Maximizing Your Financial Institution’s Telephony Move to the Cloud

The push to move to the cloud looms larger than ever, with more financial institutions upgrading their legacy IVR systems. At the same time, the consideration and need for conversational AI are at the top of decision-makers' minds. 

All too often teams believe transitioning to a cloud-based IVR and launching conversational AI has to be a tradeoff. The assumption is that teams are going to be overwhelmed and they will need to hire additional employees, project timelines will be extended, and costs will surpass budgets. Moving to a new IVR is necessary, however by delaying conversational AI, significant time is lost in delivering much-needed improvements in service delivery and overall member experience, and the lost opportunity in maximizing resources and technology spend.

According to a recent Gallup poll, curating a memorable and engaging member experience is the primary driver for creating new business opportunities. Migrating to conversational AI IVR eliminates touchtone menus, and provides friction-free service for more engagement with satisfied members all while allowing your team to expand on products and services. 

Misconceptions of a telephony first approach: 

It’s important to focus on what your team is capable of, however, it’s prudent to manage the number of projects that can be resourced by your team within a given period. It’s equally important to consider the functionality conversational AI replaces during a cloud migration. Customers will undoubtedly be impacted by two menu changes vs. one. 

By breaking the project in two, customers and members will need to learn new prompts, leaving them confused or choosing the wrong destination. With the addition of conversational AI, you will replace your full menu, allowing customers to easily interact by sharing in a few words what they need assistance with. Calls will be answered and when humans are needed, calls will be routed based on the specific customer need. 

There are a few important aspects to consider, especially since a majority of the functionality overlaps or extends the time of the project. 

Rolling the projects together adds value to your team and customers. 

• Project resource savings
• Saving on technology spend
• Minimizing customer change 
• Providing an enhanced experience at launch
• Offering customer self-service 24/7
• Take advantage of the efficiency gains sooner, addressing call center pain points

Your Non-AI Reality Still Exists

Posh has a proven track record of working with the full list of cloud providers. Together Posh and the cloud provider will create a project timeline that aligns, creating the best go-live experience.  It will be a Win-Win for the financial institution and customers. Posh’s conversational AI deployment does not extend the cloud migration timeline. Posh will work aside the provider, eliminating the need for the financial institution in creating phone tree mappings and recordings. 

“We do everything synchronously. We’ve removed the need for menu mapping and replaced it with Posh’s voice concierge to provide an enhanced member experience,” said Kathy Sianis VP of Client Experience and Strategy. “Workbooks are an extensive process. We’re replacing that with our intent escalations and customized call flows.” 

Problem(s) Solving

Upgrading your telephony capabilities solves a problem but not necessarily the pain points of the contact center. It’s undisputed that the system upgrade benefits the contact center with a scoring system, callback functionality, or authentication, however, it does not mitigate your ability to manage high call volume, provide 24/7 call center availability, and accurate call routing, while ensuring your agent’s time is spent on high-value interactions. The need to be in the cloud is solved, but not the customer experience. Ultimately, there will be little to no change to your overall call center metrics.  

It's best practice to incorporate the launch of conversational AI at the same time as your telephony upgrade in order to provide a seamless transition for your members and customers, lower the total cost of implementation, and realize a faster time to value for both investments.   

“By committing to carrying out both projects at once you’re making one experience change for your customer, not two,” Sianis said. “When you deploy new telephony you spend hours making decisions around the new menu structure, including creating prompts and records for each.  When you deploy with a conversational AI provider like Posh, it's minimal work on you while also creating a simple engagement process for your customer.”

Posh’s Conversational AI designer will take on all the heavy lifting by creating custom responses and call flows. Through the deployment of a new cloud-based telephony system and conversational AI, both you and the customer win.  

Achieve both goals of improving your telephony and improving the member and customer experience. Let’s chat.