Financial Call Centres: The 2023 Guide

Explore the crucial role of finance call centers in the financial services industry. Understand their operation, importance, and the future trends shaping this sector.

Understanding Finance Call Centres: A Comprehensive 2023 Guide

The financial sector is estimated to make up 20-25% of the world economy. According to one set of stats, in the U.S. alone, the finance and insurance industry adds $2 trillion to the GDP, and accounts for a total of 7.4% of the total GDP.

The financial services vertical isn’t just relegated to retail banks, wealth management, and similar services – the sector also includes insurance, fintech, and other industries, with approximately 539,447 private establishments and over 1,000 government establishments.

Most companies in this area interact with their customers via the finance call centre. It therefore makes sense that with so much at stake, the finance call centre is optimized to deliver on the promises and potential of the finance industry.

In this article, we’ll speak to a few basics around finance call centres, their functions, the role of technology in finance call centres, their evolution, and some solutions for finance call centres.

What Is a Financial Call Centre?

A financial call centre is comprised of frontline teams that handle inbound and outbound calls with customers and potential customers of financial institutions.

Call centres differ widely depending on the finance call centre type, the company, and the part of the industry. The finance call centre is a very specific case and differs from other call centres, with its own challenges and opportunities.

For example, cross-skilling is critical in a finance call centre. Finance call centre associates are expected to be educated about how to address different types of inquiries, as well as constantly changing rules and regulations.

When interacting with customers, agents must remain compliant, while also being empathetic and building customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Key Functions of a Finance Call Centre

What are the key functions of a finance call centre? These functions include:

Customer Support

This includes addressing customer needs related to financial products and services. Finance call centre agents answer questions about bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, or any other financial offering.

Account Management

Related to customer support, account management for finance call centres more specifically deals with areas including account updates, balance inquiries, transaction disputes, and account closures.

Payment Assistance

From making payments to requesting extensions or setting up a payment plan, many finance call centres will deal with these types of sensitive transactions.

Security (Including Fraud Prevention)

Finance call centres play a central role in fraud prevention and security. They monitor and identify potentially fraudulent activities, such as unauthorized transactions or suspicious account behavior, and call centre agents are often trained to detect and report fraudulent incidents, guide customers on security best practices, and assist in resolving fraud-related issues.

Financial Guidance and Advice

A finance call centre can offer financial guidance and advice to customers, within certain parameters and subject to specific laws and regulations. This can include general information on financial planning, budgeting, and saving strategies, or more specific information on particular products.

Technical Support

Like almost every other industry today, many customers in the finance industry are interacting with companies through websites or apps. Technical support is therefore a critical part of any finance call centre operation.

Perhaps the most important function of a finance call centre is to give customers a great experience. Getting this right is where the magic of CX (customer experience) and EX (employee experience) come together – in other words, by empowering and engaging your finance call centre agents, you’re likely to see many more satisfied customers.

One of the easiest and most effective ways of achieving this is by using technology that’s purpose-built for finance call centres.

The Role of Technology in Finance Call Centres

With the volume of calls that finance call centres have to deal with, and the potential that technology has to identify weaknesses and opportunities in the finance call centre environment, it makes sense that technology has a central role to play in running an effective finance call centre.

Some key areas in which technology is improving the effectiveness and efficiency of finance call centres include:

Call Monitoring and Analytics

This technology can capture and analyze multiple data points from calls. From more technical elements such as wait times and call durations, to value-adding analytics around sentiment, trends, and common issues. It can also be used for finance call centre agent feedback and training.

Compliance and Security

The financial industry is heavily regulated, with call centre inquiries being a major part of this. Technology can assist financial call centres tremendously, for example when it comes to authentication, encryption, and security.

Cross-Channel Integration

Today’s finance call centres are not only about voice communication; interactions with customers can take place on web-based chat, mobile-based messaging channels, and multiple other platforms.

While these are examples of how technology impacts the technical elements of finance call centre interactions, it’s the impact technology can have on the call centre agents themselves where the effect is really felt.

How Finance Call Centres Enhance Customer Experience

Finance call centres can enhance the customer experience in a number of ways. Of course, there are the “low-hanging fruit” such as reducing wait times or providing effective self-service options that allow customers to transact or get answers to their questions quickly.

However, it’s by investing in their frontline teams that financial services companies can really make the biggest impact.

By providing timely, pro-active coaching and feedback, enabling ongoing learning, making data come alive, and gamifying the experience for finance call centre associates, organizations can ensure the highest level of compliance while building customer happiness and loyalty.

Future Trends: The Evolution of Finance Call Centres

The finance call centre is evolving. Some of the exciting trends in the industry include:

• Latest gamification platforms being used to reduce attrition, increase motivation, and boost engagement
• Moving rapidly from being viewed as a cost center to becoming a profit center
• Seeing finance call centre agents as brand ambassadors
• AI assisting agents by increasing personalization, satisfying customers, and providing ongoing value
• Cloud-based software supporting decentralized and distributed workforces

These trends – and many others – are reshaping the finance call centre industry.

Call Centre Solutions for the Finance Sector

Our finance call centre solution is already used by some of the world’s biggest players in the space to dramatically improve both the employee and customer experience.

This offers the following unmatched features and benefits:

Actionable, Dynamic KPIs

Leverage performance data to offer real-time performance visibility for your employees, making KPIs actionable and employees motivated to achieve their goals.

Targeted Microlearning

By continuously educating employees and providing personalized and targeted microlearning, finance call centres can mitigate risk, while maximizing upselling and cross-selling opportunities – and get an edge over competitors.

Augmented Coaching

Coaching and feedback mechanisms build stronger bonds between managers and associates and help boost performance and engagement while reducing attrition. AI-powered coaching insights take these capabilities to a whole new level.

AI-powered Content Creation

With the sheer amount of frontline training materials needed for finance call centres (including training around compliance updates) it can be tough for admins to create the needed materials in a timely manner. The platform’s AI Microlearning capability enables admins to quickly create learning materials at scale.

Quality Management Tools

Quality assurance is a big part of the finance call centre agent experience. But this process has largely been disconnected, inconsistent, and static, has lacked a feedback loop, and is overall not conducive to optimizing potential value.

The platform’s quality assurance capability enables organizations improve processes with customized forms, providing personalized feedback, and identifying coaching and learning opportunities in the flow of work.

Full Suite of Engagement Tools

With a gamified approach, employees can earn points, level up, participate in team competitions and dynamic leaderboards, earn milestone badges, and more.

With Centrical, clients experience a 20% increase in resolution rates, 30% lower early attrition, and a 10% average increase in CSAT scores.

Summary: Finance Call Centres Can Drive Business Success

In this article, we saw how finance call centres can be optimized to become key drivers of business success when leveraged correctly. Below are a few key takeaways:

• Finance call centres have unique requirements for agents, including continuous cross-skilling, upskilling, and staying current on new products of regulatory changes
• The finance call centre experience is evolving for both employees and customers, largely thanks to technology and a focus on the employee experience
• By investing in the frontline employee experience, finance call centres will enhance and elevate the customer experience, improving KPIs such as CSAT
• Advanced gamification and incorporating AI can provide personalized coaching and interactive KPI progress achievement, offer easy-to-digest microlearning, as well as offering a comprehensive suite of engagement tools for finance call centres