Cloud Telephony is Easing the Process of Personal Finance Here's why it would become a necessity for all personal finance firms to adopt cloud telephony to manage their operations, and meet all the regulatory compliances
By Ankit Jain
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Besides abiding many regulatory compliances, personal finance firms have to meet few more prerequisites in order to excel in the industry. One of those, that is of paramount importance is efficient customer service. Organizations dealing in personal finance need to ensure data privacy and security, and instant resolution of customer queries.
Cloud telephony provides a number of revolutionary products and functionality to ease the process of customer interaction in personal finance sector. It's appreciable that the sector has already realized the importance of cloud telephony, and is using it to effectively and securely meet its demands. It has stopped using outdated on-premise technologies that consume significant capital on a continuing basis.
Now, let's have a step by step look on cloud telephony products and features that is helping personal finance sector to tackle its issues in a more secure, seamless and cost-effective way.
Centralized Business Phone Number
A virtual number, 10-digit phone number behind which many other contact numbers are mapped, serves as a centralized contact number for any organization. So, irrespective of the geographical location your customers are based in, they can dial the same contact number to reach their respective account managers. Not only this, a virtual number also ensures call-tracking which helps in monitoring performance of all the agents from a single location. So, next time if customers complain about their calls not being picked on time, it can easily be tracked which agent is not performing his/her duty religiously.
Sticky Agent
The problem of prospects going through a long IVR menu to reach their respective agents everytime they call, gets resolved with the help of "Sticky Agent' feature. This feature ensures that a particular call gets connected only to that agent with whom the customer/prospect spoke previously. This feature simplifies two processes. First, the customer gets connected only to their dedicated account manager everytime he/she calls. Second, prospects need not explain their query again to any other agent if they require any further assistance related to the same issue. This feature not only reduces customer waiting time but also increases overall productivity of the team.
Call Recording
Call recording is another must have feature for any personal finance company. The reason I'm focusing on personal finance is, it is one of those sectors that is involved in making monetary investments on behalf of their clients. So, it's very important to keep a recording of all customer-agent conversation in order to mitigate the risk of any future disputes. And it also helps organizations arrive at quick resolution for their customer complaints.
Furthermore, call recordings are also used to monitor call quality and uniformity. Agents' call recordings are being listened in order to monitor their on-call performance, and best recordings are also used for training purpose.
Cloud-based IVR
Besides these indispensable features, cloud-based IVR helps the personal finance firms meet sudden demands. At times of major economic changes like implementation of GST and demonetisation, firms get burdened with high call volumes, and calls doesn't stop even after office hours. To meet such sudden increase in customer calls, IVR stays available 24*7 and enables the callers to leave their message in the voicemail in case none of the agents are available during non-working hours. It also facilitates automatic call distribution (ACD), and hence handles high call volume efficiently.
IVR when integrated with CRM, interacts with the callers to give them their account information without any human help. Information such as total money invested in a mutual fund, outstanding premium amount, profits accrued for particular stocks, etc. can be given to the customers through a CRM-integrated IVR.
Automated Callers Database
Cloud telephony also makes it easier for the firms to distribute important information, and re-market the product to their callers by using automated callers database. The database is used to reach out the prospects via SMS, facebook ads or through calls. So, when a company needs to inform their customers about the best performing mutual fund or any other investment opportunities, it can be done by shooting SMS to multiple callers at once.
Bulk SMS feature is also used to give important information to customer like annual reminder to pay their premium, send order confirmation message to customers, and send OTP to facilitate secure transactions.
Furthermore, callers database is also used to make outbound IVR calls to give important information such as linking of Aadhar card, and filing income tax return on time.
In nutshell, cloud telephony is acting a catalyst in simplifying the processes of personal finance sector. In the years to come, it would become necessity for all personal finance firms to adopt cloud telephony to manage their operations, and meet all the regulatory compliances.