CUSTOMER PROFILE
THE CHALLENGE
U.S. Bank sought to accurately understand its customer experience, in order to better serve its clients, as well as to optimize operations and improve employee performance. This required identifying pain points, emerging issues and hot topics as they arose from the analysis of interactions between customers and the bank.
U.S. Bank was using quality assurance reviews and customer surveys to attempt to capture the information sought. However, in practice, the company was only capturing and reviewing about 20 to 25% of all customer interactions. Jason Bettini, U.S. Bank’s Customer Analytics Leader, likened the process to “fishing with large webbed nets,” in which detailed, comprehensive, and actionable data was being missed. A large blind spot, entirely unaccounted for, was unstructured data and feedback from clientele.
“We needed a net with much more intricate webbing,” Bettini said, “to help us capture the other 80% of interactions that were getting away.”
Even when the “large webbed net” yielded what appeared to be valuable high-level insights, a deeper dive into captured interactions was a cumbersome process. Countless hours would have to be spent manually searching for relevant calls, listening to them, and trying to piece together causes and trends. The same time-consuming effort was necessary to identify and track coaching opportunities or best practices.
The overall result was a very partial, if not wholly inaccurate, understanding of the causes of identified customer experience issues and their true business impact. In addition, due to the lack of comprehensive and consistent data, it was impossible to get an accurate measure of the value of coaching, operational modifications, or personnel changes.
THE SOLUTION
U.S. Bank sought a solution that would provide comprehensive interaction capture, including all structured and unstructured data. The solution also had to provide insights from deep-dive analytics, rapidly, and with easy-to-use interactivity.
NICE Nexidia Analytics was found to have the most omnichannel capabilities, providing sentiment analytics for both speech- and text-based communications. This functionality allows the NICE solution to handle sophisticated queries and reports, including pain point root causes, trends, and churn. Nexidia also offered the bank’s analysts centralized administration and customizable reports.
Holistically capturing data and drawing insights, the NICE solution bridged the gaps in U.S. Bank’s understanding of its customers’ experience. As Bettini put it, “Nexidia became our large, intricately webbed net.”
Real - world insights for optimal implementation
U.S. Bank and NICE determined a four-month timeline for implementation of Nexidia Analytics, with parallel work on the technical and functional aspects of deployment. Technical teams worked on infrastructure and functional teams set up speech analytics parameters, call mapping, platform design, user strategy, and business objectives. NICE consultants were always closely involved, sharing industry best practices and client-specific guidance.
U.S. Bank set up a dedicated Speech Analytics Team, combining Nexidia experts and analysts from within the company’s lines of business, contributing invaluable knowledge of the bank and relevant real-world experience. As a result, each business line leader was also able to customize user-specific access to the Nexidia solution, as well as training in its use, suiting their individual operational needs. For collaboration among the diverse lines of business during the Nexidia implementation, a Governance Committee was established.
The business line leaders became strong advocates promoting user adoption within their respective areas. To support the process and to promote ongoing engagement, the Analytics Team began sending a weekly “playbook” to all stakeholders with up-to-date information, lessons learned, and tips to keep the solution relevant. With these steps, U.S. Bank has successfully created a constant circle of communication between the business lines and the Analytics Team, which in turn continues to drive adoption.
90 days, over $83,000 in savings
With fruitful collaboration among NICE representatives, the bank’s Analytics Teams, and its business line leadership, U.S. Bank met the tight deadline they had set. The first areas targeted for improvement – on over 20 separate analytics projects - were average handle time (AHT), call avoidance, volume reduction, and dead air root cause.
Within just the first 90 days, the benefits began rolling in. U.S. Bank has already realized over $83,000 in savings, the equivalent of 2.01 FTE, and identified a potential $2.6 million in cost savings across the enterprise.
The detailed results achieved in focused U.S. Bank customer experience improvement projects include:
- 1.58 FTE, or the equivalent of $65,000, saved with fewer referrals to the customer’s branch.
- 0.43 FTE, or the equivalent of $18,000, saved in optimized fraud-prevention adherence.
- 2.38 FTE saved with reduced “dead air” during customer calls.
- 17.58 FTE saved with reduced AHT on longer-than-average calls.
An evolving playbook
The rapid productivity successes seen by U.S. Bank are in large part the result of the pre-launch focus on preparedness in each business line. With that in mind, the bank’s Governance Committee continues to meet monthly, maintaining on ongoing dialogue on departmental hot topics and best practices.
In addition, the weekly Analytics Team playbook continues to evolve each week, with content ranging from information on user access and training, to the Analytics Team’s prioritization of new requests from the field. Going forward, the playbook will also share data on realized cost savings, highlighting the success of recent projects, and lessons learned, as well as other identified or expected savings.
