Building an elite services company

Securing early mover advantage

One of the country’s big-four retail banks, Westpac NZ specializes in consumer, business and institutional banking, as well as private and wealth management services. Their vision is to be one of the world’s best financial services companies — helping customers, communities and people prosper and grow.

Realizing this ambition with a traditional contact center was tough. Managed by different vendors, much of the technology had reached end of life. So, more time and money were spent fixing issues, rather than enhancing the customer experience.

A cloud contact center was seen as a powerful competitive differentiator. “We wanted to zig while the rest of the world was zagging,” said Jason Lock, Head of Contact Centers for Westpac NZ. “Few banks were using true cloud platforms.”

Creating an innovation conveyor belt

Backed by extensive research and development investment, Westpac NZ chose the Genesys Cloud™ platform to deliver things they couldn’t before through a sustained program for customer service innovation. The Genesys Cloud platform delivers frequent releases for improved functionality, insights reporting and bug fixes, if needed.

“We wanted a technology partner with a proven track record and strong after-sales support, who wouldn’t rely on us to provide all the thinking and thought leadership,” said Lock. “Now, we’re not waiting two years for a software release or server upgrade. We’re able to simply switch on new capabilities when required and use them in the right way, which is a major paradigm shift. Genesys Cloud has changed the game for us — constantly bringing new functionality.”

An agile cloud model helped accelerate time to value. “This agile release cycle delivers incremental value improvements that other less progressive communication orchestration systems cannot,” added Stephen Abercrombie, Operations Manager at Westpac NZ. “Cloud-driven releases also mean less time is required from our internal technology teams, while we still get all the benefits.”

The Genesys Cloud all-in-one solution offers a path for unifying chat, email, text, inbound and outbound calls; workforce management; and quality management metrics. So, everything needed to understand business performance is all in one place, making it easier to improve customer and employee engagement. After being initially rolled out to the bank’s outbound teams within two months, Genesys Cloud was then fully deployed to 500 users across the business.

Standing out with personalized customer experience

Westpac NZ can now focus on designing customer-centric financial offers. That means providing a highly personalized service, based on what’s known from previous interactions. Agents can instantly recognize customers and anticipate why they’re calling.

“It’s about making sure frontline employees are incredibly well-equipped to meet the needs of customers in the big moments,” said Lock. “Knowing them, having deeper conversations and managing complex interactions, so they don’t have to go to great effort to explain themselves.”

Moving to Genesys Cloud has enhanced customer experience in other ways, too. For example, it removed common causes of frustration like putting customers on hold and transferring calls between departments. Now, every call is routed quickly to the best placed advisor, making interactions easier for customers and more productive for staff. In addition, customers can retain their place in the queue and request a callback.

“We’ve seen great improvements in our survey ratings,” said Paula Mullan, Senior Manager Contact Center Transformation for Westpac NZ. “Customers feel more valued at the end of the call, which is a major contributor to raising our overall Net Promoter Score.”

Ongoing collaboration

The partnership continues to grow. Genesys developers often visit Westpac NZ to work alongside their counterparts in the bank as part of an agile team to drive improvements. This was one of the key factors underpinning the successful Genesys Cloud rollout. The common goal is to create an elite services organization with the introduction of digital channels, such as email, chat, social media and click-to-call.

“Genesys has 11,000 customers around the world,” said Lock. “We continue to take on lessons from them, shaping a customer experience that’s unique and reflective of industry best practice.”