BNP Paribas Transforms Digital Services Engagement using Verint Coaching Bots*

BNP Paribas supports 3.9 million customers through a network of almost 460 bank branches. The organization is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, the European Union’s leading bank, operating in 68 countries with more than 193,000 employees.

Results

Increased digital self-service usage from 10.1% to 18.4% in three months.
Increased up-sell offers by 62% and sales by 48% within two months.
Eliminated 75% of collections call volume where agents reach voicemail, significantly reducing collections process costs.

About BNP Paribas

The bank recognizes that to stay in front, it can’t stand still. The organization needs to continually innovate. This includes finding new ways to take customer engagement to the next level, making the entire banking experience more rewarding, agile, and efficient.

“When customers pick up the phone to talk live with BNP agents, they, rightly, expect a rapid response and sensitivity to their moods and overall sentiment,” says Patrycja Kazmierska, product owner customer communication at BNP Paribas. “Our goal was to empower agents with real-time assistance to help improve the quality and efficiency of our everyday customer service interactions.”

Opportunity

While the bank understands the importance of customer empathy, it was struggling to deliver it on a consistent basis, especially given the modern, work-from-anywhere contact center environment. Interactions involving negative sentiments, long silences, or multiple interruptions only complicated matters. In these situations, real-time assistance can make the difference between a satisfied banking customer or one who is lost to the competition.

BNP Paribas’ goals were to:

Guide employees in real time, using linguistic, acoustic, and application triggers.
Add context and recognize actions from employees’ desktops.
Provide next best action to drive positive interaction outcomes.

“Verint Coaching Bots are transforming customer engagement at BNP Paribas. By providing an in-the-moment understanding of customer intent and sentiment, agents can respond empathetically, resulting in increased levels of engagement, task completion, and customer satisfaction.”
Patrycja Kazmierska
Product Owner Customer Communication, BNP Paribas

Analyze customer calls and agent desktop activities in real time with Verint Coaching Bots

Already a long-time satisfied Verint customer, BNP Paribas added and standardized on Verint Coaching Bots. The solution enables the bank to analyze customer calls and agent desktop activities in real time, automatically identifying opportunities to guide interactions toward better outcomes. When certain criteria are met, employees receive automated assistance and guidance in a unified Work Assist application.

Verint Coaching Bots are deployed among several hundred agents, including in the sales and collections groups. Working with expert local Verint resources, the bank created application triggers to account for up to 50 different use cases, with up to 20 triggers active at any one time. Some triggers are very complex, with up to 200 phrases. Most triggers include linguistic (words or sentiment), acoustic (sound triggers), and application (desktop actions) sources together, although some are linguistic or application only.

contact center agents on call wearing headset

BNP Paribas’ initial use case focused on reminding agents to promote self-service to customers, with the aim of significantly increasing self-service adoption and usage.

“Agents and supervisors typically embrace Verint Coaching Bots as it helps improve their performance,” notes Kazmierska. “The solution is also incredibly quick and easy to deploy. Two people were engaged to set it up and organize the triggers. Several other speech analytics analysts investigated the different use cases and created call categories within Verint Speech Analytics that were imported as Verint Coaching Bot triggers.”

The bank uses the same Polish language model in Verint Coaching Bots that it uses in Verint Speech Analytics. In addition, phonetic boosting is used to fine-tune certain triggers.

Benefits

By standardizing on the innovative, AI-enabled Verint solution, BNP Paribas is responding in real time to customer interactions. In turn, it is providing customers with a seamless, agile service experience. Specific benefits include:

Digital self-service promotion campaign: The bank increased digital self-service usage from 10.1 to 18.4 percent in three months. The catalyst was pop-ups prompting agents to suggest digital options to customers during calls. This spanned services such as card activation, credit card PIN and limit changes, password reset, email and address changes, etc.
Customer complaints, fees, and commissions: The bank improved first contact resolution by presenting agents with real-time guidance via embedded contextual knowledge links and other features.
Customer objections to up-sell offers: Through real-time guidance that enabled agents to better manage objections, the bank saw a 62 percent lift in up-sell offers made to customers and a 48 percent increase in sales within two months.
Collections process: The bank eliminated 75 percent of call volume where agents reach voicemail, significantly reducing collections process costs.
Digital collections: The bank saw digital online collections increase by 31 percent and go mobile activations increase by 39 percent within four months.
Emergency alerts: When a frustrated customer informs an agent that they will take action, such as publicizing the issue in the media or taking the bank to court, a supervisor receives an alert of the ongoing conversation. The supervisor can then listen to the call in real-time and help diffuse the escalation.
Interest in credit cards: Every time customer interest in a credit card is detected (based on defined call categories), a call script is presented to the agent to guide the customer according to the highest standards. This way, the bank minimizes the risk of complaints and increases first contact resolution.

“Verint Coaching Bots are transforming customer engagement at BNP Paribas,” Kazmierska concludes. “By providing an in-the-moment understanding of customer intent and sentiment, agents can respond empathetically, resulting in increased levels of engagement, task completion, and customer satisfaction.”

*Note: Verint Coaching Bots were formerly known as Verint Real-Time Agent Assist

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