Building proactive banking models

Fulfilling customer requests wasn’t enough

DenizBank Financial Services Group is one of the largest Turkish private banks, with 690 branches and more than 12,000 employees. To stand out, it wants to be the best in efficiency, cost and process management, customer experience (CX), and employee satisfaction.

As an industry leader, DenizBank knew that simply fulfilling customer requests wasn’t enough. So, it leveraged the rich features and open architecture built into the Genesys Engage™ on-premises solution to create a unique proactive service model.

The bank successfully integrated multiple touchpoints, including inbound, outbound, chat, video calls and self-service. And by orchestrating automation with a human touch, the bank incorporated a virtual voice assistant to spot and call customers who needed help. It also finely tuned call routing to deepen personal relationships with customers.

Predicting customer needs with a human touch

Working across departments, the bank created DENIZ, its virtual voice assistant built on the Genesys Voice Platform, by collecting samples of how customers talk when using IVR. Harnessing natural language processing and voice recognition technology, DENIZ doesn’t just pick up on words; it analyzes the customer’s previous interactions across other channels to understand the intent behind a question.

Previously, DenizBank had been using touch-tone, directed dialog IVR systems with complicated menu trees. “That wasn’t popular with customers,” said Esra Turhan, Contact Center Senior Vice President at DenizBank. “We couldn’t work out why they were calling or harvest that data for future improvements. But we knew competitors were adapting IVR for call steering. That’s why we chose to go a step further.”

DenizBank wanted to strike a balance between meeting its growing customer expectations and reducing its costs. “The difference between DENIZ and other assistant services is that it’s proactive,” Turhan added. “If a customer is having trouble with their PIN or needs a higher credit limit, it doesn’t wait until the customer gets in touch ― it calls them.”

DENIZ processes around 4 million inbound and outbound calls a month — increasing service efficiency and boosting brand perception. Customers are given a natural, intuitive experience that’s just like talking to a live human. Using tools such as speech analytics to detect emotion, DENIZ can also tell when a caller is getting frustrated and assist them. If that means transferring a call, DENIZ provides the agent with a summary of the conversation so customers don’t have to repeat themselves.

An innovative personal service experience

DenizBank portfolio managers look after high-value accounts. Previously, they couldn’t always give clients their full attention because they had to deal with general incoming calls. “Our goal was to get closer to them and solve problems before they became an issue,” said Turhan.

Now, thanks to Genesys intelligent routing, high-value customers are normally served by their dedicated portfolio manager in the contact center — regardless of which phone number or channel they use. For instance, if they call or initiate a chat the conversation is automatically intercepted and re-routed. And those interactions often take place over a video call for a more personal face-to-face experience.

“As soon as a customer enters a local branch and takes a ticket from the system it notifies Genesys Outbound Contact Manager, which places a call with their portfolio manager,” added Turhan. “They then phone the customer’s mobile to see if there’s anything they can help with. Similarly, they are alerted if their customer has trouble using their card in a store or difficulty accessing their online account. Our personal service follows them around ― a first for Turkish banking.”

Great for customers, employees and stakeholders

Capable of handling 70 different transactions, DENIZ has been adopted by 60% of the bank’s customers who call the contact center. The bank has experienced a 69% reduction in average wait times and a 30-second drop in AHT. These service improvements have contributed to a 40% increase in customer satisfaction.

Eased workloads allow staff to add the human touch where it matters most, while still meeting their productivity targets. “The synergy between our agents and DENIZ-powered processes is evolving into a most exciting partnership,” Turhan said. “For example, it automates the removal of simple repetitive requests and releases our agents for more fulfilling work. Our employee satisfaction rate is 70%, and we’ve seen a 10% increase in employee engagement.”

Around 13% of sales are made through DENIZ without ever having to route through an agent — equating to an eight-figure increase in customer credit limits to date. A faster speed-of-answer has also reduced phone charges, while lower attrition rates are reducing recruitment costs.

“We’ve increased satisfaction by engaging with customers at the right time, on the right channel and with the right-skilled person,” concluded Turhan. “We couldn’t have achieved these results without Genesys.”