Banking Trends 2014

Self Service

The top trend for banking in 2014 will be to provide more customer access and functionality for self-serve options. The predominant discussion regarding technology focuses on whether banks can match customers’ want and need for mobile applications that address their changing requirements.  Many banks are providing solutions to customers through remote applications that their staff cannot perform at their own banking centers and call centers. Making this consistent will become a necessary technology in 2014.  Tablet applications will be advancing to point-of-sale staff in banks so that the face of the bank is uniform and not on two generations, as it is viewed by customers today. There has been much discussion about a cloud-based design and, if this  strategic direction is selected, the shift will come quickly.

Identity 2.0

The most important bank tech trend will be the adoption of “Identity 2.0”—augmenting the contact center’s authentication process with predictive analytics across voice biometric, account, call and other metadata. Verifying identity becomes not just a fixed question-and-answer process, but a data science across multiple factors. By analyzing an interaction via a combination of “voiceprint” screening and other predictive factors, financial institutions can stop more attacks and fraudulent transactions, better identify and track known fraudsters, and improve the authentication process for legitimate customers.

 The Customer Service Experience

This will include continued enhancements to online dashboards that place greater control in the hands of customers. Gone are the days of banks determining what and how information is presented to customers at the point of login to online banking sites. Through the use of customization tools and widgets, customers will determine their experience and have faster and easier access to the information they choose. The banks will also have their own dashboards better informing them of customer needs, profitability, and product usage so they can better serve them. The ways in which information is presented will also advance. Finally, as mobile payment capabilities advance in consumer banking, the corporate side of the bank will play catch up with new mobile offerings for both the smartphone and tablet.

Advanced Analytics  Customers and  Business

Armed with this information, banks have an opportunity to significantly impact the success of their marketing efforts to both new and existing customers. Social media is one component of the Big Data equation. The key to successfully utilizing social data lies in transforming it into truly actionable insights by layering in analytics and combining it with other sources of data. Social media, Big Data, and Predictive Analytics are some of the forces reshaping the way that bank marketers think about their roles.

 

Workforce Scientist-Data & Psychology

 

Workforce scientists gather real data to identify which personality traits would make a candidate psychologically-predisposed to being an ideal employee for a specific work environment.

“Analytics allows business operators to continuously challenge assumptions about how to expand and manage their workforces profitably,” says Dr. David Ostberg, vice president of Workforce Science at Evolv, a San Francisco-based data analysis and workforce probability firm.

Evolv’s researchers have discovered that many traits commonly screened for in the hiring process don’t accurately predict job performance. For example, their analyzed data from 21,115 call center agents and discovered that “previous employment duration is a very weak predictor of how long a new hire will stay on a job.” Instead, the data shows that a person’s creativity, curiosity and ability to multitask correlate more strongly with how long they might stay on the job. Although call centers each have unique requirements, most traits identified as predictors of retention are relevant to all of them.

In order to assess whether candidates possess these predictive traits, companies must employ a more psychologically-based approach to hiring. In 2012, Transcom, a global call center operator with over 30,000 customer service specialists, hired Evolv, a company that uses predictive analytics to reduce attrition.

This involved giving candidates a realistic preview of the demanding nature of the position, then assessing their competency using actual job simulations. Additionally, they asked candidates “forced choice questions” that require more self-reflection. For example, the answer to this forced question would tell recruiters whether the applicant is curious by nature:

With an analytical approach and a more psychology-based approach to hiring, this call center was able to transform its hiring process, reduce attrition, and reduce costs. By using  data analysis technology and workforce psychology, call center operators now have intelligent tools to help them determine what type of people succeed in call center environments.