The Improved Client Service Experience, Powered by Digital

Reaching beyond stellar. Using digital technologies to get there.

The Improved Client Service Experience, Powered by Digital

Reaching beyond stellar. Using digital technologies to get there.

September 2019

By Jennifer Wagner

For providers looking to lead clients on their respective digital journeys, the focus needed extends well beyond one of offering a robust array of innovative solutions that are derived from the latest technologies and capabilities.

While having access to these services is the important beginning of the passage to sustain long-term, mutually successful client relationships, that is only the first step. To maintain, and supersede, a level of service that can be called the “continuum of client support,” providers must actively invest in new technologies and tools that embed forward-thinking processes to strengthen and propel their interactions with clients.

 

Enabling a Future Vision for Servicing

 

Viewing the customer experience as a range of behaviors along this continuum – rather than a static deliverable – offers powerful visibility into the entirety of a client’s journey, allowing providers to recognize not just the points of high satisfaction (which BNY Mellon surveys tell us where we are actively achieving1), but also insight into any shortcomings.2 As part of this holistic insight, success for clients around servicing and implementations in today’s market means doing more than ever before: increased understanding around client expectations, quickly translating feedback into action items, and keeping pulse with industry trends for all customers, across all channels, continuously.

Jen Wagner and colleagues

“Service providers are increasingly turning toward digitally advanced internal systems and processes to meet their customers’ expanding needs for faster, enhanced information that will free clients to solve important business issues – with less time spent solving inquiries and waiting for answers.”

— Jennifer Wagner, Global Head of Client Support, Treasury Services

As the needs of the market increase, and that effort becomes increasingly challenging, the industry is reading the tea leaves. According to one recent industry survey3, 56% of customer service personnel say handling complex issues is the most challenging feature of their jobs and 32% acknowledge that addressing demands will increase in complexity over time, while 41% believe that new technology will help that effort via less administrative tasks. Service providers are increasingly turning toward digitally advanced internal systems and processes to meet their customers’ expanding needs for faster, enhanced information that will free clients to solve important business issues – with less time spent solving inquiries and waiting for answers.

 

The BNY Mellon Direction: Simplifying the Implementation Process

 

We are actively reimagining how clients onboard our solutions toward a digital experience that provides increased levels of transparency and leverages a simpler, more optimal operating model for the entire continuum of their experience with us. The initiative leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge machine learning to catapult our process beyond manual and time-consuming procedures and systems to handle digitized data capture for an increasingly seamless continuum of client experience.

The Continuum of Client Service

Through a cloud-based Onboarding Data Repository, our clients will be able to use digital documents to increase process efficiencies around necessary – though time consuming – protocols, including tax processes; regulatory requirements (such as KYC and AML); account openings; straight through processing; resiliency management; etc. The initiative is being designed to:

 

  • Aggregate data to reduce timeframes around regulatory reporting, onboarding workflows and implementation of services to simplify how clients interact with us.
  • Accelerate required processes, such as utilizing machine learning to streamline client data collection for Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions scanning to accelerate onboarding processes.
  • Optimize and boost requests for timely information through automated capabilities that enable our staff to quickly find, view and upload digitized documents and data to hasten implementation requirements for inquiry resolution.
  • Mitigate risk via full transparency into transaction requests, inquiries and status for immediate views across the entire implementation process.
  • Automate an expedient workflow utilizing predictive logic to compress steps in a regulation-laden process, streamlining and condensing the points of contact across the organization's end-to-end implementation experience.
Jen Wagner and colleagues

A Smarter Vision for Servicing

 

BNY Mellon is also digitizing workflows via the use of AI to further streamline and manage data in a way that provides clients with fast access to servicing protocols. The aim is to refocus clients’ staff away from handling and making inquiries to managing and growing their business, a huge redirect in effort, highlighted by the fact that BNY Mellon Treasury Services alone currently handles more than 6,700 inquiries per month:

 

  • Faster Service Inquiry Resolution: Through digital self-service tools that will allow for greater access to requested information, our new, digitized servicing system will utilize machine learning to connect servicing information to the proper team(s) across the organization for fast information retrieval and inquiry resolution.
  • Enhanced Data Insights: By automatically tracking and aggregating historic inquiry volume and account actions, the system will provide increased transparency around open queries, inquiry status, and detailed information on comprehensive client interactions for instant access to account updates. Advanced tools automatically complete instructions; provide predictive analytics around data and offer full transparency into account information.
  • Improved Efficiency: The platform will employ AI to review and translate manual processes to resolve a greater amount of inquiries on first contact, allowing us to service accounts faster by:
    • Streamlining and automating account creation workflows by replacing manual data input processes with automated data processes
    • Dedicating resources focused on analysis and root cause resolution of inquiries for continuous process improvement
    • Identifying repetitive transactions involving the same parties to automatically release future items, creating exponential time and resource efficiencies by reducing unnecessary service hold ups
  • Instant Information Access: The platform’s easy-to-navigate repository of data on our solutions will permit users to find fast answers about our comprehensive products and services, industry-related information (e.g., trends and updates) and thought leadership topics from our treasury management experts.
Advanced Technology Tools infographic

The Future of Digital Servicing

 

As the financial services industry begins to focus on how the latest technologies can digitize client interactions for exponential improvement, the transitions are, and will continue to be, a monumental undertaking. The effort requires a complete reimagining of how current workflows can employ growing technological capabilities. For BNY Mellon, our collaborative and personalized approach to servicing – that is deeply embedded in our culture – has enabled us to launch this journey while continuing to offer the consistent, flexible, knowledge-focused and solutions-driven services that have been profoundly successful for our clients. We have embarked on the digital journey that all financial providers must begin to take to meet the evolving needs of a digitized future. By embracing simpler, smarter and safer technologies to transform how we operate, providers can empower clients to spend their time growing and developing their business, while leaving the servicing to us.

Jennifer Wagner

Global Head of Client Support, Treasury Services


 

1 BNY Mellon Servicing data reports overall satisfaction of Treasury Services clients at 87 percent, with 91 percent of Treasury Services clients indicating they would recommend BNY Mellon to others.

2 The Truth about Customer Service; Harvard Business Review; Rawson, Duncan, and Jones; September 2013.

3 Calabrio Research; AdWeek; The Widening Gap between Customer Service and the Customer; March 12, 2018; https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/infographic-the-widening-gap-between-customer-service-and-the-customer/

 

BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation and may also be used as a generic term to reference the Corporation as a whole or its various subsidiaries generally and may include The Bank of New York Mellon, 240 Greenwich Street, New York, New York 10286, a banking corporation organized and existing pursuant to the laws of the State of New York and operating in England through its branch at One Canada Square, London E14 5AL, England. The information contained in this material is for use by wholesale clients only and is not to be relied upon by retail clients. Not all products and services are offered at all locations.

 

This material, which may be considered advertising, is for general information and reference purposes only and is not intended to provide legal, tax, accounting, investment, financial or other professional advice on any matter, and is not to be used as such. BNY Mellon does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of, nor undertake to update or amend the information or data contained herein. We expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from or in reliance upon any of this information or data. Trademarks and logos belong to their respective owners.

 

© 2019 The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. All rights reserved.

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