4 Solutions to the Communication Challenges of HealthTech Adoption
Despite significant advancements in healthcare technologies (HealthTech), many providers in the sector are having difficulty adopting and realising their full potential.
TeleHealth, which is shorthand for providing health-related services through telecommunication technologies, underwent a rapid acceleration of adoption when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Since then, the majority of patients have embraced the convenience of digital engagement and virtual care options for enhanced access to personalised, high-quality care and follow-up monitoring.
However, at the same time, an alarming number of physicians and providers have scaled back their use of TeleHealth as they struggle to keep up with the increasing demand for virtual visits and health condition remote monitoring at scale, creating a shift in patient-physician relationships.
Here at Webhelp, we see the same issue across the entire spectrum of HealthTech — consumers are on-board, but providers are often slower to adopt the technology. This trend extends to almost every technology offered within the consumer care and healthcare system, especially software and physical solutions that create new digital diagnosis or treatment opportunities.
We believe that adequate communication and related solutions are the key components to solving these challenges, so this article outlines several strategies for aligning patient and physician perspectives and empowering providers with the full potential of HealthTech solutions.
Virtual training and onboarding for clinical staff
A great starting point is to help healthcare professionals to understand the benefits that healthcare applications and similar HealthTech tools can provide.
During this process, representatives can inform, train, and onboard doctors at their offices, in the hospital or online. Additionally, this is an ideal opportunity to host webinars and introduce multidisciplinary boards into the process – a medical science liaison, for example.
By organising these virtual events through digital channels, providers can understand everyone’s preferences in-depth, monitor the information provided, analyse attendance trends and obtain valuable feedback to inform future strategic planning. As previously reported at Webhelp Medica, providers have begun offering webinars, remote workshop sessions, and social networks intended solely for clinical staff, suggesting that the industry is open to digitising its communication endeavours. Now it’s just a matter of increasing adoption.
Support, training and outreach for patients
As part of this solution, providers could run informative campaigns to build awareness of the different healthcare apps available whilst implementing patient support programs for specific treatments and drugs. Providing motivational calls to help patients understand the benefits of these is a proven enabler.
Once implemented, nurses can teach patients to be autonomous in their treatment, such as administering injections themselves at home. Once the patient becomes responsible for this process, the nurses can carry out continuous remote monitoring, including as part of virtual wards through SMS or other channels, enabling patients to follow treatment and monitoring plans independently in their own homes. When Webhelp Medica implemented a self-injection learning program for almost 3,000 patients, 99% of physicians and 93% of patients were highly satisfied with the approach, highlighting the efficacy of combining nurses with digital support.
These initiatives become game-changing for non-tech users and vulnerable or immobile patients, especially when coupled with the creation of online patient groups where people can discuss their pathology with others in the same situation. Equally, it’s crucial to include caregivers, families, spouses, and patient associations to expand these groups further and provide more support and autonomy for patients.
We like to think of this process as creating “expert patients” trained in their pathology with the knowledge to help other patients with their treatment routines, lessening the burden on clinical staff. It also allows physicians to strengthen their relationships with patients by enrolling them in coaching and learning programs.
Ongoing monitoring to link clinical staff with patients
Once engaging with clinical staff and patients through training, onboarding, and outreach, the monitoring and follow-up process is where the optimisation of patient-provider communication flourishes. By customising patient journeys based on their uptake of technology and putting digital technology at the heart of the follow-up wherever appropriate, clinical staff can vastly increase patient awareness of the importance of care continuity.
While it’s essential to determine whether patients feel comfortable talking with health professionals remotely, virtual monitoring ensures that problems and concerns can be solved quickly, efficiently, and effectively for many pathologies. For example, for psychological and behavioural follow-ups, providers can install a team of remote nurses and psychologists, or even tobacco specialists and dieticians, to follow the patient’s progress and provide guidance and advice via digital platforms or telephone calls.
For tech-savvy patients, there’s an opportunity to apply conversational SMS platforms and social messaging tools to communicate with clinical staff instantaneously. Clinical staff can also automate appointment and medication reminders to reduce the rate of no-shows and ensure patients stay on track with treatment plans. Plus, providing an inbound line allows autonomous patients to ask questions if they have any doubts about their treatment.
In another example, providers could email patients a QR code that refers to an informative video explaining, presenting, and informing people on their pathology, treatment follow-up, and tips for improved well-being. After a teleconsultation, physicians could also automate a message to check in on long-term patients and ask if they have questions about their treatment.
When implemented correctly, virtual wards and outpatient monitoring processes like these bring clinicians and patients closer together, preventing communication challenges before they occur.
Round-the-clock medical information helpline
Another relatively untapped communications solution is a readily available information helpline operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An incoming medical information line can provide patients with status updates on product availability, medication request follow-ups, medical information requests, patient data and held information, pharmacist information, specific questions from a doctor, and pharmacovigilance.
With these four communications strategies and solutions, healthcare providers can improve their relationship with HealthTech, encouraging physicians to share the same enthusiasm for technological evolution as their patients.
Connecting biotech, healthtech and medtech - Webhelp to lead discussion at LSX World Congress 2022
Webhelp are delighted to be announced as an official partner at this year’s LSX World Congress, taking place in London on 10th-11th of May.
The 8th annual LSX World Congress will welcome many industry leaders, from founders and CEOs of innovative start-ups through to healthcare giants. Attendees span various healthcare backgrounds, including experts in biotech, healthtech, and medtech.
Representing Webhelp are Dr Jerome Stevens, General Manager & co-founder of Webhelp Medica, Emma Bouché, Head of Healthcare at Webhelp UK, and the newly appointed Tom Houston, Healthcare – Client Partner, Gobeyond Partners (part of the Webhelp Group).
A keynote panel hosted by Webhelp opens day two of the congress and is entitled ‘The Devil Is in the Data: How the Medtech Sector Is Optimising Its Data Assets and Connecting with Consumers in a Wholly Patient-Centric Approach’.
Jerome Stevens will moderate on behalf of Webhelp, joined by four speakers – Marc Julien, Co-CEO of Diabeloop, Laurent Vandebrouck, CEO of Chronolife, Eliane Schutte, CEO of Xeltis, and finally Ian Crosbie, CEO of Sequana Medical.
The panel will discuss topics such as:
- Unlocking the full potential of health data, and new applications in 2022
- Healthcare professionals and patient onboarding, training and ongoing support
- Information is power: ethical data use and the importance of patient transparency
- How to ensure data security and demonstrate best practice for Healthcare professionals and patients
Commenting on the panel, Jerome said:
“I’m looking forward to joining innovative leaders to collaborate and share our expertise on health data in the medtech sector and the opportunities this creates. With particular focus on optimising and securing data and prioritising patient-centricity, it promises to be an invaluable session.”
Keep an eye out for first-hand highlights and key takeaways from our panel discussion.
For more information on healthcare trends read Emma Bouché’s recent article here.
3 reasons why organisations can’t stand still on UBO compliance
Jonathan Cowey, Business Director for Regulated Services at Webhelp UK, considers what the FCA’s new anti-money laundering bill means for UK financial organisations.
The demand for change
What do firms need to be aware of and be thinking about?
The latest message from the FCA is a firm and clear reminder to organisations that they should be fully assessing UBOs.
So what’s the issue?
Can organisations stand still?
Firstly – it is their obligation; it’s a regulatory requirement, and failure to do this can see hefty fines imposed. There is major precedent for this too. The FCA levied nearly £570m of financial penalties on organisations during 2021, 84% of which (£477m) related directly to failings within AML compliance, with UBO being a key facet to this.
Secondly – costs. When not done correctly, the costs to remediate back books and the operational upheaval to put things right far outweighs the costs of simply getting it right in the first place.
Thirdly – and most importantly in my view – ethically; it is the right thing to do. It is the moral obligation of institutes to ensure they are acting and enabling a safer, more secure world – their customers expect it of them.
It's time to act
At Webhelp, we offer a full KYB/UBO compliance capability; consultancy expertise, technology solutions, as well as skilled KYB, AML and compliance resources globally to support you on this journey. We partner with many financial services organisations, both here in the UK and across the globe with their AML programmes.
Jonathan Cowey is the Business Director for UK Regulated Services at Webhelp. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions and he will be happy to discuss with you.
The Changing Role Of Technology In Customer Experience
Technology is a fundamental pillar of customer service design in today’s modern CX environment.
It’s impossible to imagine a customer service solution without technology at the core of the process. However, based on our research in partnership with industry analyst Frost & Sullivan, around 75% of organizations struggle to deploy CX technologies at scale.
So – while those responsible for designing customer service solutions know that technology underpins modern CX, most struggle with large technology projects.
So what can we do to improve this?
Firstly, it’s worth examining why technology has become so pervasive in CX. From the traditional post-purchase call to a customer service support line, we are now in an environment where the customer journeys must be designed to build and maintain a positive long-term relationship. Now customers are likely to engage with a brand before, during, and long after purchase. They are often not calling for help or support, they are reinforcing the relationship, and of course, there is now an expectation that every step is tailored to their unique needs.
CX technologies create the ability to communicate more efficiently with customers, gain more valuable insight into what customers need and prefer, and dramatically improve advisors’ ability to help customers. The gamification of processes inside the contact center is one example of how service quality can be enhanced by increasing employee engagement.
This means that design thinking needs to be applied to the modern customer journey. We should understand how the customer becomes aware of our brand, how they obtain more information, and how they gradually move towards a purchase. Technology needs to be designed to support and enable this overall journey once the design has been established.
There are several distinct areas to be considered:
- People: technology can be used inside the contact center to help advisors. It can reduce repetitive tasks, automate processes, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to augment and support people’s roles – for example, supporting with multilingual service requests or searching for information as a conversation takes place and then advising the advisor on the next best action.
- Insight: you can dive into customer transaction data to create insights. What are they searching or browsing? Do their purchases correlate with certain dates, events, or weather patterns? Using data analytics to find patterns in your customer data will allow much greater personalization.
- Channels: customers want to engage on social channels Instagram and TikTok. They want to use asynchronous messaging tools like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Outreach to a brand may be via a personal blog, rather than a call to the customer service team. You need to be across all these channels and offer in-app service where appropriate.
- Infrastructure and Security: customer service processes are no longer locked down inside a contact center. You can create a secure distributed network of customer advisors that work from home. This can create the ability to hire expertise from anywhere and to build more flexibility into working hours. The infrastructure required to deliver this consistently needs to be robust, with investment cycles well planned.
Because commuting to a contact center and then working a continuous 8-hour shift has been replaced by a more flexible hybrid approach, including working from home, workforce management (WFM) systems have also become essential to modern customer service processes. Matching your available team to peak times when most customers need help can create more flexible working hours for the advisors and allow the brand to help customers faster.
Calabrio WFM is a highly agile and scalable workforce management platform that allows the delivery of seamless experiences for customers, advisors and contact center managers—no matter where employees are working. Webhelp works with Calabrio to gain greater visibility into employee performance metrics through personalized dashboards containing the data that can help their performance and allows them to leverage tools such as self-scheduling.
“In today’s new reality, technology and workforce management are no longer optional. Brands aren’t able to deliver a truly seamless experience without having a seamless internal process too. Calabrio’s cloud platform is perfectly suited for dynamic global players like Webhelp, enabling them to truly understand their CX operations, no matter the set-up, whether it be on-site, virtual or hybrid,” said Magnus Geverts, VP, Product Marketing, Calabrio.
Designing a modern customer experience is impossible without technology. Customer interactions are no longer restricted to voice calls. Customer and employee expectations have been elevated through technological advancement and the experience of more flexible work throughout the pandemic.
Technology is now the foundation of customer experience.
It is no longer just a tool for designing a customer service solution – it defines how customer relationships are managed.
A recent paper explains the Webhelp Anywhere methodology and the Frost & Sullivan research in more detail.
Accessing CX Talent In the Modern Work Environment
Modern customer service solutions need flexibility and scalability.
In fact, 99% of CX leaders say they are important factors. Traditional customer service solutions based in physical contact centers almost always struggled with seasonal peaks – partly because you can only get so many people into an office. Today, seasonality and challenging business peaks are now just an accepted feature of the business environment.
With competition for talent and consumer expectations both at an all-time high, resourcing customer experience services effectively has never been more challenging. A resilient and flexible customer service solution needs to be delivered at a time when talent is harder than ever to find. So how do we build a solution that delivers the required flexibility and also engages the advisors on the frontline?
The first step is to think about how and where the customer service solution should be delivered.
First, what kind of sourcing and shoring will be required?
Naturally this depends on questions such as the level of resilience, and your ability to locate the required skills:
- Onshore: the customer service advisors are located close to the service provider, typically in the same country or even the same state or city.
- Nearshore: the advisors are located close enough for a day trip to be possible, but potentially in a different country – for example Eastern Europe servicing customers elsewhere on the continent.
- Offshore: the advisors can be located almost anywhere internationally.
Then, where will your advisors be located for work itself?
The pandemic proved to many executives that work-from-home (WFH) solutions are not only possible, but can also be secure and more productive. Now it’s time to embrace that experience as we redefine how customer experience is designed. Will you use a contact center or allow everyone to WFH or arrange a hybrid arrangement that is more flexible?
- WFH: advisors working from their own home, no location proximity needed
- Hybrid: the ability to mix and match, so advisors can work from home, from an office, and even from other secure locations – such as an office rented for a single day.
- Contact Center: a traditional office environment for the customer service team.
By exploring the nine options this three-by-three set of options creates, it will be possible to define your initial strategy. For large organizations, these will likely span more than one box. For example, if offshoring is not appropriate for a particular process then you can compare the merits of onshore advisers with nearshoring and then look at both these choices with the different work location options.
This approach creates the possibility that you can source talent anywhere. You can build an approach to locating customer service expertise that is borderless and global. It allows you to decide where the customer service processes should be delivered, and based on the role profiles needed for a process, brand, or service – then allows for an exploration of where the best talent is located.
Flexibility in work location works well for advisors. In our recent research with Frost & Sullivan, 76% of executives said they believe that customer service advisors should be able to choose where they work. People want flexibility and it can be designed into the solution. Without this flexibility it will be a challenge to both attract and retain the best CX talent.
“Locating and attracting the best CX talent today requires the ability to offer flexibility and support. You should engage your teams constantly and center programs around their needs to create an impactful experience. You also need to show that they can develop new skills, at the same time, offering more flexible hours than a traditional contact center.” Webhelp Group Chief People Officer – Francesca Zanisi
Technology can also be used to help augment the individual team members. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can listen to customers and direct the advisor towards the next best action. Automation can reduce the need to use multiple systems – most repetitive actions can be removed. Tools like Polyglot can help agents to work across different languages – an advisor offering text support on WhatsApp can work in English, even if the customer is sending messages in a different language.
“Technology now plays a central role in creating a flexible virtual contact center that can be accessed by customer advisors from the office or their home from anywhere in the world. The consistent experience and collaboration that the right platform can provide helps to foster a shared environment for people engagement and service performance. In addition, the various technology solutions deployed in modern customer service operations can augment the role of the advisor and help them to be more effective when helping customers. This also gives the customer more options and a better experience.”
Webhelp Group CTO – Yan Noblot
Modern customer service solutions need a wide range of skills. The customer service advisor is no longer the only consideration. Network and security expertise is required. Software developers are required to build bespoke solutions and code automated systems. Data analytics and AI is required to create insight into customer behavior and preferences.
For all these reasons, accessing CX talent is no longer about just finding a steady supply of advisors for your contact center. The solution requires a wide array of skills and people that want more flexibility in their work location and hours. By blending individual locations and using a strategy, you can create the best combination of flexibility for the customer service employees and a resilient customer service operation.
A recent paper explains the Webhelp Anywhere methodology and the Frost & Sullivan research in more detail.
Grow your own capability or outsource to experts?
How to make the right choice for your operation and your customer
This article was originally published in the Spring 2022 issue of Institute of Water Magazine, authored by Hayley Monks, Managing Director of Utilities for Gobeyond Partners, part of the Webhelp Group.
UK utility companies are under increased scrutiny as costs begin to rise. Consumers are feeling the pressure as combined water and sewerage bills for 2022/23 will rise by £7 to an annual average of £419 while water-only bills will be an average of £4 more from April. Whilst the average increase of 1.7% on combined water and sewerage bills is below inflation prices vary across England and Wales, with some customers seeing a hike of up to 10% or a fall of 6%.
Increasing costs, technological advances, pressures on operations, staffing and recruitment all place pressure on businesses to become as agile as possible and operate effectively in a changing and often unpredictable environment.
This uncertainty is leading businesses to consider the benefits of a strategic service partner and to understand how the right partner can help them navigate this challenging environment, working together to deliver what’s important – reducing operating costs whilst creating positive, valuable customer experiences.
Here are some questions to think about when engaging a strategic service partner to support service improvement and cost reduction.
How will you supercharge your digital transformation journey?
The pandemic has exacerbated the need for digital transformation across the sector and a significant number of businesses look to an outsourcer to support their transformation journey.
From deploying the right technology, to assessing existing digital journeys and creating the right balance between digital and human solutions. A strategic service partner offers centres of excellence that can support businesses to develop and deliver large scale, customer-led digital transformation programmes.
Engaging an expert partner whose core activity is transformation, digital customer experience, self-service and multi-channel strategy can be the answer. Giving you access to teams of customer journey and analytics experts, who can bring an understanding of drivers for customer demand, remove barriers to digital adoption, create revenue opportunities and provide best practice CX strategies.
But you want to maintain control. Business leaders often feel like outsourcing means losing this. The right outsourcing relationship should feel like a true partnership and an extension of your business – giving you confidence that you have delegated the activity to experts in their field who can deliver.
Can you create confidence from shared commercial objectives?
Creating commercial certainty in an uncertain world has never been more important. A modern, innovative a strategic service partner will work closely with its clients to develop shared commercial objectives. Ensuring both businesses succeed together.
This approach also supports the development of long-term, outcome focused, strategic partnerships where costs are better managed, customer experience is enhanced and the traditional cost-to-serve, transactional model is consigned to history.
Is your current operating model inflexible and in need of modernisation?
It’s our view that when businesses are considering a strategic service partner they can often need a solution that is unique to their situation. For some, this can be a need for a scalable, virtual and home-based solutions, while others may require a full on-site solution across multiple geographies.
Transitioning to a completely elastic operation as standard can take time and can be a costly learning curve. One thing that many companies have learnt as a result of COVID-19 the need to be agile and support people to work from wherever and however they want to work. But as customer demand grows, a strategic service partner can deliver an always-on, cost effective solution, customisable across multiple geographies and languages, and with access to specialist skills as required – combining to offer a solution capable of meeting their short and long-term customer operation demands.
Do you have a solution to short term, unpredictable or seasonal demand?
A strategic service partner offer valuable, long-term partnerships but there can be instances when businesses have a short-term, immediate demand challenge. Offering flexible demand solutions, where they rapidly deploy teams to meet short term spikes in customer activity offers a cost effective solution to customer demand-related challenges whilst ensuring a positive customer experience throughout.
Do you have limited access to highly specialised services and skillsets that can provide the insight, and enable the transformation, you need?
The ability to work anywhere has grown in the last 18 months some geographies still struggle to recruit and retain talent. An organisation may want to resource all their services themselves, but the pipeline is either not there or costly to maintain.
The growth of the digital customer continues and with it comes differing customer journey challenges. A strategic service partners offers more specialist solutions such as:
Data and analytics expertise to support businesses to bring true understanding of their customers and their needs. Strategic service partners embrace the wealth of data available from front-line, real-time customer interactions, creating actionable insights to deliver transformative, personalised and innovative customer experiences. An in-house option can work, however it requires long term commitment and knowledge development, which may not suit those who need to deliver change fast.
Access to specialist digital content services to moderate and manage content on digital platforms. Content moderation can be a drain on resources in an environment where users expect content to be published in near real-time – a strategic service partner can offer a combination of highly experienced content moderation experts and automation tools to support the best user experience.
A popular area for outsourcing is secure payment services, offering safe and simple solutions for customers and organisations. Managing customer and financial data should be done with great consideration. Your chosen strategic partner will become a data processer and responsible for looking after your data. Due diligence on data governance and management is an essential – this can be time consuming.
Business process outsourcing can be an incredibly positive step for businesses of all sizes, from fast growing companies scaling up their operations to established businesses looking to start, or take the next step on, their digital transformation journey. Finding a partner that fits your brand and values is just as important as any cost saving opportunity.
At Webhelp, we are primed to support you with any plans you may have for strategic growth and customer solutions.
If it sounds like we could provide a solution for you, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Where cryptocurrency meets Know Your Customer
There’s a strong case to be made that, as a society, we are in the advent stage of mainstream crypto. Consider the following three indicators: Firstly, it’s becoming seen as a normal part of our everyday life. The 2022 Superbowl saw over 112 million people tune in worldwide, with a significant portion watching the half time advertisements for FTX Trading and Crypto.com. There’s also been massive investment in Formula 1 and the English Premier League, with ByBit partnering with F1 champs Red Bull, and Dogecoin and CoinJar sponsoring Watford FC and Brentford FC, respectively.
The second reason is that crypto is becoming much more stable than before. Many cautious investors were previously discouraged by crypto’s volatility and complexity. It was difficult for the average person on the street to understand its purpose or to predict its movements. That’s all now beginning to change – with more providers and greater participation from the wider public, the market has arguably become more stable and efficient.
Lastly, crypto is becoming more widely recognised as a mainstream currency, making greater inroads to sit alongside fiat currencies used globally Increasingly, major banking services are offering crypto as part of their services. Revolut, for example, allows you to convert your cash into a wide selection of crypto currencies in just a few clicks. Opportunities have spread to other industries, with car dealerships as an example offering crypto as an alternative to traditional payment methods.
As we sit on the cusp of a new era for crypto, the question we’re asking is – how critical is Know Your Customer going to be?
KYC in a nutshell
Know Your Customer (KYC) is a fundamental part of an organisation’s risk management practice
It involves:
- establishing who your customer is,
- verifying their identity,
- building up a risk profiles of the customer, and then
- monitoring that throughout the lifecycle of their engagement with the company
Anonymous by design
Crypto, by nature, takes a decentralised approach. It was originally designed and built in a manner that allows its customers to remain anonymous, and protect their personal information from central governing bodies. Anonymity has been crucial to this development since the very beginning – Satoshi Nakamoto, credited with developing and creating the concept, is a pseudonym used by an unknown individual or individuals – and therefore, the traditional rules of tracking customer information do not typically apply. As a result, KYC poses a major challenge for global regulators when it comes to the increasing growth of crypto.
Crypto organisations have been pressured of late to introduce KYC checks in order to be permitted to operate through global jurisdictions. Binance, for example, recently introduced ID and facial recognition checks in order to operate in, and through, the UK. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also gone further, cracking down on bitcoin ATMs and ordering the closure of all Bitcoin cashpoints in the UK. For the compliance specialist, some of these restrictions make a great deal of sense in the face of historic and current misuse of cryptocurrencies, as platforms for money laundering, fraud, and financing of terrorism, along with documented links to cyber warfare.
To add to the complication is the recent rise in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital items – frequently artworks – that are traded for often extremely high values based on their inherent scarcity. In 2020, roughly $120m of NFTs were traded. In 2021, that number was closer to $21.5bn. The concern around NFTs is that they aren’t yet explicitly regulated, and are therefore not subject to the same scrutiny, exacerbating the potential issues around fraud and money laundering.
New world, old solutions
The reluctance across the crypto community to comply with traditional regulation is strong, and its effect is very real. Many argue that it goes against the very foundations of the technology, and undermines the anonymous nature of crypto. As a result of the introduction of KYC measures, some firms – such as Coindesk – have seen huge losses in customer numbers. KYC can introduce friction and cost into the onboarding process, putting new customers off, and ultimately costing the firm more money.
An additional consideration is whether the regulations are having the desired effect. With a suspected $9bn laundered through crypto in 2021, it’s clear that something still isn’t working.
Part of the problem is clearly down to the processes and solutions being used, which often struggle to maintain effectiveness at scale as users and transactions increase. This is in part driven by a ‘lift-and-shift’ of traditional approaches to KYC, and trying to make them work in a non-traditional set-up. Another problem is that, unlike traditional FS organisations, in crypto organisations KYC often only enters the process once trading is enabled. This means trading can happen immediately, and any concerns need to be remediated at a later point in time, defeating the whole purpose of the check in the first place; put simply, it does not work.
Whatever the reasons are, and there are numerous, it’s worth noting that a recent survey suggests that only 31% of crypto exchanges have complete and transparent KYC checks in place.
What to do?
It’s inevitable, and welcomed, that some form of increased regulation will be introduced into crypto, but what that looks like is still uncertain. What is certain, however, is that if crypto organisations want to continue operating at scale, across global jurisdictions – and protect themselves against the impacts of getting things wrong – KYC should be a key priority for them.
Contrary to some industry thinking, two things can be true at the same time:
- We should be able to live and operate in a world with strict privacy, where pseudonyms and direct, private interactions are possible
and
- We should be able to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, finding ways to quickly identify and deal with bad actors
To do this, we need to ensure the correct balance, designing KYC in a way that doesn’t introduce cost or friction into the customer experience, while ensuring that the solution effectively does what it needs to do.
By managing KYC in crypto in the right way, organisations will be able to:
- Improve customer transparency and trust, leading to greater adoption nationwide and globally
- Proactively combat the rising risks of money laundering, fraud and other scams
- Continue to improve the overall market stability, allowing firms to scale and grow
- Protect organisations’ profit and loss from regulatory and government sanctions.
There’s no doubt that KYC process are going to become increasingly embedded within crypto, but the key is to use this for competitive advantage through elegantly designed solutions – whether that’s electronic ID verification (eIDV) , automation, streamlined UX or more. It’s all possible, and it’s all up for grabs.
At Webhelp, we support our clients globally with KYC advice, solutions and implementation. Please get in touch if you have any questions.
Why car manufacturers need digital dealerships, not call centers
Automotive can be an enigmatic industry. World-leading in terms of product design, technology, and innovation – yet one of the last sectors to embrace digital to fully support their customers.
Almost all consumers will visit a manufacturer’s website at some stage when looking to buy a new car, but only a fraction will complete a purchase there. Most complete their journey elsewhere – either with competitors or offline in dealerships.
Yet around 60% of all new car buyers said buying online is appealing and they would do far more via digital channels, if it were possible. This includes tasks which traditionally were only carried out in dealerships, such as understanding jargon and technical details, comparing models according to personal criteria, deciding which to buy, finding deals, calculating budgetary factors, comparing insurance and service packages, agreeing the final price of the new car and trade-in, and checking their eligibility for finance.
Almost one third (29%) of people would be happy to self-serve online; and the same percentage again said they would need the reassurances and interactions that only humans can provide.
The only way to reach the second group is to replicate online, the same high standard of specialist product and financing expertise that previously customers only received at a physical showroom.
Building “Digital Dealerships” represents a massive opportunity for automotive brands to provide what almost a third of their potential customers want in terms of a digital experience. While massively improving experiences for everyone and driving higher conversion rates and sales online and offline, “Digital Dealerships” will also gradually increase direct relationships with their customers.
But it’s a difficult journey.
For years, brands have asked outsourcing providers to deliver call centers for essential customer services at scale across multiple regions, based mainly on securing the most competitive cost. To support the adoption of ecommerce, massively accelerated by COVID, manufacturers deployed chatbots and live chats, which were staffed by traditional customer-service agents, trained to capture contact details and find the nearest dealership. Today this results in frustrating and unproductive customer journeys and is no longer enough.
So how can manufacturers build their “Digital Dealerships”?
Build digital dealerships in-house
Some manufacturers created in-house teams capable of successfully supporting their ecommerce operations in a pilot market or two.
But they’ve found that replicating and scaling home-grown sales teams from a pilot country to multiple brands, markets and languages requires so much more time and money, that this approach is no longer viable.
At some point, manufacturers will find that outsourcing operations is the only realistic and scalable option available.
Outsource delivery to a specialized provider
Delivering a Digital Dealership is hard.
Half of the success is in developing the perfect mix of the right people with the right skills and training, data and insights, processes and supporting technologies.
The second half lies in successfully integrating it into manufacturers’ businesses and operations.
This makes it more of a journey than an ‘out of the box’ solution.
As a car manufacturer, your journey should start with finding a partner that brings the right mindset, people, insights, processes, and technology mix to the party – who won’t try to learn it all on your payroll.
To ensure that, we recommend you ask prospective suppliers the following questions:
- What framework do you have to identify our maturity and current gaps, plan the journey, and manage its progress?
- What soft and hard skills are the agents selected on, and what automotive-specific sales and product training should they undergo?
- Would you have your agents undergo the same ongoing e-learning training and regular exams as my dealers?
- Are your agents FCA (or equivalent) certified and trained to advise and sell finance and insurance products?
- How incentivized are they to sell, remain and grow?
- What processes, data, and insights do they use to improve customer experience and sales performance?
- Do your agents use scripts? How prescriptive they are, and how often are these evaluated and optimized?
- What languages, operating hours and peaks can the teams cover and absorb? Do they work from the office, remotely, or both?
- What internal technologies do they use to access and maintain knowledge, learn, test, evaluate, and improve?
These answers will enable you to create a genuine digital dealership, and not a generalist customer support center.
If you need help or want to learn more about our journey and Digital Dealerships, get in touch.
About the author
Tomas Honz is Group Head of Solutions for Automotive and Mobility at Webhelp. He has over 20 years’ experience helping leading car manufacturers and retailers to maximize their use of online through innovations, best-practice customer experiences and deployment of people, processes, and technologies.
The business case for customer-led transformation in financial services
The financial services (FS) sector is under increasing pressure to modernise operational models whilst driving profitability, improving customer experience (CX), managing higher levels of risk, and looking after its people.
In this rapidly changing business environment, customer-led transformation can enable firms to tackle these challenges, get ahead of potential disruptors, provide the proper channels to retain customers, and become agile enough to pivot when consumer behaviours inevitably change.
As such, the firms that will most successfully evolve are those that commit to holistic, flexible, and connected customer-led transformation programmes. This article explores the crucial business case for doing so, providing advice and examples to guide firms in the right direction.
Why is customer-led transformation so crucial in Financial Services?
In a recent article, Webhelp Financial Services Managing Director, Hervé Mazenod, explored the next wave of challenges that organisations were facing, many of which are already coming to the fore.
For the general population, the long-term issue of the rising cost of living is significantly impacting consumers’ financial well-being. Plus, we are seeing an exacerbation of the narrative around increasing wages, increasing resignations, and an inability to recruit adequately.
Regulatory pressure continues to build, with the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) proposed Consumer Duty being an example. While the Duty is there to protect customers, it will also complicate the supply of retail financial products and services for firms.
Alongside these challenges, the importance of customer experience remains, with competition in the market continuing to grow relentlessly. In the UK, poor customer experience costs businesses over £37 billion per year, and there is a strong connection between customer satisfaction and sales gains, with companies seeing a 4.4% drop in sales when CSAT scores fall at least one point below the sector average.
There are also continuous changes in consumer behaviour, with some considerable differences in customer experience expectations across Europe.
Webhelp recently conducted a European survey to analyse customer perceptions of banking and insurance interactions. Here are some of the most prescient results.
Customers prefer to avoid branch visits
Survey respondents preferred online channels, but voice was still popular in some countries. Still, interaction through a physical store or branch was the lowest preferred channel across Europe (19%). These findings mean that firms have an opportunity to better serve customers by investing in email, webchat, SMS, and social media, leading to enhanced customer experience and fewer overheads related to physical locations.
Improving first-time resolution will boost loyalty
Around 25% of respondents said their provider did not resolve issues first time, and over 40% said it was a high effort to drive a resolution. When measuring these results against customer loyalty, 10% said they would reduce or cease their relationship with the business after their interaction, showing a clear opportunity to retain customers through improved experiences.
The threat of disruptive business models
Over 40% of customers said they would actively leave their current provider if brands such as Google or Amazon started offering banking services. By working to understand why customers would so willingly switch brands, businesses could pivot their offering to better meet customer needs, and pre-emptively disrupt the market.
Customer needs are also becoming more complex and personal. With the proliferation of automation in the customer journey, the need for a human touch with empathetic customer experience agents will become more important for dealing with complex tasks.
By meeting the combined weight of these challenges and recognising the customer’s evolving demands, firms have a clear opportunity to differentiate in the market – a differentiation that begins with developing a robust customer-led transformation programme.
The outcomes of a successful transformation
The external factors justifying customer-led transformation are highly compelling, with a broad range of outcomes that firms can factor into an associated business case.
Higher Profitability
While customer experience transformation requires investment, the benefits quickly outweigh the costs. By focusing on fluidity of service, the often hidden cost of poor experience is brought to the surface as unnecessary hand-offs, delays, errors, queries and other failure points are gradually reduced.
Organisations can achieve higher productivity and create interactions that are of real value to customers; leading to better reputation, a reduction in operational headcount and an increase in potential revenue.
Enhanced customer experience
Ultimately, by giving customers efficient digital channels, fast resolutions, and personalised interactions at every step of the journey, the experience of dealing with your organisation becomes effortless, impactful, and worth talking about, attracting more customers and boosting business.
Engaged people and talent
Creating awareness of the customer journey allows colleagues to see the value in their role and how their interactions fit the overall experience, increasing engagement and driving a continuous improvement mindset. This cultural shift results in less attrition and helps attract new talent to the organisation.
More protection for customer and business
Customer-led transformation can enhance debt management or financial support services during inflation and job insecurity, making firms trusted partners to customers. It can also help prevent fraud and other economic crimes since many aspects of transformation require a re-visiting of data security practices and systems.
In striving to achieve these outcomes, what pitfalls can firms expect to face along the way?
Friction in the transformation process
In our experience, many transformation initiatives appear to be sensible, well thought out, and rigorously planned, but they often fail to deliver the total value that stakeholders anticipated at the outset, and sometimes have negative impacts on other parts of the business and customer experience.
Lack of an end-to-end view
Transformation programmes often focus on individual segments of the customer journey. For example, an insurance firm might hone in on transforming the underwriting process rather than the entire policy renewal process. This approach often fails to impact the customer as it neglects to improve all other steps in the journey.
Not truly understanding the customer
Many enterprises fail to understand customer emotions because they map journeys based on their interactions rather than from a customer’s perspective. In our experience, the absence of end-to-end data systems holds organisations back even further, preventing them from joining the dots across the journey and seeing the first-hand customer experience.
Failing to take a holistic approach
The actual cost of transformation can be significantly greater when organisations focus on single-point solutions that fail to take a broader, enterprise-level approach. For instance, the automation of a mortgage decision/underwriting process should be one of a number of changes driven by a holistic design that looks at the overall experience of the customer looking to move home (or at the very least looking for credit). Too often, these instances are single point solutions which do not link with a broader strategy.
Transformation friction in the fraud customer journey
Along with these fallbacks, the financial services industry faces transformation barriers in many existing processes. Take fraud, for example. Identifying and verifying a genuine fraud case can often be lengthy and complex due to the numerous necessary steps required to manage risk and protect the customer. On one level, this friction is intentional and designed to identify potential fraudsters. But, on the other hand, it results in a fragmented process that adds to customer frustration and anxiety.
In some of these cases, we’ve seen clients with up to 16 different security checks in one fraud customer journey. We’ve also seen dramatic differences in the language used by firms across their various communication channels, which can be confusing for customers and prevent fast and effortless resolutions. In both examples, the end-to-end journey was inefficient, and customers poorly rated the experience, despite the firms’ heavy investment into transformation.
So how can firms approach a holistic transformation process that covers the entire customer journey, end-to-end, and functions successfully with a deep understanding of customer needs?
Implementing end-to-end customer journey transformation
In our experience, there are four core elements to a successful customer-led transformation.
Visualise the journey from the customer’s point of view
Take into account various customer personas, and focus on effort, failure points, actions, and emotions. Managing the customer journey is about creating insight and monitoring changes in customer behaviour to drive continuous data-led improvement, high performance, and positive customer experiences.
Bring all parties together
All departments should play a part in the transformation and collaborate to create a customer-centric culture that harnesses the value of human capability. It’s all about ensuring that teams can complement one another’s abilities and employees are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and empowerment to do the right thing.
Challenge the real need of the customer
When thinking of a mortgage, where does the customer journey start? Likely from the moment they consider moving house, not only when searching for financing. Recognising this means potentially including other actors outside of the organisation and then involving everyone in supporting that customer journey internally.
Leverage data, insight, and supportive technology
Supportive technology can enable firms to harness new capabilities, create a seamless transition between solutions, optimise adoption through behavioural science, better predict consumer behaviour changes, and drive continuous improvement. In addition, the valuable data and insight gained from the right technology can allow proactive actions in response to customer behaviour and needs.
Quality is free
In 1979, author and management theory contributor Phillip Crosby explored the concept that “quality is free”, surmising an investment in the right place to get things right first time, is always preferable to being exposed to the higher costs of fixing issues as they arise.
In making the business case for customer journey-led transformation, financial services firms can develop great customer experiences while unlocking a wide range of benefits across the organisation – in other words, by applying the idea that “quality is free”, you could say that “great customer experience is free”.
How’s that for a business case?
At Webhelp, we are primed to support you with any transformation plans you may have.
If it sounds like we could provide a solution for you, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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Customer experience innovation set to undergo exponential growth in the next decade, research finds
Paris, France – 10th March 2022 – Customer contact center operations are set to undergo transformation to improve customer experience (CX) delivery, finds new research from Frost & Sullivan. Commissioned by Webhelp, the study of over 1,000 senior customer experience management professionals finds organizations are embracing technology and new ways of working to deliver improved customer service, with 98% planning to transform operations within 24 months.
The study finds almost one in two senior CX professionals expect to see a rise in new customer channels supported by technology such as voice assistants and AR services in the next decade. Much of this change has been accelerated in the last couple of years by the Covid-19 pandemic; 90% expect working from home to be a permanent part of CX delivery models in the future, and 78% expect advisors to have the ability to determine where they want to work.
In remote environments operational challenges have remained, and the research reveals engaging and motivating employees is seen as the most pressing, closely followed by keeping up with the latest contact center technology and deploying it at scale.
“The study has provided fascinating insight on the future direction of customer experience delivery,” commented Alexander Michael, Director of Consulting at Frost & Sullivan. “As the industry continues to undergo rapid transformation, it’s pleasing to see that brands plan to embed work from home as a permanent part of their model. Those that recognize that this needs to be designed in properly, in a sustainable manner, will see true benefits for their business and their customers.”
A bespoke approach to quality customer journey delivery
Contact center management expects onshore, nearshore and offshore contact centers to grow in the future – showcasing the need for a tailored approach across different businesses to maximize quality delivery. Companies choosing to improve customer experience may need to adapt the approach, while ensuring the security of customer data, access to talent, the resilience of operation and cost base.
“CX transformation must start with the needs of the customer and strategy of the business,” commented Olivier Duha, CEO and Co-founder of Webhelp. “Once agreed, it’s important to think holistically about how an operation is designed to meet those needs. This model should embrace the most suitable delivery format, considering how onshore, nearshore and offshore locations can be combined with working models such as onsite, at-home, or hybrid work. The world we live in today means we can host a customer support location for anywhere in the world and scale it rapidly.”
The research indicates that any customer experience management approach must address operational challenges of the future, around managing employee attrition, integrating disparate channels and systems, managing compliance, and engaging and motivating employees (all areas estimated by one in two to be more challenging in the future).
The future
Respondents that have engaged in transformation projects are seeing benefits, with positive impacts identified on the security of data/customers (77%), customer experience (78%), access to talent (76%), the resilience of operations (77%), and cost base (77%).
“Our research shows us that 99% of customer experience leaders are focused on being able to quickly scale operations to meet customer demand,” explains Matthieu Bouin, Group Managing Director at Webhelp. “To achieve this, you need two things. Firstly, you need to design your operation with this in mind. Secondly, you need the right tech platform that can adapt, scale, and flex in response to the increasingly rapid changes in consumer behavior.”
-ENDS-
Notes to editors
- For more details on Webhelp Anywhere please visit: https://webhelp.com/anywhere
- Full research is available on request
- Study was conducted December 2021 across Europe, US and Asia, surveying customer experience leaders
About Webhelp
Webhelp designs, delivers, and optimizes unforgettable human experiences for today’s digital world – creating game-changing customer journeys. From sales to service, content moderation to credit management, Webhelp is an end-to-end partner across all B2C and B2B customer journeys. Its over 100,000 passionate employees across more than 55 countries thrive on making a difference for the world’s most exciting brands. Webhelp is currently owned by its management and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (Euronext: GBLB), a leading global investment holding, as of November 2019.
