With the shift to digital showing no signs of a slowdown, banks are challenged to take a more proactive, strategic approach to meet customer expectations. Those that successfully adapt and leverage new technologies gain a competitive advantage and increase customer loyalty.

Westpac NZ, one of New Zealand’s “big four” banks propelled their digital transformation with the goal of becoming one of the world’s great services companies. Yet, their contact centre’s functionality was limited; it had no callback, recording capabilities or ability for customisation. With legacy, on-premises technology hindering their vision for customer experience excellence, they searched for a technology partner that could help them get to the next level. And they knew that a cloud contact centre could be a significant competitive differentiator.

“We wanted to zig while the world was zagging,” says Jason Lock, Head of Contact Centres for Westpac NZ. “And, the truth is not many banks are using true cloud-hosted telephony platforms.”

After extensive research, Westpac New Zealand chose the Genesys® PureCloud® platform to enable them to achieve their customer service innovation goals and continue to change their game in four simple steps: deploy, test, change and repeat.

Deploy
With an agile cloud model, the PureCloud platform enables Westpac NZ to drive their customer service innovation. This began with a rollout to the bank’s outbound teams within two months. Next, it was deployed to 500 users across the business. And, they’re continuing to innovate quickly on new capabilities when needed.

Test
A cloud-based solution keeps the experience seamless for Westpac NZ banking customers throughout testing and implementation of new value-add concepts. Innovations are tested on a small scale to learn outcomes from a customer perspective with minimum risk. This means consuming innovation rapidly and staying one step ahead of the competition.

Change
One of the most challenging aspects of digital innovation is change management. Even if technology simplifies processes, employees who use it need training and support. For Westpac New Zealand, the changeover was fast and seamless, thanks to the easy-to-learn, intuitive interface. In fact, it only required a 15- minute training session for each person to get up to speed on how to use the PureCloud platform versus the old system.

Repeat
Innovation is not a one-time project. For lasting success, it’s vital to continuously build for the future. Westpac NZ is getting out in front of customer needs with PureCloud. Because they no longer have to work through extensive business cases, logistics and processes of a technical change, they can simply switch on solutions when they need them. This has been a major paradigm shift that enables Westpac NZ to be incredibly responsive to customer needs and positions them on the leading edge of innovation.

Win
With their goal of becoming one of the world’s great service companies, Westpac NZ is shifting metrics, as well as tactics and technology. Instead of using average handle time as their principal metric, they’ve pivoted to using Net Promoter Score (NPS). It’s no longer about focusing on the length of calls. Instead, they create brand advocates by being better equipped to meet the needs of customers.

“We’ve seen great improvements in our survey ratings,” says Paula Mullan, Senior Manager Contact Centre Transformation for Westpac NZ. “Customers feel more valued at the end of the call, which is a major contributor to raising our overall Net Promoter Score.”

Recognising their successful digital transformation, Westpac NZ was named a Genesys 2018 Customer Innovation Award Winner for Best Cloud Migration and/or Deployment. Learn more about all 2018 category winners, and stay tuned for upcoming details on how to submit a nomination for the 2019 Customer Innovation Awards. Read the complete Westpac customer story.