Using Speech Analytics for Compliance in Retail Banking

Recent controversies surrounding the mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance have highlighted a need for banks to improve monitoring of customer-agent interactions to ensure compliance to regulations. In addition, the recent global financial crisis has led to greater consumer wariness of banks and increased likelihood to complain about services received.

Isolating calls to measure FCR and customer attrition

Customer services offered by banking call centres have been criticised in the past particularly where potential customers are persuaded to join banks on the offer of financial rewards but ultimately a poor service is delivered.
Analytics tools can search for key phrases (such as ‘I want to make a complaint’) that can indicate negative customer experiences. Speech analysis can not only indicate how many of these calls occur, but also the time they’re most likely to happen, the agents most likely to have them and the call types most likely to lead to them. Challenging calls are thus isolated, with speech analytics highlighting the positions of pertinent phrases within each call, making root cause analysis simple and effective to carry out, especially when compared to the unrepresentative call sampling and listening exercises typically used by quality staff.

Identifying what drives customer to leave

Findings from these exercises can then be linked to two other useful speech analytics measures, first call resolution and cancellation calls, to predict what drives customers to leave and when this is most likely to happen. This insight can be used to inform training staff, management and even senior decision makers over which policies most (and least) appeal to customers.

Identifying breaches of regulations or evidence of mis-selling

Speech Analytics for compliance is also a hot topic, benefiting banks primarily by offering risk-based quality monitoring across 100% of calls. Rare but potentially catastrophic breaches of regulations are unlikely to be picked up in any of the 4 calls per agent, per month that most call centres typically select to evaluate. Using analytics, phrases that indicate mis-selling behaviour or other compliance failings (such as agents offering advice to customers) can be isolated and followed up, within hours if necessary.
Analytics could even be used to isolate calls when a bank is under investigation in order to demonstrate that PPIs were not mis-sold, saving money that would have been put aside to pay fines or compensation.
There are many arguments in favour of using speech analytics within a retail banking environment and by making a strategic decision now banks could yield demonstrable returns during a tough economic climate.
If you want to find out more about speech analytics for compliance and how it can help in retail banking contact Business Systems now.