Colonial First State sees 40 percent of customer interactions move to web messaging

Colonial First State (CFS) has seen 40 percent of customer interactions have moved to web messaging following an overhaul of its service centre.

Marissa Powe, executive director of retirement and growth, Colonial First State told a Genesys Xperience Sydney audience the move “did surprise us” however, the efficiency created by the move “works really well”.

Powe said part of its divestment from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia was moving out of its IT infrastructure.

“As we got into the cloud for our call centre and telephony platform we had the keys to our own house, which was pretty exciting.”

“We didn't know what to do first, so it was good to sit down as a team and decide what was our roadmap and we were launching our edge investment platform, which is a really big investment for us back in February.”

The team had to choose what the “best features that we could roll out at the time” with web messaging and cobrowse the two features “that were quite differentiators for us in the market,” according to Powe. 

“With cobrowse, when you're talking to a customer, you couldn't see what they were doing live.

“What you've have up is have a copy of the screens up and talk to them, but imagine rolling out a new investment platform to 1000s of advisors. Just that ability to screen share and train them, be able to point, take over the screen and really train them live.

“That was exceptional for us and it's a key feature as we roll out new enhancements with the platform.”

Powe said as 40 percent of interactions shift to web messaging, advisors “just leave it open and just come to us when they need something and it's that constant message that’s open that works really well.

Powe added other capabilities agents love are gamification and leaderboards as its “great way to just drive to performance and have individual one on one conversations”.

“The screen recording was a great one for us as well because at the start we are like, this would be good for quality checking and it really was because sometimes agents might forget to do something or forget to send an email, so we're able to check on that.

“But also, more importantly and more powerful was in our induction and our trainings,” Powe said.

“Superannuation can be quite complex. We all have regulations that we all have to meet. That ability to show users how to get the most efficient way to come in and out of the systems, that they have to access but do it the most efficient way, we're using that in our training”.

Customer sentiment readings have also improved as CFS no longer has to rely on member surveys, which could take up to three weeks.

“Now we can call them back the next day if we see from the sentiment perspective, that the call hasn't been that good one.”

Powe added given the additional visibility its people can complete “more work from home”.

“We've become more flexible, which is helpful. Now, we're sitting at 20 percent attrition, which we're happy with and the agents have just loved the new features and the new system,” Powe said.