RPA – An Efficient and Powerful Tool to Enhance Customer Service and Processing in Banking

ICompetition in the banking sector has intensified with the digitalisation of the sector allowing for the emergence of micro and digital banking services. Banks are constantly on the lookout to streamline their processes in order to improve their profit margins. The quality of customer service and processing offered by banks is a key determinant of their success in the market. Consumer expectations are gradually rising, and with a plethora of options available, not catering to the expectations could prove disastrous for a bank's revenue.

Banks are leveraging the power of Robotic Process Automation in order to exceed customer expectations and gain a competitive edge in the market. The smart system is enabling banks to automate an assortment of customer service procedures allowing them to respond to customer queries and requests in no time. Here are the different ways in which RPA is helping banks enhance their customer service and processing:

Some of the critical processes which can be automated to reduce costs substantially are:

Customer Service

Customer service is vital to a bank’s reputation and impacts its revenue in the long run. With RPA, banks can significantly reduce the turnaround time for answering and addressing customer queries and reduce the need for human intervention in the process. Queries such as account information, balance, and application status can be automatically answered using rule-based logic allowing bank employees to focus on more critical tasks at hand. Additionally, advancements in artificial intelligence and natural language processing is allowing banks to replace human operators with chatbots which can effectively comprehend customer queries and mimic a response similar to a human employee.

Solving Basic Consumer Queries and Requests

Banks receive voluminous customer queries ranging from lost cards to frauds each day and bank employees often find themselves under the immense pressure of quickly resolving the requests to adhere to the high customer service standards. In addition, addressing each query manually can substantially hamper other priority tasks and can lead to significant errors. Giving out erroneous information could significantly tarnish a bank’s reputation and hurt its revenue.

With Robotic Process Automation, banks can easily automate the processing of repetitive queries and tasks such as account information, bank balance queries, and loan status applications. Automating these tasks frees up time for bank employees to address higher priority customer queries that require immediate attention. Consequently, RPA is helping banks significantly reduce the turnaround time for resolving customer queries and enhancing their experience.

Integration of Legacy Systems Aiding in Quick Resolution of Complex Queries

Generally, bank employees use a combination of various legacy systems to gather information on their customers. Mergers and acquisitions are common in banking and lead to the addition of more legacy systems for bank employees to deal with. When addressing a customer service request, managing these legacy systems can considerably increase the turnaround time for resolution. Longer turnaround time for addressing customer requests can lead to low customer retention and acquisition rates. However, banks are realising the shortcomings in the traditional system and are using Robotic Process Automation to streamline it. RPA can work across these legacy systems and provide the required information in one place. Automation is also improving the accuracy of these systems by eliminating the chances of errors that might creep in due to manual processing of data across platforms. These systems can help banks resolve the most complex customer queries quickly and efficiently.

Credit Card and Loan Processing

Availability of affordable internet and the advent of sophisticated technology is allowing consumers to file in loan and credit card applications from the comfort of their home. With the digitalisation of the financial sector, consumers expect quick processing of their credit card and loan applications. The traditional method for these financial requests involves gathering data from multiple systems for conducting various credit and background checks. Banks can easily cut down the time of processing these applications from weeks to days to even hours using robotic automation processing. The system allows quick, efficient, and easy gathering of information for banks to conduct the required checks. In addition, RPA can help banks substantially cut down on the time taken for copying information from one system to another.

Other areas where RPA can help banks in providing superior services are KYC processing and account closures. Consumer expectations are gaining prominence in the banking sector with the financial institutions continuously modifying their procedures to ensure customer satisfaction. RPA is an efficient system that can help banking institutions keep pace with growing consumer expectations.