us confidence that it can do the right thing for us. But for me, I think there's opportunities, like I've said, around the agent assist, etc., that we will look at utilised in the future. Because like Emily said, I don't think there's any, I don't think we're going to move backwards. This is all going to push forwards. So getting that verbatim feedback from customers, being able to share that with the business. I think tells the business something around AI and how we can utilise it and leverage it for good and to help drive change within the business. So I think that's the first the first thing we've done certainly from a customer perspective with AI. But I think from a business perspective, it's it's one of the first reportable things that we're doing within within Atom. So it's it's exciting to see that I can do stuff so quickly, that I can analyse that data so quickly and I think that's where the change will come from most businesses is being able to get data quickly, to get themes quickly, to be able to do that analysis, that would usually take somebody a long time to do. Yeah, and that's the Genesys with it, sort of speech and text analytics and things like that, you know, looking for sentiment and what customers are talking about fits in quite nicely with that. And it also, I think, as a starting place for your business on where you've started trialling this technology, it fits in with that, you know, key customer experience pillar that we were talking about. So you've started by how can we analyse what our customers are talking about and what they need and that fits beautifully really I think with your overall message yeah Yeah I think it goes goes back to as well that we're not looking to replace humans we we're using it as an enhancement as something to use along the side of our agent. It's it's not the case of that we're gonna get AI bots and just not have a contact centre anymore that's just not not where we see ourselves, it's more using it.
as an addition and getting things getting trends out of it is going to be like transformational for us because we can track we can track what our trends are, we're not just looking at it in at a point in time we can see historic what what's what customers need and kind of plan plan for the future really. Fantastic okay sort of round us off with the biggie get your bets in. What trends do you think are going to emerge over the next 12 months in the kind of contact centre CX space? I can get my crystal ball out.
I know. I think, obviously, we've spoken about it a lot today. It's going to be businesses working out how they can leverage AI to enhance customer service, to be able to analyse trends and other data within their businesses to then make decisions. And I don't think we can play down the importance that AI will bring over the next 12 months. I think we've seen where it's been in the last 12 months from looking at different products and services where you sort of a little bit, we need to see that mature a little bit. And within that 12 months, we're seeing real growth in those technology spaces and how it's used. So I think it's going to be a lot of decision-making this year for contact centres and customer experience managers of how can we leverage this to do more. Whether that's lowering a cost from a FTE perspective by implementing bots to assessing data on how we can drive business change. I think that's where the big debate is going to be. The conversation about AI is going to run on and I think it's going to grow. For us, does it fit with our model of being faster, smarter, simpler? Does that help us achieve one of those three things? For me, it's that digital summarisation. I don't want our team to spend less time with our customers, but little things like digital summarisation will help that wrap-up time. So it's using it not to take away that customer contact, but to help where it can at the start and end. And I think everybody will try and use AI to, very much I'm saying everybody, I would like to think that people start using it as we have to understand, to help understand customers more, because that should always be at the heart of everything you do within a within the cx space. And anyway that AI can assist that will be will be a positive one. Yeah I think having Kerv as well share other
customers journeys and share learning, share kind of what how people are using it is really helpful and that's going to help us to plan for the next 12 months too. We can get ideas, we can share ideas, share best practice. So yeah I think it's really exciting and I'm I'm just desperate to get get going with it yeah. It's a it's a confidence thing isn't it? I think being able to have those conversations with other customers and with yourself Sarah. You sort of go yeah well they're doing it, they've been successful with it, we we can dip our toe, we can have a little go at it. But i think that conversation is really important uh
and I think the things like the webinars from yourselves and Genesys, help bring communities together. That way you can do whatever they say, you can share best practice, you can understand the pain points that customers have gone through, maybe get around some of those issues that other people have had. And I think that's how everyone will grow by collaborating across businesses, across industries, to understand how they can leverage this new technology.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I had a really good chat there about quite a few different points, your journey in particular and thoughts on the wider industry. So wonderful. Thank you so much.
No problem. Thanks for having us.
0sec
44sec
3min
7min
9min
11min
16min
17min
21min
24min
26min
29min
30min
Description
Join us and Atom bank on a journey through their CX priorities, transformation and future plans featuring Ben Evans, Customer Support Manager and Emily Callander, Configuration Specialist.
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Engage Customer Engagement Examples of Excellence podcast. In this episode, our host, Sarah Woolley, meets Atom bank's Emily Callender and Ben Evans. Ben is the Customer Support Manager at Atom bank and has been leading the customer support team for the last five years, with over 20 years experience in the contact centre industry. Emily is a Configuration Specialist at Atom bank and has been with the organisation for almost a year now. working in operational effectiveness, supporting with configuration changes on various systems, and implementing, testing, and launching enhancements. Our host, Sarah, is the Customer Success Manager at Kerv, who has been working with Atom bank for nearly two years to help them optimise their use of the Genesys platform.
Hi, Ben and Emily. Lovely to have you here today to chat about your digital transformation project. Really excited to learn a bit more about what you've been doing over the past couple of years. So, to kick us off could you just let us know a little bit more about Atom bank sort of who are you and what do you do?
Yeah absolutely so Atom bank: we are the the first UK app only bank. So we were the first one with the license back in sort of 2015. The bank was formed in 2014, we got our banking license and then we launched for customers in April 2016. We're based in the northeast of England so our HQ is in Durham and we employ around 550 ish. people so a very small fish in a very large pond um so our aim is to change banking for good for better for everybody um and we offer mortgages uh business lending and savings, um sorry award-winning business lending, don't miss that out oh no absolutely not absolutely not um. So the business has changed I've been here sort of nine years coming up and the business has changed dramatically over that time um both from a technological perspective and a people perspective. So obviously we we started the bank um in 2014-15 and we had a lot of various partners who we dealt with and over the years we've sort of streamlined that um one of those which been bringing Kerv on to manage Genesys uh in 2022. uh so we've been a Genesys customer for all of our time um in 2022 we moved over to that relationship with yourselves at Kerv. Um we are completely hybrid working. So we have people working from the office and at home. And we were the first UK company in 2021 to move to a full four-day working week.
I'm very jealous of that.
It is quite handy having that extra day off. But I think being a challenger bank, we were very open to change. We strive to have the best technology. We strive to do what we can for our people. So we don't sort of rest on our laurels. We're continuously looking for the next best thing to take our service, both from an app perspective, from our customer service perspective, to the next level. And that was the decision on bringing Kerv on, because we feel like you are going to help us do that.
Wonderful. Well, I know that customer experience is one of the main focuses, one of the main pillars of your business, and making sure that that's the best it can be. So what was the sort of top priority for those goals that you had when you started this journey?
For us, we need to be easy to do business with from a customer perspective. So for us within customer support, we are a complete omni-channel. So we deal with customers through app chat, through phone, email, and through our social medias. And we don't segregate the team. So we wanted to make sure that we have a small knit community that is in the team that customers can really speak to frequently if they feel the need that they can come back to. And however, they want to contact us they've got a channel of choice there so the whole premise of Atom is that we're delivering better value for customers and part of that operating model is that we have a small contact centre. We don't necessarily want to be a two/three hundred seat contact centre, we want to give that personal touch and so the priority when we think about customer experience is just that our customers getting value for money from us as a business, from us as a team are we quick and easy to do business with and can they get through however they want to through a channel of choice. So obviously for us, understanding our customers is paramount. So we do a lot of different things within the voice of customer space, one of them being demand capture. So every interaction that we have through customer support is captured the reason for contact. And that does a number of different things. So we take that data and we pretty much advise the rest of the company around what customers'pain points are. So then we go and change that, whether that be through a process, through the app journey, or through customer service. So the main priority for us is that simplicity and that first point of contact resolution because we want customers to come through when they've got an issue and have that resolved right there at first point. I think what makes us a little bit different from other contact centres is that part of my job is to to reduce the amount of contact we have coming through. So we want to optimise our procedures. We want to optimise the app so customers can really self-serve. So it almost seems like we're doing ourselves out of a job, really, because we want to lower that. But there will always be a need for customers to speak to a human, and that's where we're really comfortable with. So the goal was to make sure that we're easy to do business with, that we've got the relevant systems in place for our...
team to be able to service customers and to deliver world-class customer service. Wonderful yeah and i think that's something that I saw as well when I came up and visited your contact centre in in durham and those guys that are on site, is there's a wonderful atmosphere amongst the team as well people helping each other supporting each other um and just making sure that everyone can give the best um service to your customers and it's definitely a great atmosphere up there too. Yeah that's right as well like our agents are so passionate about helping customers and that's half the battle sometimes
Yeah, it's so important when you've got such a small team that they collaborate on a daily basis. And I think the length and breadth of knowledge that the team need to have is probably the largest within the business. So it's really important that we're sharing best practice, that we're giving feedback all the time. And the team are really on board with that. And I think where we see someone struggling with something, somebody will go over and give them a hand. And obviously we're using Teams all the time, et cetera. So I think since the... COVID days we've we've been a lot more collaborative because there's that need to help people at home as well as in the office.
Absolutely yeah so I guess diving a little bit more we've just started touching a bit on on the software and things like that so what kind of business outcomes would you say have improved the most since you started the journey with us here at Kerv and the Genesys platform too?
Yeah so I would say firstly just having you Sarah and Graham just there for our support um we can kind of pick up the phone, we can pop you an email and you always there to kind of give us a helping hand. I was down in London the other day for a meeting and Graham had dropped a message saying do you want to grab a coffee and we'll just have a catch up and just having that relationship really helps on the transformation journey. So yeah we've done a couple of things already we started with our customer surveys so we use CX index and we had a load of support from Kerv on that journey and project. And now we're getting kind of live view of our customers thoughts and opinions and that's all being facilitated through Kerv which has been amazing. We're getting we're getting like real-time reporting now so we can get that the thoughts and the voice of the customer straight away. We've also kind of used little parts of Genesys such as canned responses so we're helping to reduce our average handle time. And again, we had a couple of things that we had questions on and just reaching out to Kerv and logging it as a ticket and getting that help straight away. I know that Kerv really want to help and they're always there at the end of the email just to kind of get back to us and make sure that we're getting that support.
I think the customer service specifically, it was quite a long piece of work that we collaborated on. But I think as well as the customer having a portal to share their feelings and thoughts about the service or Atom in general, it's a real opportunity for the team to understand what customers are saying about them. It's been a massive hit since we launched that. And I speak to the team on a monthly basis and it's sort of, what do you think of the customer service and they all love it. It's all, they're all documenting the great feedback that they get from customers and using that as part of their sort of end of year appraisals, et cetera. But it also works on the other side of the coin where we understand what customers are saying about the service specifically, so we can go away and address maybe some of the parts that we need to develop or that we need to change. That has been a really big, huge success since we took that on earlier on in the year.
Fantastic. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that that's going really well. Customer insights can be a bit scary sometimes when you ask for that feedback and not knowing what's going to come back.
but obviously yeah you guys have fantastic service so i'm glad to hear that's going well. It is and i think we need to trust ourselves that we do deliver great service uh and sometimes I think everybody just sees a lot of the time as, oh, well, they've said something really nice. I was just doing my job. But that's where we need to get them to understand that they're fantastic at their job. And that's just another layer to say, to back that up. So it's really an eye opener for them that they come in and they work their shift and the impacts that they can have on each individual customer, I think that's sort of overlooked at times that you actually do have a huge impact on that customer's day. On that customer scenario depending on how you treat them. And I always like to say we don't hire robots. We hire people based on their personality. So we've got great people who can have great conversations with customers. It's almost like you're talking to your next door neighbour or a friend. And and really that's where the surveys sort of confirm that for them, that what they're doing is the right thing, the way they're talking to customers, the questions they're asking.
the resolutions are finding for customers are the right ones for them um so it's been it's been great i'm a massive fan. Me too, and it also helps to just plan ahead like we're getting that survey and and those responses now so we can see what we want to focus on next and the vision for the next six like 12 months and be able to plan our enhancements around what feedback we're getting through so that's been a massive help too
Wonderful. And you've led me really nicely into my next question as well, which is what is next? What are your key priorities that you're looking at over the next sort of six or so months?
It's been really difficult because there's so much that we want to do. We get so excited when we can do things.
We get carried away don't we.
We do. I think for me, one of the priorities is managing vulnerable customer experience. Obviously, it's got a lot of focus on since consumer duty came in sort of last year. But as a digital bank we don't see our customers day to day so it's not like you go to a branch and you can tell how somebody's feeling or whether they've got sort of things that they want to discuss. Um so for us it's making sure that having those relevant conversations with customers and identifying where where customers need our help. So from a contact centre perspective it's really making sure that our our guys are attuned into to the customer um doing the right thing we're listening we're learning from customers as well. So it's really important that the team are at a run point every day that they're coming to work and they're engaged and they're concentrating on those conversations with the customer. Um and we've got a few things in the pipeline how we want to we want to grow our team to be more susceptible to commentary to background noise all that sort of stuff and to understand how customers emotions can can drive the conversation. Um so that's one of our key priorities over the next six months. We always want to make banking easier we want to make it faster we want to make better value and that's where the demand capture comes in. Obviously anything a customer can do for themselves um saves the customer time uh it also saves us um in terms of in terms of cost having to build something new from from a back-end perspective um so it's really making sure we're joining all the dots up so customers can do things for themselves and we're exclusively there for when they need a hand. And again, going back to what I was saying about the surveys and our need to drive contact down, is that customers will always get stuck at some point. Technology will always fail at some point, as much as we don't want it to, but we're going to be there to help the customer and navigate through whatever issues they've got. And there'll always be a need for that interpersonal connection with customers. So it's really just refining moving forward from a customer perspective. I think we've got a lot of features that we want to implement through Genesys that will help us save time, will help the customer experience as well. And we want to grow the business, but we don't want to grow the size of the contact centre. So it's really important we get that right. And I think the features that we get through Genesys, the ones that we've implemented already and the ones that we're exploring will help us hit that sort of cost base where we're not spending, we're not throwing a load of money at it and we're not bringing in loads of new partners. We wanted a platform that we could configure, that we have that control over, and that will give us some features and benefits that will not only impact positively on customers, but the team as well. So I think it's been the last sort of... two and a bit years or coming up two years um i think we've we've got into our groove with that and we're making those changes all the time and Emily's been fantastic in coming on board as a configuration specialist and um because i'm not the most technical person so so I know what I want and Emily tells us how we can do it and then we go away and collaborate and obviously speak to yourself about it. So it's a real good team effort and I think we've got to keep that momentum over the next six months so we want to be doing the right thing for the customer through our partners such as Genesys and Kerv to get the most out of the product that we've got.
Absolutely yeah and that's what we are our main focus at Kerv really is we're always here to support. and we can do projects and we can do config changes and things but we also want to empower you to make those changes yourself so it's your platform you have ownership of it and we're just here to help. So it's yeah since you've come on board Emily it's definitely been really exciting as well asking lots of interesting questions about all sorts of bits of the platform and yeah
Picking something wonderful yeah it's nice and refreshing to just have that relationship so we can just delve a little bit deeper into things and think oh is that going to work for us, is it not, and you're always there to advise so it's yeah.
But I think it also confirms that it was the right decision to move from one Genesys platform to another, when previous iterations we've had to log tickets and have changes done and not had that control. So if we want to go away and build something within Genesys or try something out, we can in a really safe space. We can work out whether it works for us and works for everybody else. But we can do that ourselves. And I think that was the real draw to this. That with your support we could go in and almost play yeah play in that space and um which is a very dangerous word when you're in financial services, but it it gives us the confidence that what we want to do we can do ourselves. It works how we want to work it, we can test it and and really make sure that that's that's correct and then we can we can roll it out. And previously, we may have to wait six months to do one element of that where we can make those changes quite rapidly.
Wonderful. So you've touched on it a little bit, you know, starting to talk about that consumer duty and things like that. So in the sort of broader banking industry and CX, how do you think AI is going to change the space? How is it transforming the industry?
Yeah, it's so interesting that it just gets... AI is mentioned in nearly every other conversation at the minute and so i think that shows that it's not going anywhere and it's definitely here to stay so i think businesses that are using it safely in like controlled environments but also trust that the impact it's going to have is going to be positive. They're going to be the ones that are kind of ahead of ahead of the curve and seeing that kind of return on investment what in time that they're putting in. So yeah I find it intriguing anyways, I'm a little geek anyways and I want to know all about it but yeah I think it's hard not to get ahead of yourself with it but kind of knowing that it's there for a support is going to be transformational for the business. I read something the other day and it was saying that a third of people think that it's going to have a positive impact on customer service and I think it's interesting that it's only a third, what are the other two-thirds thinking? But I think it highlights the importance of like fully considering the use cases that we do apply AI to and making sure that we are considering not just tech teams but also operational teams and what impacts it could be having on departments and our customers. It's like I think that's the first point of contact you need to be thinking about when you're looking at AI.
Yeah, I think it's quite interesting, the Genesys approach as well to AI is there's a lot of focus in the features that they're introducing that are actually to do with supporting agents in terms of surfacing knowledge, helping them summarise calls rather than we're not feeding AI generated responses to customers because it's not really there right now. It's a bit risky. So it'll help source articles that you've written for your customers and things like that. But I think Genesys is looking at it in quite a sort of measured, careful way. It's not just gone. oh ai and shelved it everywhere it's really making sure that what they introduce is is useful and productive for both customers and agents which i think is a good way to go. And i think jumping on some webinars and stuff as well um that Genesys facilitate like there's always a webinar on AI or Kerv also like do little podcasts and webinars and things like that. It's just it's nice to have that contact and know like what what people are discovering with with use cases
Yeah, and I think everyone's in the same boat in terms of the security aspect of AI. So I think Genesys approach is the right one. Like you say, we're not feeding information outside to customers, we can use it for our internal procedures. And I think the feature of digital summarisation is a fantastic one. And I think that's definitely within our roadmap over the next couple of months to look at. It's more using it as support rather than your front door. And I think that's really important. And I think as time goes on and the security is more robust around it, that people understand it more, actually, there will be a lot we can get out of it. From an agent perspective, like you see using the agent assist, etc. will help everybody move forward. I was surprised at the one in three because I think it will do a lot of good. It's how you use it. And I think everyone's sort of at the point of going, right, what's the safest way to implement this? Which is the right thing to do.
So obviously you're quite a sort of digital contact centre really, digital bank, digital contact centre makes sense, so how important do you think that is to have that sort of contact centre model in the modern world?
I think it's really important, I think we can't remove it from from other channels. I think for us it's really important that a customer has a channel that they're really comfortable with and that they want to use first and foremost. I think when we look at things like chatbots, which we don't currently use it might be something that we do in the future, but it's for those really basic tasks I think our issue is is that we want to drive that we want the customer to do more so that they're coming through to us when they're having issues uh and i don't know whether chatbots will be able to navigate that as well as a as a person could. So I think having been in a digital world being a digital bank we do look at digital first um and for much larger companies obviously you can you can do a lot more. We're 550 people and we've got a contact centre of sort of 40 people so for us it's it won't reduce the volume as much because of the issues that we deal with um but i think as well as that from a digital perspective as well it really helps people with accessibility needs um that they may have had to use something else like an add-on when they want to talk to a company um whereas AI and in that digital side of things will help those customers that that struggle with with technology day to day. So it's definitely got its place. I think as we've discussed in the last question that the usage of that will grow um it's used it sensibly but it's definitely got a it's definitely got its place in in modern contact centres and I know a lot of people do use it in many different ways. Like I say as it grows and the capability grows and the security grows I think more people start coming into the fold so for me having having a telephone line is really important because people do like to talk to people. But we find that our chat channel has actually exceeded voice channel over the last sort of two or three years. When we first started this, it was much lower and year on year, the volume that we get through chat has grown. But I think the fact that there's somebody, there's a person on the end of that chat really, really has an appeal for customers. The amount of times we get the first message a customer comes through is 'are you a robot'? I said no no we're not a robot I'm a real human person and and that gives that gives customers the confidence that they're being listened to that the other person on the end of that chat um understands and can empathise and sympathise where needed. But that just shows that the uptake in technology over the years is grown and grown, so it's how do we how do we embrace that? How do we harness that moving forward? And do we need to change what we do in that digital space? So it's a it's from from a customer perspective digital will always be there. For us it's a channel of choice for the customer um and one that customers are adopting at pace so it's it's how do we how do we enhance that? How do we make it better for customers? How do we show them that we're a real person right when they come on? And if we need to, do we consider bots at any time?
So in terms of the sort of transformation that you're going through and that other sort of companies in the financial industry might be going through, what do you think the biggest shift is going to be in the next couple of years, sticking with that kind of technology digital space?
Yeah, I think it's just the tip of the iceberg at the minute and there's always new emerging technologies. Every other day I think there's a new company launching with some use of AI. Just kind of the industry embracing it is going to be where I can see it going. We can't be shying away from it because, like I say, it's here to stay. But I think there's definitely a generational shift with how AI is going to be used. And maybe I might be making assumptions here, but sometimes the younger generation might be more open to that. That use of AI when they need to get in touch with a company. So yeah, I think those kind of shifts are going to be what we kind of see and the kind of just companies embracing its use.
Yeah, I think you're spot on with that generational shift. I think there's lots of sort of memes and stuff at the moment, aren't there, about how millennials hate calling anyone and how they love to use a chat or yeah, an FAQ page or self-serve and not have to pick up the phone. Yeah I think over time that's definitely where a lot of the shift will come from I think you're quite right there. So for Atom bank specifically obviously we've touched a little bit about AI and and what you're sort of thinking of doing in that space with stuff like summarisation and having a look at that, um is there any sort of where else in your CX operation that you've sort of started thinking about AI and what you might do with it in future? So we've sort of we've dipped our toe a little bit in terms of using AI to summarise the feedback that we get from customers through our customer surveys. So we do have AI rules within Atom, and we've got a team down there who support us with that. And we've found that it's been really handy because obviously we get thousands of bits of customer feedback every day from the surveys, and being able to hand that over to the AI team and then push it through to come out with sort of emerging trends. What are the three things that we were really great at and customers love and are giving us great feedback on? And what are the three most mentioned developmental areas um and that's something that we hadn't considered actually when we when we started the customer surveys is what are we going to do with all this data? How do we process all this data? So it was almost it was almost uh like a coming together of minds where we haven't talked within the business around AI. And Emily sort of said, well, we could maybe leverage some of this. So we had a conversation with the team. And obviously what would take us hours and hours to troll through bits of feedback and data is done in 20 seconds. So I think for us, again, that's from a business perspective it's building the confidence, we can give it a little bit of information, see what it gives us back. How is it presented? What are the words that are used? All that sort of stuff. So we've started off really, really sort of cautiously to give us confidence that it can do the right thing for us. But for me, I think there's opportunities, like I've said, around the agent assist, etc., that we will look at utilised in the future. Because like Emily said, I don't think there's any, I don't think we're going to move backwards. This is all going to push forwards. So getting that verbatim feedback from customers, being able to share that with the business. I think tells the business something around AI and how we can utilise it and leverage it for good and to help drive change within the business. So I think that's the first the first thing we've done certainly from a customer perspective with AI. But I think from a business perspective, it's it's one of the first reportable things that we're doing within within Atom. So it's it's exciting to see that I can do stuff so quickly, that I can analyse that data so quickly and I think that's where the change will come from most businesses is being able to get data quickly, to get themes quickly, to be able to do that analysis, that would usually take somebody a long time to do. Yeah, and that's the Genesys with it, sort of speech and text analytics and things like that, you know, looking for sentiment and what customers are talking about fits in quite nicely with that. And it also, I think, as a starting place for your business on where you've started trialling this technology, it fits in with that, you know, key customer experience pillar that we were talking about. So you've started by how can we analyse what our customers are talking about and what they need and that fits beautifully really I think with your overall message yeah Yeah I think it goes goes back to as well that we're not looking to replace humans we we're using it as an enhancement as something to use along the side of our agent. It's it's not the case of that we're gonna get AI bots and just not have a contact centre anymore that's just not not where we see ourselves, it's more using it.
as an addition and getting things getting trends out of it is going to be like transformational for us because we can track we can track what our trends are, we're not just looking at it in at a point in time we can see historic what what's what customers need and kind of plan plan for the future really. Fantastic okay sort of round us off with the biggie get your bets in. What trends do you think are going to emerge over the next 12 months in the kind of contact centre CX space? I can get my crystal ball out.
I know. I think, obviously, we've spoken about it a lot today. It's going to be businesses working out how they can leverage AI to enhance customer service, to be able to analyse trends and other data within their businesses to then make decisions. And I don't think we can play down the importance that AI will bring over the next 12 months. I think we've seen where it's been in the last 12 months from looking at different products and services where you sort of a little bit, we need to see that mature a little bit. And within that 12 months, we're seeing real growth in those technology spaces and how it's used. So I think it's going to be a lot of decision-making this year for contact centres and customer experience managers of how can we leverage this to do more. Whether that's lowering a cost from a FTE perspective by implementing bots to assessing data on how we can drive business change. I think that's where the big debate is going to be. The conversation about AI is going to run on and I think it's going to grow. For us, does it fit with our model of being faster, smarter, simpler? Does that help us achieve one of those three things? For me, it's that digital summarisation. I don't want our team to spend less time with our customers, but little things like digital summarisation will help that wrap-up time. So it's using it not to take away that customer contact, but to help where it can at the start and end. And I think everybody will try and use AI to, very much I'm saying everybody, I would like to think that people start using it as we have to understand, to help understand customers more, because that should always be at the heart of everything you do within a within the cx space. And anyway that AI can assist that will be will be a positive one. Yeah I think having Kerv as well share other
customers journeys and share learning, share kind of what how people are using it is really helpful and that's going to help us to plan for the next 12 months too. We can get ideas, we can share ideas, share best practice. So yeah I think it's really exciting and I'm I'm just desperate to get get going with it yeah. It's a it's a confidence thing isn't it? I think being able to have those conversations with other customers and with yourself Sarah. You sort of go yeah well they're doing it, they've been successful with it, we we can dip our toe, we can have a little go at it. But i think that conversation is really important uh
and I think the things like the webinars from yourselves and Genesys, help bring communities together. That way you can do whatever they say, you can share best practice, you can understand the pain points that customers have gone through, maybe get around some of those issues that other people have had. And I think that's how everyone will grow by collaborating across businesses, across industries, to understand how they can leverage this new technology.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I had a really good chat there about quite a few different points, your journey in particular and thoughts on the wider industry. So wonderful. Thank you so much.
No problem. Thanks for having us.
0sec
44sec
3min
7min
9min
11min
16min
17min
21min
24min
26min
29min
30min
Share
Embed
You may also like
Description
Join us and Atom bank on a journey through their CX priorities, transformation and future plans featuring Ben Evans, Customer Support Manager and Emily Callander, Configuration Specialist.
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Engage Customer Engagement Examples of Excellence podcast. In this episode, our host, Sarah Woolley, meets Atom bank's Emily Callender and Ben Evans. Ben is the Customer Support Manager at Atom bank and has been leading the customer support team for the last five years, with over 20 years experience in the contact centre industry. Emily is a Configuration Specialist at Atom bank and has been with the organisation for almost a year now. working in operational effectiveness, supporting with configuration changes on various systems, and implementing, testing, and launching enhancements. Our host, Sarah, is the Customer Success Manager at Kerv, who has been working with Atom bank for nearly two years to help them optimise their use of the Genesys platform.
Hi, Ben and Emily. Lovely to have you here today to chat about your digital transformation project. Really excited to learn a bit more about what you've been doing over the past couple of years. So, to kick us off could you just let us know a little bit more about Atom bank sort of who are you and what do you do?
Yeah absolutely so Atom bank: we are the the first UK app only bank. So we were the first one with the license back in sort of 2015. The bank was formed in 2014, we got our banking license and then we launched for customers in April 2016. We're based in the northeast of England so our HQ is in Durham and we employ around 550 ish. people so a very small fish in a very large pond um so our aim is to change banking for good for better for everybody um and we offer mortgages uh business lending and savings, um sorry award-winning business lending, don't miss that out oh no absolutely not absolutely not um. So the business has changed I've been here sort of nine years coming up and the business has changed dramatically over that time um both from a technological perspective and a people perspective. So obviously we we started the bank um in 2014-15 and we had a lot of various partners who we dealt with and over the years we've sort of streamlined that um one of those which been bringing Kerv on to manage Genesys uh in 2022. uh so we've been a Genesys customer for all of our time um in 2022 we moved over to that relationship with yourselves at Kerv. Um we are completely hybrid working. So we have people working from the office and at home. And we were the first UK company in 2021 to move to a full four-day working week.
I'm very jealous of that.
It is quite handy having that extra day off. But I think being a challenger bank, we were very open to change. We strive to have the best technology. We strive to do what we can for our people. So we don't sort of rest on our laurels. We're continuously looking for the next best thing to take our service, both from an app perspective, from our customer service perspective, to the next level. And that was the decision on bringing Kerv on, because we feel like you are going to help us do that.
Wonderful. Well, I know that customer experience is one of the main focuses, one of the main pillars of your business, and making sure that that's the best it can be. So what was the sort of top priority for those goals that you had when you started this journey?
For us, we need to be easy to do business with from a customer perspective. So for us within customer support, we are a complete omni-channel. So we deal with customers through app chat, through phone, email, and through our social medias. And we don't segregate the team. So we wanted to make sure that we have a small knit community that is in the team that customers can really speak to frequently if they feel the need that they can come back to. And however, they want to contact us they've got a channel of choice there so the whole premise of Atom is that we're delivering better value for customers and part of that operating model is that we have a small contact centre. We don't necessarily want to be a two/three hundred seat contact centre, we want to give that personal touch and so the priority when we think about customer experience is just that our customers getting value for money from us as a business, from us as a team are we quick and easy to do business with and can they get through however they want to through a channel of choice. So obviously for us, understanding our customers is paramount. So we do a lot of different things within the voice of customer space, one of them being demand capture. So every interaction that we have through customer support is captured the reason for contact. And that does a number of different things. So we take that data and we pretty much advise the rest of the company around what customers'pain points are. So then we go and change that, whether that be through a process, through the app journey, or through customer service. So the main priority for us is that simplicity and that first point of contact resolution because we want customers to come through when they've got an issue and have that resolved right there at first point. I think what makes us a little bit different from other contact centres is that part of my job is to to reduce the amount of contact we have coming through. So we want to optimise our procedures. We want to optimise the app so customers can really self-serve. So it almost seems like we're doing ourselves out of a job, really, because we want to lower that. But there will always be a need for customers to speak to a human, and that's where we're really comfortable with. So the goal was to make sure that we're easy to do business with, that we've got the relevant systems in place for our...
team to be able to service customers and to deliver world-class customer service. Wonderful yeah and i think that's something that I saw as well when I came up and visited your contact centre in in durham and those guys that are on site, is there's a wonderful atmosphere amongst the team as well people helping each other supporting each other um and just making sure that everyone can give the best um service to your customers and it's definitely a great atmosphere up there too. Yeah that's right as well like our agents are so passionate about helping customers and that's half the battle sometimes
Yeah, it's so important when you've got such a small team that they collaborate on a daily basis. And I think the length and breadth of knowledge that the team need to have is probably the largest within the business. So it's really important that we're sharing best practice, that we're giving feedback all the time. And the team are really on board with that. And I think where we see someone struggling with something, somebody will go over and give them a hand. And obviously we're using Teams all the time, et cetera. So I think since the... COVID days we've we've been a lot more collaborative because there's that need to help people at home as well as in the office.
Absolutely yeah so I guess diving a little bit more we've just started touching a bit on on the software and things like that so what kind of business outcomes would you say have improved the most since you started the journey with us here at Kerv and the Genesys platform too?
Yeah so I would say firstly just having you Sarah and Graham just there for our support um we can kind of pick up the phone, we can pop you an email and you always there to kind of give us a helping hand. I was down in London the other day for a meeting and Graham had dropped a message saying do you want to grab a coffee and we'll just have a catch up and just having that relationship really helps on the transformation journey. So yeah we've done a couple of things already we started with our customer surveys so we use CX index and we had a load of support from Kerv on that journey and project. And now we're getting kind of live view of our customers thoughts and opinions and that's all being facilitated through Kerv which has been amazing. We're getting we're getting like real-time reporting now so we can get that the thoughts and the voice of the customer straight away. We've also kind of used little parts of Genesys such as canned responses so we're helping to reduce our average handle time. And again, we had a couple of things that we had questions on and just reaching out to Kerv and logging it as a ticket and getting that help straight away. I know that Kerv really want to help and they're always there at the end of the email just to kind of get back to us and make sure that we're getting that support.
I think the customer service specifically, it was quite a long piece of work that we collaborated on. But I think as well as the customer having a portal to share their feelings and thoughts about the service or Atom in general, it's a real opportunity for the team to understand what customers are saying about them. It's been a massive hit since we launched that. And I speak to the team on a monthly basis and it's sort of, what do you think of the customer service and they all love it. It's all, they're all documenting the great feedback that they get from customers and using that as part of their sort of end of year appraisals, et cetera. But it also works on the other side of the coin where we understand what customers are saying about the service specifically, so we can go away and address maybe some of the parts that we need to develop or that we need to change. That has been a really big, huge success since we took that on earlier on in the year.
Fantastic. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that that's going really well. Customer insights can be a bit scary sometimes when you ask for that feedback and not knowing what's going to come back.
but obviously yeah you guys have fantastic service so i'm glad to hear that's going well. It is and i think we need to trust ourselves that we do deliver great service uh and sometimes I think everybody just sees a lot of the time as, oh, well, they've said something really nice. I was just doing my job. But that's where we need to get them to understand that they're fantastic at their job. And that's just another layer to say, to back that up. So it's really an eye opener for them that they come in and they work their shift and the impacts that they can have on each individual customer, I think that's sort of overlooked at times that you actually do have a huge impact on that customer's day. On that customer scenario depending on how you treat them. And I always like to say we don't hire robots. We hire people based on their personality. So we've got great people who can have great conversations with customers. It's almost like you're talking to your next door neighbour or a friend. And and really that's where the surveys sort of confirm that for them, that what they're doing is the right thing, the way they're talking to customers, the questions they're asking.
the resolutions are finding for customers are the right ones for them um so it's been it's been great i'm a massive fan. Me too, and it also helps to just plan ahead like we're getting that survey and and those responses now so we can see what we want to focus on next and the vision for the next six like 12 months and be able to plan our enhancements around what feedback we're getting through so that's been a massive help too
Wonderful. And you've led me really nicely into my next question as well, which is what is next? What are your key priorities that you're looking at over the next sort of six or so months?
It's been really difficult because there's so much that we want to do. We get so excited when we can do things.
We get carried away don't we.
We do. I think for me, one of the priorities is managing vulnerable customer experience. Obviously, it's got a lot of focus on since consumer duty came in sort of last year. But as a digital bank we don't see our customers day to day so it's not like you go to a branch and you can tell how somebody's feeling or whether they've got sort of things that they want to discuss. Um so for us it's making sure that having those relevant conversations with customers and identifying where where customers need our help. So from a contact centre perspective it's really making sure that our our guys are attuned into to the customer um doing the right thing we're listening we're learning from customers as well. So it's really important that the team are at a run point every day that they're coming to work and they're engaged and they're concentrating on those conversations with the customer. Um and we've got a few things in the pipeline how we want to we want to grow our team to be more susceptible to commentary to background noise all that sort of stuff and to understand how customers emotions can can drive the conversation. Um so that's one of our key priorities over the next six months. We always want to make banking easier we want to make it faster we want to make better value and that's where the demand capture comes in. Obviously anything a customer can do for themselves um saves the customer time uh it also saves us um in terms of in terms of cost having to build something new from from a back-end perspective um so it's really making sure we're joining all the dots up so customers can do things for themselves and we're exclusively there for when they need a hand. And again, going back to what I was saying about the surveys and our need to drive contact down, is that customers will always get stuck at some point. Technology will always fail at some point, as much as we don't want it to, but we're going to be there to help the customer and navigate through whatever issues they've got. And there'll always be a need for that interpersonal connection with customers. So it's really just refining moving forward from a customer perspective. I think we've got a lot of features that we want to implement through Genesys that will help us save time, will help the customer experience as well. And we want to grow the business, but we don't want to grow the size of the contact centre. So it's really important we get that right. And I think the features that we get through Genesys, the ones that we've implemented already and the ones that we're exploring will help us hit that sort of cost base where we're not spending, we're not throwing a load of money at it and we're not bringing in loads of new partners. We wanted a platform that we could configure, that we have that control over, and that will give us some features and benefits that will not only impact positively on customers, but the team as well. So I think it's been the last sort of... two and a bit years or coming up two years um i think we've we've got into our groove with that and we're making those changes all the time and Emily's been fantastic in coming on board as a configuration specialist and um because i'm not the most technical person so so I know what I want and Emily tells us how we can do it and then we go away and collaborate and obviously speak to yourself about it. So it's a real good team effort and I think we've got to keep that momentum over the next six months so we want to be doing the right thing for the customer through our partners such as Genesys and Kerv to get the most out of the product that we've got.
Absolutely yeah and that's what we are our main focus at Kerv really is we're always here to support. and we can do projects and we can do config changes and things but we also want to empower you to make those changes yourself so it's your platform you have ownership of it and we're just here to help. So it's yeah since you've come on board Emily it's definitely been really exciting as well asking lots of interesting questions about all sorts of bits of the platform and yeah
Picking something wonderful yeah it's nice and refreshing to just have that relationship so we can just delve a little bit deeper into things and think oh is that going to work for us, is it not, and you're always there to advise so it's yeah.
But I think it also confirms that it was the right decision to move from one Genesys platform to another, when previous iterations we've had to log tickets and have changes done and not had that control. So if we want to go away and build something within Genesys or try something out, we can in a really safe space. We can work out whether it works for us and works for everybody else. But we can do that ourselves. And I think that was the real draw to this. That with your support we could go in and almost play yeah play in that space and um which is a very dangerous word when you're in financial services, but it it gives us the confidence that what we want to do we can do ourselves. It works how we want to work it, we can test it and and really make sure that that's that's correct and then we can we can roll it out. And previously, we may have to wait six months to do one element of that where we can make those changes quite rapidly.
Wonderful. So you've touched on it a little bit, you know, starting to talk about that consumer duty and things like that. So in the sort of broader banking industry and CX, how do you think AI is going to change the space? How is it transforming the industry?
Yeah, it's so interesting that it just gets... AI is mentioned in nearly every other conversation at the minute and so i think that shows that it's not going anywhere and it's definitely here to stay so i think businesses that are using it safely in like controlled environments but also trust that the impact it's going to have is going to be positive. They're going to be the ones that are kind of ahead of ahead of the curve and seeing that kind of return on investment what in time that they're putting in. So yeah I find it intriguing anyways, I'm a little geek anyways and I want to know all about it but yeah I think it's hard not to get ahead of yourself with it but kind of knowing that it's there for a support is going to be transformational for the business. I read something the other day and it was saying that a third of people think that it's going to have a positive impact on customer service and I think it's interesting that it's only a third, what are the other two-thirds thinking? But I think it highlights the importance of like fully considering the use cases that we do apply AI to and making sure that we are considering not just tech teams but also operational teams and what impacts it could be having on departments and our customers. It's like I think that's the first point of contact you need to be thinking about when you're looking at AI.
Yeah, I think it's quite interesting, the Genesys approach as well to AI is there's a lot of focus in the features that they're introducing that are actually to do with supporting agents in terms of surfacing knowledge, helping them summarise calls rather than we're not feeding AI generated responses to customers because it's not really there right now. It's a bit risky. So it'll help source articles that you've written for your customers and things like that. But I think Genesys is looking at it in quite a sort of measured, careful way. It's not just gone. oh ai and shelved it everywhere it's really making sure that what they introduce is is useful and productive for both customers and agents which i think is a good way to go. And i think jumping on some webinars and stuff as well um that Genesys facilitate like there's always a webinar on AI or Kerv also like do little podcasts and webinars and things like that. It's just it's nice to have that contact and know like what what people are discovering with with use cases
Yeah, and I think everyone's in the same boat in terms of the security aspect of AI. So I think Genesys approach is the right one. Like you say, we're not feeding information outside to customers, we can use it for our internal procedures. And I think the feature of digital summarisation is a fantastic one. And I think that's definitely within our roadmap over the next couple of months to look at. It's more using it as support rather than your front door. And I think that's really important. And I think as time goes on and the security is more robust around it, that people understand it more, actually, there will be a lot we can get out of it. From an agent perspective, like you see using the agent assist, etc. will help everybody move forward. I was surprised at the one in three because I think it will do a lot of good. It's how you use it. And I think everyone's sort of at the point of going, right, what's the safest way to implement this? Which is the right thing to do.
So obviously you're quite a sort of digital contact centre really, digital bank, digital contact centre makes sense, so how important do you think that is to have that sort of contact centre model in the modern world?
I think it's really important, I think we can't remove it from from other channels. I think for us it's really important that a customer has a channel that they're really comfortable with and that they want to use first and foremost. I think when we look at things like chatbots, which we don't currently use it might be something that we do in the future, but it's for those really basic tasks I think our issue is is that we want to drive that we want the customer to do more so that they're coming through to us when they're having issues uh and i don't know whether chatbots will be able to navigate that as well as a as a person could. So I think having been in a digital world being a digital bank we do look at digital first um and for much larger companies obviously you can you can do a lot more. We're 550 people and we've got a contact centre of sort of 40 people so for us it's it won't reduce the volume as much because of the issues that we deal with um but i think as well as that from a digital perspective as well it really helps people with accessibility needs um that they may have had to use something else like an add-on when they want to talk to a company um whereas AI and in that digital side of things will help those customers that that struggle with with technology day to day. So it's definitely got its place. I think as we've discussed in the last question that the usage of that will grow um it's used it sensibly but it's definitely got a it's definitely got its place in in modern contact centres and I know a lot of people do use it in many different ways. Like I say as it grows and the capability grows and the security grows I think more people start coming into the fold so for me having having a telephone line is really important because people do like to talk to people. But we find that our chat channel has actually exceeded voice channel over the last sort of two or three years. When we first started this, it was much lower and year on year, the volume that we get through chat has grown. But I think the fact that there's somebody, there's a person on the end of that chat really, really has an appeal for customers. The amount of times we get the first message a customer comes through is 'are you a robot'? I said no no we're not a robot I'm a real human person and and that gives that gives customers the confidence that they're being listened to that the other person on the end of that chat um understands and can empathise and sympathise where needed. But that just shows that the uptake in technology over the years is grown and grown, so it's how do we how do we embrace that? How do we harness that moving forward? And do we need to change what we do in that digital space? So it's a it's from from a customer perspective digital will always be there. For us it's a channel of choice for the customer um and one that customers are adopting at pace so it's it's how do we how do we enhance that? How do we make it better for customers? How do we show them that we're a real person right when they come on? And if we need to, do we consider bots at any time?
So in terms of the sort of transformation that you're going through and that other sort of companies in the financial industry might be going through, what do you think the biggest shift is going to be in the next couple of years, sticking with that kind of technology digital space?
Yeah, I think it's just the tip of the iceberg at the minute and there's always new emerging technologies. Every other day I think there's a new company launching with some use of AI. Just kind of the industry embracing it is going to be where I can see it going. We can't be shying away from it because, like I say, it's here to stay. But I think there's definitely a generational shift with how AI is going to be used. And maybe I might be making assumptions here, but sometimes the younger generation might be more open to that. That use of AI when they need to get in touch with a company. So yeah, I think those kind of shifts are going to be what we kind of see and the kind of just companies embracing its use.
Yeah, I think you're spot on with that generational shift. I think there's lots of sort of memes and stuff at the moment, aren't there, about how millennials hate calling anyone and how they love to use a chat or yeah, an FAQ page or self-serve and not have to pick up the phone. Yeah I think over time that's definitely where a lot of the shift will come from I think you're quite right there. So for Atom bank specifically obviously we've touched a little bit about AI and and what you're sort of thinking of doing in that space with stuff like summarisation and having a look at that, um is there any sort of where else in your CX operation that you've sort of started thinking about AI and what you might do with it in future? So we've sort of we've dipped our toe a little bit in terms of using AI to summarise the feedback that we get from customers through our customer surveys. So we do have AI rules within Atom, and we've got a team down there who support us with that. And we've found that it's been really handy because obviously we get thousands of bits of customer feedback every day from the surveys, and being able to hand that over to the AI team and then push it through to come out with sort of emerging trends. What are the three things that we were really great at and customers love and are giving us great feedback on? And what are the three most mentioned developmental areas um and that's something that we hadn't considered actually when we when we started the customer surveys is what are we going to do with all this data? How do we process all this data? So it was almost it was almost uh like a coming together of minds where we haven't talked within the business around AI. And Emily sort of said, well, we could maybe leverage some of this. So we had a conversation with the team. And obviously what would take us hours and hours to troll through bits of feedback and data is done in 20 seconds. So I think for us, again, that's from a business perspective it's building the confidence, we can give it a little bit of information, see what it gives us back. How is it presented? What are the words that are used? All that sort of stuff. So we've started off really, really sort of cautiously to give us confidence that it can do the right thing for us. But for me, I think there's opportunities, like I've said, around the agent assist, etc., that we will look at utilised in the future. Because like Emily said, I don't think there's any, I don't think we're going to move backwards. This is all going to push forwards. So getting that verbatim feedback from customers, being able to share that with the business. I think tells the business something around AI and how we can utilise it and leverage it for good and to help drive change within the business. So I think that's the first the first thing we've done certainly from a customer perspective with AI. But I think from a business perspective, it's it's one of the first reportable things that we're doing within within Atom. So it's it's exciting to see that I can do stuff so quickly, that I can analyse that data so quickly and I think that's where the change will come from most businesses is being able to get data quickly, to get themes quickly, to be able to do that analysis, that would usually take somebody a long time to do. Yeah, and that's the Genesys with it, sort of speech and text analytics and things like that, you know, looking for sentiment and what customers are talking about fits in quite nicely with that. And it also, I think, as a starting place for your business on where you've started trialling this technology, it fits in with that, you know, key customer experience pillar that we were talking about. So you've started by how can we analyse what our customers are talking about and what they need and that fits beautifully really I think with your overall message yeah Yeah I think it goes goes back to as well that we're not looking to replace humans we we're using it as an enhancement as something to use along the side of our agent. It's it's not the case of that we're gonna get AI bots and just not have a contact centre anymore that's just not not where we see ourselves, it's more using it.
as an addition and getting things getting trends out of it is going to be like transformational for us because we can track we can track what our trends are, we're not just looking at it in at a point in time we can see historic what what's what customers need and kind of plan plan for the future really. Fantastic okay sort of round us off with the biggie get your bets in. What trends do you think are going to emerge over the next 12 months in the kind of contact centre CX space? I can get my crystal ball out.
I know. I think, obviously, we've spoken about it a lot today. It's going to be businesses working out how they can leverage AI to enhance customer service, to be able to analyse trends and other data within their businesses to then make decisions. And I don't think we can play down the importance that AI will bring over the next 12 months. I think we've seen where it's been in the last 12 months from looking at different products and services where you sort of a little bit, we need to see that mature a little bit. And within that 12 months, we're seeing real growth in those technology spaces and how it's used. So I think it's going to be a lot of decision-making this year for contact centres and customer experience managers of how can we leverage this to do more. Whether that's lowering a cost from a FTE perspective by implementing bots to assessing data on how we can drive business change. I think that's where the big debate is going to be. The conversation about AI is going to run on and I think it's going to grow. For us, does it fit with our model of being faster, smarter, simpler? Does that help us achieve one of those three things? For me, it's that digital summarisation. I don't want our team to spend less time with our customers, but little things like digital summarisation will help that wrap-up time. So it's using it not to take away that customer contact, but to help where it can at the start and end. And I think everybody will try and use AI to, very much I'm saying everybody, I would like to think that people start using it as we have to understand, to help understand customers more, because that should always be at the heart of everything you do within a within the cx space. And anyway that AI can assist that will be will be a positive one. Yeah I think having Kerv as well share other
customers journeys and share learning, share kind of what how people are using it is really helpful and that's going to help us to plan for the next 12 months too. We can get ideas, we can share ideas, share best practice. So yeah I think it's really exciting and I'm I'm just desperate to get get going with it yeah. It's a it's a confidence thing isn't it? I think being able to have those conversations with other customers and with yourself Sarah. You sort of go yeah well they're doing it, they've been successful with it, we we can dip our toe, we can have a little go at it. But i think that conversation is really important uh
and I think the things like the webinars from yourselves and Genesys, help bring communities together. That way you can do whatever they say, you can share best practice, you can understand the pain points that customers have gone through, maybe get around some of those issues that other people have had. And I think that's how everyone will grow by collaborating across businesses, across industries, to understand how they can leverage this new technology.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I had a really good chat there about quite a few different points, your journey in particular and thoughts on the wider industry. So wonderful. Thank you so much.
No problem. Thanks for having us.
0sec
44sec
3min
7min
9min
11min
16min
17min
21min
24min
26min
29min
30min
Description
Join us and Atom bank on a journey through their CX priorities, transformation and future plans featuring Ben Evans, Customer Support Manager and Emily Callander, Configuration Specialist.
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Engage Customer Engagement Examples of Excellence podcast. In this episode, our host, Sarah Woolley, meets Atom bank's Emily Callender and Ben Evans. Ben is the Customer Support Manager at Atom bank and has been leading the customer support team for the last five years, with over 20 years experience in the contact centre industry. Emily is a Configuration Specialist at Atom bank and has been with the organisation for almost a year now. working in operational effectiveness, supporting with configuration changes on various systems, and implementing, testing, and launching enhancements. Our host, Sarah, is the Customer Success Manager at Kerv, who has been working with Atom bank for nearly two years to help them optimise their use of the Genesys platform.
Hi, Ben and Emily. Lovely to have you here today to chat about your digital transformation project. Really excited to learn a bit more about what you've been doing over the past couple of years. So, to kick us off could you just let us know a little bit more about Atom bank sort of who are you and what do you do?
Yeah absolutely so Atom bank: we are the the first UK app only bank. So we were the first one with the license back in sort of 2015. The bank was formed in 2014, we got our banking license and then we launched for customers in April 2016. We're based in the northeast of England so our HQ is in Durham and we employ around 550 ish. people so a very small fish in a very large pond um so our aim is to change banking for good for better for everybody um and we offer mortgages uh business lending and savings, um sorry award-winning business lending, don't miss that out oh no absolutely not absolutely not um. So the business has changed I've been here sort of nine years coming up and the business has changed dramatically over that time um both from a technological perspective and a people perspective. So obviously we we started the bank um in 2014-15 and we had a lot of various partners who we dealt with and over the years we've sort of streamlined that um one of those which been bringing Kerv on to manage Genesys uh in 2022. uh so we've been a Genesys customer for all of our time um in 2022 we moved over to that relationship with yourselves at Kerv. Um we are completely hybrid working. So we have people working from the office and at home. And we were the first UK company in 2021 to move to a full four-day working week.
I'm very jealous of that.
It is quite handy having that extra day off. But I think being a challenger bank, we were very open to change. We strive to have the best technology. We strive to do what we can for our people. So we don't sort of rest on our laurels. We're continuously looking for the next best thing to take our service, both from an app perspective, from our customer service perspective, to the next level. And that was the decision on bringing Kerv on, because we feel like you are going to help us do that.
Wonderful. Well, I know that customer experience is one of the main focuses, one of the main pillars of your business, and making sure that that's the best it can be. So what was the sort of top priority for those goals that you had when you started this journey?
For us, we need to be easy to do business with from a customer perspective. So for us within customer support, we are a complete omni-channel. So we deal with customers through app chat, through phone, email, and through our social medias. And we don't segregate the team. So we wanted to make sure that we have a small knit community that is in the team that customers can really speak to frequently if they feel the need that they can come back to. And however, they want to contact us they've got a channel of choice there so the whole premise of Atom is that we're delivering better value for customers and part of that operating model is that we have a small contact centre. We don't necessarily want to be a two/three hundred seat contact centre, we want to give that personal touch and so the priority when we think about customer experience is just that our customers getting value for money from us as a business, from us as a team are we quick and easy to do business with and can they get through however they want to through a channel of choice. So obviously for us, understanding our customers is paramount. So we do a lot of different things within the voice of customer space, one of them being demand capture. So every interaction that we have through customer support is captured the reason for contact. And that does a number of different things. So we take that data and we pretty much advise the rest of the company around what customers'pain points are. So then we go and change that, whether that be through a process, through the app journey, or through customer service. So the main priority for us is that simplicity and that first point of contact resolution because we want customers to come through when they've got an issue and have that resolved right there at first point. I think what makes us a little bit different from other contact centres is that part of my job is to to reduce the amount of contact we have coming through. So we want to optimise our procedures. We want to optimise the app so customers can really self-serve. So it almost seems like we're doing ourselves out of a job, really, because we want to lower that. But there will always be a need for customers to speak to a human, and that's where we're really comfortable with. So the goal was to make sure that we're easy to do business with, that we've got the relevant systems in place for our...
team to be able to service customers and to deliver world-class customer service. Wonderful yeah and i think that's something that I saw as well when I came up and visited your contact centre in in durham and those guys that are on site, is there's a wonderful atmosphere amongst the team as well people helping each other supporting each other um and just making sure that everyone can give the best um service to your customers and it's definitely a great atmosphere up there too. Yeah that's right as well like our agents are so passionate about helping customers and that's half the battle sometimes
Yeah, it's so important when you've got such a small team that they collaborate on a daily basis. And I think the length and breadth of knowledge that the team need to have is probably the largest within the business. So it's really important that we're sharing best practice, that we're giving feedback all the time. And the team are really on board with that. And I think where we see someone struggling with something, somebody will go over and give them a hand. And obviously we're using Teams all the time, et cetera. So I think since the... COVID days we've we've been a lot more collaborative because there's that need to help people at home as well as in the office.
Absolutely yeah so I guess diving a little bit more we've just started touching a bit on on the software and things like that so what kind of business outcomes would you say have improved the most since you started the journey with us here at Kerv and the Genesys platform too?
Yeah so I would say firstly just having you Sarah and Graham just there for our support um we can kind of pick up the phone, we can pop you an email and you always there to kind of give us a helping hand. I was down in London the other day for a meeting and Graham had dropped a message saying do you want to grab a coffee and we'll just have a catch up and just having that relationship really helps on the transformation journey. So yeah we've done a couple of things already we started with our customer surveys so we use CX index and we had a load of support from Kerv on that journey and project. And now we're getting kind of live view of our customers thoughts and opinions and that's all being facilitated through Kerv which has been amazing. We're getting we're getting like real-time reporting now so we can get that the thoughts and the voice of the customer straight away. We've also kind of used little parts of Genesys such as canned responses so we're helping to reduce our average handle time. And again, we had a couple of things that we had questions on and just reaching out to Kerv and logging it as a ticket and getting that help straight away. I know that Kerv really want to help and they're always there at the end of the email just to kind of get back to us and make sure that we're getting that support.
I think the customer service specifically, it was quite a long piece of work that we collaborated on. But I think as well as the customer having a portal to share their feelings and thoughts about the service or Atom in general, it's a real opportunity for the team to understand what customers are saying about them. It's been a massive hit since we launched that. And I speak to the team on a monthly basis and it's sort of, what do you think of the customer service and they all love it. It's all, they're all documenting the great feedback that they get from customers and using that as part of their sort of end of year appraisals, et cetera. But it also works on the other side of the coin where we understand what customers are saying about the service specifically, so we can go away and address maybe some of the parts that we need to develop or that we need to change. That has been a really big, huge success since we took that on earlier on in the year.
Fantastic. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that that's going really well. Customer insights can be a bit scary sometimes when you ask for that feedback and not knowing what's going to come back.
but obviously yeah you guys have fantastic service so i'm glad to hear that's going well. It is and i think we need to trust ourselves that we do deliver great service uh and sometimes I think everybody just sees a lot of the time as, oh, well, they've said something really nice. I was just doing my job. But that's where we need to get them to understand that they're fantastic at their job. And that's just another layer to say, to back that up. So it's really an eye opener for them that they come in and they work their shift and the impacts that they can have on each individual customer, I think that's sort of overlooked at times that you actually do have a huge impact on that customer's day. On that customer scenario depending on how you treat them. And I always like to say we don't hire robots. We hire people based on their personality. So we've got great people who can have great conversations with customers. It's almost like you're talking to your next door neighbour or a friend. And and really that's where the surveys sort of confirm that for them, that what they're doing is the right thing, the way they're talking to customers, the questions they're asking.
the resolutions are finding for customers are the right ones for them um so it's been it's been great i'm a massive fan. Me too, and it also helps to just plan ahead like we're getting that survey and and those responses now so we can see what we want to focus on next and the vision for the next six like 12 months and be able to plan our enhancements around what feedback we're getting through so that's been a massive help too
Wonderful. And you've led me really nicely into my next question as well, which is what is next? What are your key priorities that you're looking at over the next sort of six or so months?
It's been really difficult because there's so much that we want to do. We get so excited when we can do things.
We get carried away don't we.
We do. I think for me, one of the priorities is managing vulnerable customer experience. Obviously, it's got a lot of focus on since consumer duty came in sort of last year. But as a digital bank we don't see our customers day to day so it's not like you go to a branch and you can tell how somebody's feeling or whether they've got sort of things that they want to discuss. Um so for us it's making sure that having those relevant conversations with customers and identifying where where customers need our help. So from a contact centre perspective it's really making sure that our our guys are attuned into to the customer um doing the right thing we're listening we're learning from customers as well. So it's really important that the team are at a run point every day that they're coming to work and they're engaged and they're concentrating on those conversations with the customer. Um and we've got a few things in the pipeline how we want to we want to grow our team to be more susceptible to commentary to background noise all that sort of stuff and to understand how customers emotions can can drive the conversation. Um so that's one of our key priorities over the next six months. We always want to make banking easier we want to make it faster we want to make better value and that's where the demand capture comes in. Obviously anything a customer can do for themselves um saves the customer time uh it also saves us um in terms of in terms of cost having to build something new from from a back-end perspective um so it's really making sure we're joining all the dots up so customers can do things for themselves and we're exclusively there for when they need a hand. And again, going back to what I was saying about the surveys and our need to drive contact down, is that customers will always get stuck at some point. Technology will always fail at some point, as much as we don't want it to, but we're going to be there to help the customer and navigate through whatever issues they've got. And there'll always be a need for that interpersonal connection with customers. So it's really just refining moving forward from a customer perspective. I think we've got a lot of features that we want to implement through Genesys that will help us save time, will help the customer experience as well. And we want to grow the business, but we don't want to grow the size of the contact centre. So it's really important we get that right. And I think the features that we get through Genesys, the ones that we've implemented already and the ones that we're exploring will help us hit that sort of cost base where we're not spending, we're not throwing a load of money at it and we're not bringing in loads of new partners. We wanted a platform that we could configure, that we have that control over, and that will give us some features and benefits that will not only impact positively on customers, but the team as well. So I think it's been the last sort of... two and a bit years or coming up two years um i think we've we've got into our groove with that and we're making those changes all the time and Emily's been fantastic in coming on board as a configuration specialist and um because i'm not the most technical person so so I know what I want and Emily tells us how we can do it and then we go away and collaborate and obviously speak to yourself about it. So it's a real good team effort and I think we've got to keep that momentum over the next six months so we want to be doing the right thing for the customer through our partners such as Genesys and Kerv to get the most out of the product that we've got.
Absolutely yeah and that's what we are our main focus at Kerv really is we're always here to support. and we can do projects and we can do config changes and things but we also want to empower you to make those changes yourself so it's your platform you have ownership of it and we're just here to help. So it's yeah since you've come on board Emily it's definitely been really exciting as well asking lots of interesting questions about all sorts of bits of the platform and yeah
Picking something wonderful yeah it's nice and refreshing to just have that relationship so we can just delve a little bit deeper into things and think oh is that going to work for us, is it not, and you're always there to advise so it's yeah.
But I think it also confirms that it was the right decision to move from one Genesys platform to another, when previous iterations we've had to log tickets and have changes done and not had that control. So if we want to go away and build something within Genesys or try something out, we can in a really safe space. We can work out whether it works for us and works for everybody else. But we can do that ourselves. And I think that was the real draw to this. That with your support we could go in and almost play yeah play in that space and um which is a very dangerous word when you're in financial services, but it it gives us the confidence that what we want to do we can do ourselves. It works how we want to work it, we can test it and and really make sure that that's that's correct and then we can we can roll it out. And previously, we may have to wait six months to do one element of that where we can make those changes quite rapidly.
Wonderful. So you've touched on it a little bit, you know, starting to talk about that consumer duty and things like that. So in the sort of broader banking industry and CX, how do you think AI is going to change the space? How is it transforming the industry?
Yeah, it's so interesting that it just gets... AI is mentioned in nearly every other conversation at the minute and so i think that shows that it's not going anywhere and it's definitely here to stay so i think businesses that are using it safely in like controlled environments but also trust that the impact it's going to have is going to be positive. They're going to be the ones that are kind of ahead of ahead of the curve and seeing that kind of return on investment what in time that they're putting in. So yeah I find it intriguing anyways, I'm a little geek anyways and I want to know all about it but yeah I think it's hard not to get ahead of yourself with it but kind of knowing that it's there for a support is going to be transformational for the business. I read something the other day and it was saying that a third of people think that it's going to have a positive impact on customer service and I think it's interesting that it's only a third, what are the other two-thirds thinking? But I think it highlights the importance of like fully considering the use cases that we do apply AI to and making sure that we are considering not just tech teams but also operational teams and what impacts it could be having on departments and our customers. It's like I think that's the first point of contact you need to be thinking about when you're looking at AI.
Yeah, I think it's quite interesting, the Genesys approach as well to AI is there's a lot of focus in the features that they're introducing that are actually to do with supporting agents in terms of surfacing knowledge, helping them summarise calls rather than we're not feeding AI generated responses to customers because it's not really there right now. It's a bit risky. So it'll help source articles that you've written for your customers and things like that. But I think Genesys is looking at it in quite a sort of measured, careful way. It's not just gone. oh ai and shelved it everywhere it's really making sure that what they introduce is is useful and productive for both customers and agents which i think is a good way to go. And i think jumping on some webinars and stuff as well um that Genesys facilitate like there's always a webinar on AI or Kerv also like do little podcasts and webinars and things like that. It's just it's nice to have that contact and know like what what people are discovering with with use cases
Yeah, and I think everyone's in the same boat in terms of the security aspect of AI. So I think Genesys approach is the right one. Like you say, we're not feeding information outside to customers, we can use it for our internal procedures. And I think the feature of digital summarisation is a fantastic one. And I think that's definitely within our roadmap over the next couple of months to look at. It's more using it as support rather than your front door. And I think that's really important. And I think as time goes on and the security is more robust around it, that people understand it more, actually, there will be a lot we can get out of it. From an agent perspective, like you see using the agent assist, etc. will help everybody move forward. I was surprised at the one in three because I think it will do a lot of good. It's how you use it. And I think everyone's sort of at the point of going, right, what's the safest way to implement this? Which is the right thing to do.
So obviously you're quite a sort of digital contact centre really, digital bank, digital contact centre makes sense, so how important do you think that is to have that sort of contact centre model in the modern world?
I think it's really important, I think we can't remove it from from other channels. I think for us it's really important that a customer has a channel that they're really comfortable with and that they want to use first and foremost. I think when we look at things like chatbots, which we don't currently use it might be something that we do in the future, but it's for those really basic tasks I think our issue is is that we want to drive that we want the customer to do more so that they're coming through to us when they're having issues uh and i don't know whether chatbots will be able to navigate that as well as a as a person could. So I think having been in a digital world being a digital bank we do look at digital first um and for much larger companies obviously you can you can do a lot more. We're 550 people and we've got a contact centre of sort of 40 people so for us it's it won't reduce the volume as much because of the issues that we deal with um but i think as well as that from a digital perspective as well it really helps people with accessibility needs um that they may have had to use something else like an add-on when they want to talk to a company um whereas AI and in that digital side of things will help those customers that that struggle with with technology day to day. So it's definitely got its place. I think as we've discussed in the last question that the usage of that will grow um it's used it sensibly but it's definitely got a it's definitely got its place in in modern contact centres and I know a lot of people do use it in many different ways. Like I say as it grows and the capability grows and the security grows I think more people start coming into the fold so for me having having a telephone line is really important because people do like to talk to people. But we find that our chat channel has actually exceeded voice channel over the last sort of two or three years. When we first started this, it was much lower and year on year, the volume that we get through chat has grown. But I think the fact that there's somebody, there's a person on the end of that chat really, really has an appeal for customers. The amount of times we get the first message a customer comes through is 'are you a robot'? I said no no we're not a robot I'm a real human person and and that gives that gives customers the confidence that they're being listened to that the other person on the end of that chat um understands and can empathise and sympathise where needed. But that just shows that the uptake in technology over the years is grown and grown, so it's how do we how do we embrace that? How do we harness that moving forward? And do we need to change what we do in that digital space? So it's a it's from from a customer perspective digital will always be there. For us it's a channel of choice for the customer um and one that customers are adopting at pace so it's it's how do we how do we enhance that? How do we make it better for customers? How do we show them that we're a real person right when they come on? And if we need to, do we consider bots at any time?
So in terms of the sort of transformation that you're going through and that other sort of companies in the financial industry might be going through, what do you think the biggest shift is going to be in the next couple of years, sticking with that kind of technology digital space?
Yeah, I think it's just the tip of the iceberg at the minute and there's always new emerging technologies. Every other day I think there's a new company launching with some use of AI. Just kind of the industry embracing it is going to be where I can see it going. We can't be shying away from it because, like I say, it's here to stay. But I think there's definitely a generational shift with how AI is going to be used. And maybe I might be making assumptions here, but sometimes the younger generation might be more open to that. That use of AI when they need to get in touch with a company. So yeah, I think those kind of shifts are going to be what we kind of see and the kind of just companies embracing its use.
Yeah, I think you're spot on with that generational shift. I think there's lots of sort of memes and stuff at the moment, aren't there, about how millennials hate calling anyone and how they love to use a chat or yeah, an FAQ page or self-serve and not have to pick up the phone. Yeah I think over time that's definitely where a lot of the shift will come from I think you're quite right there. So for Atom bank specifically obviously we've touched a little bit about AI and and what you're sort of thinking of doing in that space with stuff like summarisation and having a look at that, um is there any sort of where else in your CX operation that you've sort of started thinking about AI and what you might do with it in future? So we've sort of we've dipped our toe a little bit in terms of using AI to summarise the feedback that we get from customers through our customer surveys. So we do have AI rules within Atom, and we've got a team down there who support us with that. And we've found that it's been really handy because obviously we get thousands of bits of customer feedback every day from the surveys, and being able to hand that over to the AI team and then push it through to come out with sort of emerging trends. What are the three things that we were really great at and customers love and are giving us great feedback on? And what are the three most mentioned developmental areas um and that's something that we hadn't considered actually when we when we started the customer surveys is what are we going to do with all this data? How do we process all this data? So it was almost it was almost uh like a coming together of minds where we haven't talked within the business around AI. And Emily sort of said, well, we could maybe leverage some of this. So we had a conversation with the team. And obviously what would take us hours and hours to troll through bits of feedback and data is done in 20 seconds. So I think for us, again, that's from a business perspective it's building the confidence, we can give it a little bit of information, see what it gives us back. How is it presented? What are the words that are used? All that sort of stuff. So we've started off really, really sort of cautiously to give us confidence that it can do the right thing for us. But for me, I think there's opportunities, like I've said, around the agent assist, etc., that we will look at utilised in the future. Because like Emily said, I don't think there's any, I don't think we're going to move backwards. This is all going to push forwards. So getting that verbatim feedback from customers, being able to share that with the business. I think tells the business something around AI and how we can utilise it and leverage it for good and to help drive change within the business. So I think that's the first the first thing we've done certainly from a customer perspective with AI. But I think from a business perspective, it's it's one of the first reportable things that we're doing within within Atom. So it's it's exciting to see that I can do stuff so quickly, that I can analyse that data so quickly and I think that's where the change will come from most businesses is being able to get data quickly, to get themes quickly, to be able to do that analysis, that would usually take somebody a long time to do. Yeah, and that's the Genesys with it, sort of speech and text analytics and things like that, you know, looking for sentiment and what customers are talking about fits in quite nicely with that. And it also, I think, as a starting place for your business on where you've started trialling this technology, it fits in with that, you know, key customer experience pillar that we were talking about. So you've started by how can we analyse what our customers are talking about and what they need and that fits beautifully really I think with your overall message yeah Yeah I think it goes goes back to as well that we're not looking to replace humans we we're using it as an enhancement as something to use along the side of our agent. It's it's not the case of that we're gonna get AI bots and just not have a contact centre anymore that's just not not where we see ourselves, it's more using it.
as an addition and getting things getting trends out of it is going to be like transformational for us because we can track we can track what our trends are, we're not just looking at it in at a point in time we can see historic what what's what customers need and kind of plan plan for the future really. Fantastic okay sort of round us off with the biggie get your bets in. What trends do you think are going to emerge over the next 12 months in the kind of contact centre CX space? I can get my crystal ball out.
I know. I think, obviously, we've spoken about it a lot today. It's going to be businesses working out how they can leverage AI to enhance customer service, to be able to analyse trends and other data within their businesses to then make decisions. And I don't think we can play down the importance that AI will bring over the next 12 months. I think we've seen where it's been in the last 12 months from looking at different products and services where you sort of a little bit, we need to see that mature a little bit. And within that 12 months, we're seeing real growth in those technology spaces and how it's used. So I think it's going to be a lot of decision-making this year for contact centres and customer experience managers of how can we leverage this to do more. Whether that's lowering a cost from a FTE perspective by implementing bots to assessing data on how we can drive business change. I think that's where the big debate is going to be. The conversation about AI is going to run on and I think it's going to grow. For us, does it fit with our model of being faster, smarter, simpler? Does that help us achieve one of those three things? For me, it's that digital summarisation. I don't want our team to spend less time with our customers, but little things like digital summarisation will help that wrap-up time. So it's using it not to take away that customer contact, but to help where it can at the start and end. And I think everybody will try and use AI to, very much I'm saying everybody, I would like to think that people start using it as we have to understand, to help understand customers more, because that should always be at the heart of everything you do within a within the cx space. And anyway that AI can assist that will be will be a positive one. Yeah I think having Kerv as well share other
customers journeys and share learning, share kind of what how people are using it is really helpful and that's going to help us to plan for the next 12 months too. We can get ideas, we can share ideas, share best practice. So yeah I think it's really exciting and I'm I'm just desperate to get get going with it yeah. It's a it's a confidence thing isn't it? I think being able to have those conversations with other customers and with yourself Sarah. You sort of go yeah well they're doing it, they've been successful with it, we we can dip our toe, we can have a little go at it. But i think that conversation is really important uh
and I think the things like the webinars from yourselves and Genesys, help bring communities together. That way you can do whatever they say, you can share best practice, you can understand the pain points that customers have gone through, maybe get around some of those issues that other people have had. And I think that's how everyone will grow by collaborating across businesses, across industries, to understand how they can leverage this new technology.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I had a really good chat there about quite a few different points, your journey in particular and thoughts on the wider industry. So wonderful. Thank you so much.
No problem. Thanks for having us.
0sec
44sec
3min
7min
9min
11min
16min
17min
21min
24min
26min
29min
30min
Share
Embed
You may also like
