Dial Into Digital: Transforming Banking with Integrated Communications

Many FIs struggle with sunsetting communications systems and outdated technology, causing a disconnect across all channels. Integrating communication platforms will enable FIs to streamline processes among employees, customers/members, and partners and create a second-to-none customer experience. Engage FI's Stacey McClure addresses the pain points FIs face in this arena and explains why NOW is the time to act and transform.

Transcript

Virginia Heyburn (03:52.325) 

Stacey brings a wealth of knowledge in both training and contact center services, and I can't wait for you to hear directly from her. 

Stacey, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here. 

Stacey Mcclure (04:09.73) 

I'm excited to be here. Thank you, Virginia. 

Virginia Heyburn (04:11.983) 

Thank you. And can you expand on my very brief introduction of yourself and also tell our listeners a little bit about your role at EngageFI. 

Stacey Mcclure (04:21.762) 

Absolutely, as a strategic consultant and engage, I'm leading our integrated communications line of business. So what does that mean and why am I here? I have over 30 years of communications history with IntelliCommunication. So whether that was directly communicating with the client and running engagements as a solution matter expert or whether it was a business leader. 

I always took the approach and viewed technology through the lens that it's the vehicle or the means to accomplish the client's strategic goals. In short, my role as a strategic consultant is to deliver communication solutions with ongoing measurable results for our clients. Our processes approximately are typically four to six months long. This engagement requires us to understand our clients short, mid, and long-term goals. 

We have an enterprise-wide discovery sessions across all of the lines of businesses with various stakeholders. Then armed with that knowledge, we provide the deliverable to the client across the current vendor landscape. And we select vendors that we believe that can achieve or mitigate the challenges that those clients are having right now. Once we narrow down the selection criteria, we then create a custom RFP. 

With that RFP specific to each of our clients, we narrow down from a vendor selection standpoint through client scoring and feedback that provides us direction throughout our evaluation. Ultimately, during that engagement, we've designed a solution that the client can procure that provides high value benefits for not only the internal staff, but their account holders. Additionally, I'll provide one more point. 

which is an interesting point of view and I think it's unique for Engage. Our viewpoint is based on our experience and our perspective. So whether we're having a discussion at a 50,000 foot view or we're drilling all the way into an operational level, we can do so because of our experience in the field. This allows for us to expedite during the implementation phase our clients time to value. We realize that they're not receiving the value that we've gone through. 

Stacey Mcclure (06:41.102) 

through or that was required during the evaluation at signature. It's probably another four to six months for initial phase of implementation. So I think that's a really critical or key point. 

Virginia Heyburn (06:52.185) 

that's very, very detailed. And I want to dig into that more, but for our listeners, let's go to the very foundation. And that is help us understand what is integrated communications and why is it so important for banks and credit unions? 

Stacey Mcclure (07:07.514) 

I think that's where, think that's really critical and I appreciate the question. Integrated communications is multifaceted, but if we take a look at three areas, it's really integrating people, processes, and technologies to offer an enhanced client solution, just as you mentioned earlier, across multiple channels with robust analytics that creates a high-quality interaction that drives 

customer satisfaction and business growth. Strategically, financial institutions are looking to grow their client base by focusing on new target markets. 

Virginia Heyburn (07:48.173) 

And this is what, excuse me, Stacey. So this is really absolutely pivotal to banks and credit unions not only being able to achieve efficiencies, but also connect with their customers and members in a far more meaningful way than they've been equipped to do so in the past. 

Stacey Mcclure (07:48.59) 

The digital. No, go right ahead. Pardon me. 

Stacey Mcclure (08:07.062) 

Absolutely. Our preferences are changing, but financial institutions have a very broad base of clients. So whether they're communicating with maybe my 80-year-old mother or myself, we have different preferences on communication. The digital native generation of millennials and Gen Xs prefer to communicate without speaking to a service representative. 

Today, many of our clients have multiple options for this type of communication, but they're siloed. So here's where there's room for more improvement. Because the data is siloed or the engagement is siloed, it's less optimal for that client or account holder. We've probably experienced ourselves going online and investigating our own banking solutions. And if we begin online through web searches, 

we can start to get some information off of the website. We can even start to chat with maybe a member service. However, at some point that chat, that web chat would be better served escalating to a voice call. Here's where the breakdown occurs. The technologies that are in place today require that chat to then send the perspective or the prospect. 

a phone number to call back into. They could just call back into our 800 number, more than likely they won't even reach the person they were communicating with. So then that prospect has to start all over and with the entire conversation. So there's a theory that if you show me that you know me and you understand my preferences and we can continue this chain of conversation through an omnichannel approach, 

This is a much better experience for those members or potential prospects. 

Virginia Heyburn (10:10.051) 

you've just highlighted a pain point that has bugged me for decades. And I'm sure every single person can relate and every financial institution has customers and members calling them all the time asking for them to do it a better way. So that's one pain point. That's one of the big challenges that financial institutions have historically been dealing with, but also still do today. You're saying there is a better way that this can be addressed. 

What other examples can you think of of pain points and challenges that can be solved with integrated communications? 

Stacey Mcclure (10:40.602) 

No. 

Stacey Mcclure (10:44.698) 

Absolutely. So if we just take the word integrated, the very beginning, and we utilize integrations, let's dig into that or dive into that with real life examples and tangible results. On average, most service representatives in the contact center utilize up to 15 different applications to serve as a client, to serve as a member. This results in swivel chair between multiple applications. 

higher than necessary talk times, which adversely affects queue wait times, burnout of the service representative, which creates a more error prone environment, all of which will negatively impact that client engagement. 

Virginia Heyburn (11:27.019) 

And turnover is obviously a huge issue in contact centers and in financial services. Almost every bank and credit union I talk to, they are more than ever looking to achieve operational efficiencies to a point where it's no longer, okay, how can we automate? Because you can automate bad processes too, right? It's a matter of how do we change operationally, how we even run the financial institution so we can deal with all of the challenges and headwinds that 

are completely unrelated to the telecommunications network. They might have to do with margin pressure and new competition, but everything is signaling you have to get more efficient. 

Stacey Mcclure (12:06.05) 

Absolutely, and very often that contact center is an entry point for a new hire into an organization. So if we burn out and have high turnover, we're really not even being able to promote from within, which just has this cyclical compounding environment. Many of the clients that we're working with are not only focused on enhancing their client or member experience, but they're really wanting to focus inward. 

and make sure that they're providing an excellent environment for their staff and colleagues and co-workers. 

Virginia Heyburn (12:40.855) 

And so you mentioned our clients, and I think that brings up a really important question. How do we, how do you engage with the financial services industry to build a more resilient foundation when it comes to communications and to invest in these transformative technologies that are going to just make a whole lot more business sense in the future? 

Stacey Mcclure (13:01.41) 

Yeah, I think education is key and starting these conversations early matters because as we talked about earlier, the time to value for the client doesn't happen upon contract. It really is upon the delivery and that's dependent upon all of the solutions that are going to be delivered day one or there in the future. Most of our clients already have an undertaking of some form of digital transformation. 

It's incumbent upon us to be the underpinnings of that transformation that loops together their entire digital ecosystem, ridding them of underutilized technologies that have over time created inefficiencies and congestion within their network. 

Virginia Heyburn (13:51.309) 

Now, Stacey, there anything that you want to add that we've just not covered related to how financial institutions can achieve better results with integrated communications? 

Stacey Mcclure (14:04.282) 

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think it really does matter. And if we go back to, you know, kind of sum up everything that we've shared, right? What does it mean to be the underpinning within an eco, a digital ecosystem? Many of our clients today have online banking services and they have a group that manages and monitors and communicates with those account holders. And then there's a completely different customer service group. 

So this integration, the standard integration point really allows for us to integrate with core Balone origination software. 

digital payments, card services. So now we're not only or we're not just providing self-service models where literally an institution could say, hello, thank you for calling Stacey's Bank. How may I help you? And have it as that conversational, but we're also making sure with measured applications that we're taking into account security and fraud prevention. 

Voice biometrics for member authentication, those that aren't utilizing it are still spending upwards of three minutes to authenticate members. And that's done in a very manual way. That may be one method of adding additional security and fraud prevention. For clients that we've worked with, we've reduced that down to three minutes, or excuse me, three seconds, from 10 minutes to three seconds. To boot, we're working with another client. 

who mentioned the other day that their online or their audio banking IVR, which today is how most of us do our transactions if we're not utilizing our mobile phone or online, is still configured for the full capacity. 

Stacey Mcclure (15:57.59) 

when in fact they've only been using 3 % of the capacity of that online solution for many, many months. So there are opportunities for us to reallocate funds for better use or better purposes. And these are just a couple of real life examples with tangible results that our clients are achieving this year. 

Virginia Heyburn (16:21.913) 

Yes, and being able to move those customer interactions across channels in a very seamless way. We are talking a lot right now about channel optimization in the financial services industry, combining really branch interaction and contact center engagement. There's a whole other discussion that needs to take place around communications, which is what we're doing here today that, as you say, is the underpinning of almost everything financial institutions do. 

Stacey Mcclure (16:49.048) 

Yeah, I do honestly believe that and the engagements that we've had with our clients, they're telling us it's a whole new world. And in some cases, we're making very measured, you know, first phase steps. There's a good theory of a crawl walk run. We don't have to consume everything and implement everything at one time. 

Let's make measurable changes. Let's look and analyze the data. And then we can have continuous optimization. And now we're making strategic decisions based on data. 

Some of the challenges that we've heard from the CFOs within our clients' organizations is that now they have these unknown variable costs. A lot of this technology is usage-based. the exciting part is that if your members and clients utilize it, that's fantastic. The flip side of that coin is if your members and clients utilize it, we have to be able to project that. 

we can afford and that's the sustainability of continuing to have that application utilized as the adoption grows. So it's a very measured approach, but we are focused on helping our clients understand how they can create predictability, not just from functionality standpoint, but also financially. 

Virginia Heyburn (18:11.589) 

predictability, agility, being able to adapt to whatever comes our way in our industry. Thank you, Stacey, for joining me on today's episode. I certainly feel a lot smarter about integrated communications, and I'm so grateful that you took the time today to join our listeners as well. And for our listeners, for choosing EngageFI as your source of information for banking technology services, thank you so much for this. 

Stacey Mcclure (18:30.255) 

Yeah. 

Virginia Heyburn (18:37.999) 

Please be sure to look out for the next episode of FinTech Unleashed. Follow EngageFI on LinkedIn, and until next time, have a great day.