“Right now, banks are falling short on both fronts: struggling to deliver effortless digital experiences while also failing to provide reassuring human guidance when consumers need it.”
Last month, Jim Marous, Owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report, posted this on his social media.
In doing so, he highlights how new financial services (FinServ) customers want it all: the easy, automated digital experiences and the comforting human advice.
However, these two demands are divergent, and it’s tricky for FinServ providers to do both in their contact centers.
Thankfully, the following three trends shed some light on how customer service leaders can get the balance right in 2025.
1. AI Use Goes Cradle-to-Grave
Consider the contact center’s core demand drivers. Some will follow a predictable path, and these are ripe for automation. Nevertheless, some issues require consultation.
Recognizing this, Torrin Webb, Customer Experience Strategist at Nationwide, recommends splitting contact reasons into two buckets: “transactional” and “consultative”.
In conversation with CX Today, he noted how his team then optimizes its contact center journeys by either adding automation or better-enabling consultation, depending on the bucket.
By doing so, Webb is ensuring that critical balance between the customer’s desire for both effortless service and human reassurance – as Marous underscored.
Virtual agents are becoming increasingly adept at handling those transactional contacts. Yet, for the latter, brands can optimize the customer journey to add opportunities for consultation.
Crucially, that requires a more supportive, informed contact center agent.
Thankfully, AI can help here, too. It can assist the consultative agent from before they accept the call to after they hang up.
Let’s start before the call. Consider a virtual agent that gathers the customer’s intent and pertinent information upfront. This can then pass through to the agent before they pick up, so they’re better equipped to lead the conversation.
Next, think about how AI can aid the live agent in-call, fetching information so they can stay focused on the customer. As Jason Griffin, Principal Solution Consultant at Five9, said:
“Instead of agents flipping through a manual or looking up product criteria, AI can provide guidance in real-time, whether it’s for claims, insurance policies, or other offerings.”
“These applications can also help agents identify upsell opportunities, such as loans or account upgrades, and present them effectively.”
Finally, consider after call work (ACW) automation. By auto-summarizing conversations and auto-tagging intent, agents spend less time typing notes and more time engaging with customers.
“The key is integrating AI throughout the customer journey rather than using it as a siloed tool,” concluded Griffin. In doing so, contact centers can deliver that cradle-to-grave assisted AI service that better supports the consultative FinServ agent of tomorrow.
2. Omnichannel Journey Orchestration Gets Real
Craving that effortless digital experience, 73 percent of consumers expect a seamless transition between channels. But, only 13 percent think their financial institutions meet that expectation.
Authentication represents a huge hurdle here, as customers must often re-authenticate themselves as they switch between channels.
As such, for high-risk communications, FinServ contact centers may consider: what’s the best channel to handle this customer journey?
From there, they can – again using a virtual agent – immediately pass the customer to that channel and orchestrate an experience with a one-step verification process.
That intent-level orchestration routing will continue to gain momentum as more FinServ contact centers move to the cloud and compose experiences that blend modalities, AI, and the human touch.
Many contact center vendors recognize this as the future and are getting ahead of the curve. For instance, Five9 acquired Acqueon earlier this year to create an “orchestration engine for every interaction across the entire customer journey.”
Yet, as contact centers blend those channels, they must be able to track context as the customer shifts between them. Alongside multiple authentications, that’s a significant pain point.
Thankfully, AI is again helping here. “We can summarize live and automated voice interactions, chat transcripts, and other communications, feeding that data into a CRM,” said Griffin. “The CRM becomes the single source of truth.
“The key is making all data accessible and actionable in real-time, regardless of the scenario.”
So, even if a customer moves from a virtual to a live agent, for example, all relevant data transfers smoothly, and the agent can pick up the conversation from where it left off.
Indeed, if the customer returns the next day, their information should already be in the CRM, so they don’t have to repeat their issue. In all sectors, that’s a huge source of frustration.
3. The Contact Center Becomes Part of a More Connected CX Ecosystem
Siloed data – whether in CRM systems, ERPs, or elsewhere – creates considerable integration challenges. In financial services, this is further complicated by GDPR and strict data regulations.
Another issue is the lack of advanced analytics tools. Without them, it’s tricky to use data effectively, which leads to missed opportunities for personalization, inaccurate decision-making, and – ultimately – higher costs.
However, bringing all these data silos together, combined with advanced analytics, enables a new level of personalization and insight that fosters cross-function CX collaboration.
There are a couple of new technologies FinServ contact centers can apply here. For those looking to reimagine the contact center environment, a unified CCaaS-CRM offering is one to consider.
Five9 is developing such solutions with Salesforce and ServiceNow, centralizing data and tools from the two central customer service platforms.
Another approach is to leverage Aceyus by Five9, which takes data from various CX platforms before building it into custom reports and visuals.
Yet, most pertinently, Aceyus delivers that data downstream to a customer’s data lake, enabling CX teams to mine insights and create curated new data sets on top of cross-functional data.
That can bring many benefits, especially in regard to aiding the contact center’s data strategy. As Griffin noted:
“We’re focused on making data accessible and shareable within the necessary security frameworks. That way, it can be used to connect systems, improve customer journeys, and enhance experiences for both customers and employees.”
That’s critical as data is the driver of everything AI. Whether it’s insight generation, AI Agents, or intelligent process automation, it all starts with accessible, usable data.
More Insight Into the Finserv Contact Center
While debating trends offers plenty of food for thought, the best way to envision the FinServ contact center of tomorrow is by learning from the people who are building it.
Recognizing this, Five9 contacted several FinServ contact center customers who shared their transformation strategies and results so far.
These customers included Central Bank, SumUp, and a leading FinServ provider based in Latin America. Each summarized their story as part of the Five9 2024 Customer Success Book.
The Success Book also includes various other case studies for integrating the CX ecosystem, reimagining employee experiences, and – of course – harnessing AI.
Alternatively, FinServ contact centers can follow this link to learn more about Five9’s industry-specific CCaaS innovations.
Having signed its “largest deal ever” earlier this year with a prominent US bank, serving 70MN customers, FinServ is a sector Five9 knows a lot about!
