As one of the world’s leading banks with over 70 million customers, BBVA is an innovator in its sector. BBVA Perú relies on a cloud-based contact center to support its customer care processes.

Immediately after the President of Perú decreed a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 15, the bank’s contact center experienced a dramatic increase in customer calls. Understanding customer fears and operating with a core value of “the customer comes first,” BBVA Perú immediately initiated changes to better handle this dramatic increase in call volume. Relying on its cloud-based platform, the bank successfully quickly adapted to maintain reliable customer service.

Swift Action Ensures Agent Safety

Having a solid cloud-based contact center platform in place enabled BBVA Perú to make quick and necessary changes.

“One of the first things we focused on was how to move agents to work from home,” said David Muñoz Rey, CTO. “In fact, there wasn’t even much to think about because, with our Genesys Cloud™ platform, we simply had to create an RTC webphone and remote phones. It did not demand a long time and once the staff was trained, the quality process was reviewed and the operational risk was valued, we could have people working from home in an agile and fast way

“The bank experienced an increase in the number of concurrent calls during the early days of the pandemic, this number was the double compared to its normal peak call volume. At the same time, the number of available agents dropped precipitously — and it was possible to recover its operation with the launch of telework. “We continue to work day-by-day to increase the capacity and levels of service that our customers are used to”, said Patricia Novak, Head of Customer Wellness.

The bank also created self-service functionality in the IVR to enable customers to get answers to their questions without having to rely on an agent. This helped mitigate the high volume of calls.

“That has worked well for us, too,” said Giovanny Gomez, Channels Architecture and Technologies – Contact Center. “We managed to reduce the average waiting time by around 50%.”

BBVA-Perú also implemented callback capability for high-value customers so they didn’t have to wait on hold, which customers greatly appreciated. All necessary back- and front-end improvements took just four days to implement.

Keeping Focus on Customers

BBVA Perú focused on its voice channel because the company believed that customers would want to interact with a person, as they do in a branch.

“The other digital channels have a lot of potential, of course, but many times the customer wants to listen and have the peace of mind of knowing that there’s a person there to help solve their problem,” said Patricia Novak, Head of Customer Wellness. “The response we generated in this contingency was always based on thinking about the customer.”

The bank has noticed that, despite the fears and pressure caused by the COVID-19 crisis, customers and employees alike are demonstrating a great deal of empathy for others.

“Our customers don’t mind hearing a dog barking or other background noise; they understand that our agents are doing their best to keep working and help customers,” said Patricia Novak, Head of Customer Wellness “The same is true for internal meetings: We sometimes hear children in the background, but today, that has just become normal.”

Maintaining Performance Excellence

BBVA Perú has experienced excellent performance from the start — from its Genesys Cloud platform and its agents. For example, agent productivity has remained unchanged, even as agents have moved to telework mode.

The crisis has prompted other changes that will benefit the bank in the long run — from adding a pandemic scenario to its business continuity plan going forward to facilitating work-from-home procedures for many of its employees.

When the COVID-19 crisis hit, BBVA Perú wanted to do everything it could to support its customers. Thanks to a reliable cloud-based contact center platform and agents who have demonstrated flexibility and caring, the bank has proven to its customers that they can continue to communicate with the bank whenever necessary.

Learn more about how Genesys Ready Response can help you quickly set up a cloud contact center to avoid disruption during critical times.