As per the statistics, about 75% of businesses worldwide have shifted to cloud-based services and platforms in the last five years. The benefits of cloud telephony services extend to businesses of all sizes, including startups and large corporations. They offer a complete set of features to help businesses remain successful in a fast-paced environment of today.
One such sector that can benefit from cloud telephony services is the financial service industry. Banking and financial sector rely on trust, reliability, and security. In fact, these are the reasons why these industries exist in the first place.
Therefore, keeping accurate records of customer interactions and fostering a stress-free and rewarding customer experience is of extreme importance.
And why not? Financial services are commoditized. They are almost identical to each other in terms of pricing and services they offer. With so little else to compete on, the only thing that gives a bank or a finance industry the edge over its competitor is its customer experience.
Why does Banking & Finance Industry need a cloud telephony service?
An essential goal of any financial service is maintaining a professional image.
Why would any customer choose your financial services when they have a lot of options around?
Because they want the best possible service from you.
Everyone wants to be treated as if they matter. Customers want to establish a relationship with the bank or finance they choose, and they want you to make an effort to engage them rather than just trying to push a product.
Therefore, it’s up to you to make an effort and try everything within your capability to provide the best service possible; and a good cloud telephony service is the perfect way to achieve that.
Cloud telephony systems make business much more efficient when companies switch to them. Innovative cloud communication also allows financial services firms to improve their overall communication and support processes.
After all, good communication practices contribute to customer satisfaction, process accuracy, and industry compliance.
Installing cloud telephony-based call center software in banking and financial institutions can ease things up to a great extent. You receive a number of calls every day. And an inefficient or faulty business line is the last thing you would want to worry about, especially when you are dealing with your client regarding taxes, investments, or contracts.
Cloud telephony services help you establish flexible and agile banking that can quickly respond to customer needs through the modernization of your existing systems and procedures.
There are many ways the banking and finance industry can benefit from cloud telephony services. Here are some of the key benefits;
10 Benefits of Cloud Telephony Services for the Banking and Finance Industry
1. Cost savings
One of the major benefits of cloud telephony systems is the large cost savings. Banking sector receives a number of calls every day for sales and support operations.
Similarly, finance companies still adopt cold calling strategies to generate leads and convert them. In most cases, superior business technology can be prohibitively expensive.
Cloud telephony services can be a life savior here as they cut all the costs invested in hardware, equipment, and infrastructure. With a cloud telephony system, there is no need to stick to the workstation.
You can call from anywhere and eliminate traditional charges such as long-distance fees and maintenance costs. Another benefit of a virtual phone system is that price packages can be customized to match your organization’s communication budget. No more unnecessary expenses that eat away your profits!
2. Improved security
Cloud telephony system can be the right solution for you, especially if your company has sensitive data and allows that data to exist outside of local firewalls, which means there is no risk of data loss.
Cloud telephony system offers highly innovative and quality features such as built-in redundancy that backs up data onto several secure servers across various geographical locations, thereby minimizing single points of failure.
Cloud telephony system is also enriched with a call masking feature, which can be really handy for financial institutions. With a call masking feature, you can cloak your phone number with an unallocated phone number, which can help you keep your identity secret. And when you don’t give away your identity, you can save yourself from several unwanted and spam calls.
Its additional features include protection against different kinds of viruses, malware, hackers, electronic mail retention.
3. Constant Accessible Support
One of the reasons for customer call churn is the inability to offer them constant accessible support. Digitalization has made transitions increasingly complex.
Hence, it is important to ensure transitions are seamless in order to minimize frustration, onboard customers, and minimize disruption to clients and business processes.
But only a few organizations have the resources to achieve this faultlessly. With a cloud telephony system, you can set up a dedicated support team and ensure customers have access to guaranteed remote support 24 hours a day.
4. Avoid fraudulent activities
It is unlikely that any security system will be foolproof, but adding multi-factor authentication to accounts will reduce the chances of account takeover. The OTP services for double verification verifies that a customer is what they claim to be.
Most of us have been scammed by fraud calls that ask us to provide details regarding the debit card. Therefore, all payments and banking-related activities are now conducted using OTP, which reduces such activities.
When we make a payment, we have to enter a one-time password; this makes the user aware of possible fraud.
5. Personalized client experience
Cloud telephony offers a plethora of features and allows businesses to explore multiple automated solutions. One such prominent feature is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) which allows callers to receive pre-recorded messages via voice response without having to speak to an agent.
This feature is useful in the banking sector where a customer has to go through menu options based on their preferences, and their call has to be routed to specific individuals or departments.
With IVR, the banking industry can easily answer customer queries related to general feedback, transaction details, account status, credit card payment due, reporting fraudulent activities, and many more.
In times when call volumes are high, an effective interactive voice response system can help reduce hold times by automatically assisting callers in finding answers and carrying out simple tasks themselves.
6. Complete Scalability
The low infrastructure footprint of cloud telephony enables it to scale much more easily to meet growing business demands. Cloud telephony service providers generally offer scalable solutions, which can grow along with your business and meet market demands as they increase.
In addition, new modules and features can also be added in the future when necessary. For growing organizations like banks and finance, it’s crucial to measure growth, stagger out the costs accordingly and strike a balance between evolution and efficient use of existing resources.
7. Compliance and flexibility
There are several local rules and regulations which must be followed by companies operating in the financial sector. With cloud telephony solutions, these rules and regulations are easily met.
A cloud telephony system offers a number of innovative features and functionality capable of meeting today’s demanding FCA, MIFID, Central Bank, and HIPAA compliance standards.
Talking about flexibility, businesses across all industries would benefit from more dynamic communication, but competitive industries like finance will particularly benefit from the ability to connect whenever and wherever.
8. Effective internal collaboration
It has long been a part of everyday business for large financial institutions to communicate across geographically dispersed workforces. It is common for financial organizations and banks to have branches and offices across several cities, some in different time zones, and the lack of communication can pose challenges to both managers and employees.
With a cloud telephony system, your team can access vital information and stay in touch regardless of where they are. Cloud-based communication solutions allow employees to manage their calls, emails, instant messages, and more through one central hub, which streamlines communication and encourages effective collaboration.
9. Increased customer loyalty
A cloud telephony solution lets you send bulk SMS messages to lots of prospects and customers. Using just a click, financial institutions and banks can easily make important information, offers, and promotions available to prospective clients.
Similarly, you can remind customers to pay their monthly credit card bill when the due date is approaching, preventing them from paying interest. It will help your brand increase its loyalty if you provide relevant information to your customers at the right time.
10. Additional customer service channel
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may benefit customers in many ways. When we talk about AI, chatbots have emerged as one of the most popular and significant customer service channels in recent years. With chatbots, customer service is provided in real-time and on a 24/7 basis.
In addition, self-service bots are very popular because they can answer any of the customer’s questions immediately without putting them on hold. It is clear to all top banks that today’s customer service is more conversational, a fact that’s well understood by their top customers.
Banks and financial Industries have been successful in automatizing repetitive mundane tasks by integrating chatbots on their websites and applications.
Conclusion
Without a doubt, business organizations will find cloud telephony services highly appealing, especially banking and finance industries that have to deal with heavy data and make strategic decisions regarding customer service.
With all the above-mentioned benefits, you must be quite sure about how cloud telephony help you achieve your target. The only thing now remains is to find the right resource to boost your bottom line results.
