Customer expectations are pushing banks to innovate. Today’s bank customers expect
anytime, anywhere access to their money. They expect banks and their services to be
available across channels and devices. And they expect banks to communicate the way
they do: using live, streaming video. Is your bank ready for the next wave in technology? Are
you ready to video enable your channels? In this interview, Global Industry Solutions Manager
Leonard Selvaggio of Cisco discusses the changing customer experience banks need to offer
and how video should be at the centre of that experience.
Leonard Selvaggio’s current focus is on the insurance and retail banking industries. As industry
solution manager he identifies business issues in the insurance and retail banking industries and
develops business and technology solutions to address those issues. He has been instrumental
in creating and marketing innovative solutions for financial services firms for over 25 years as
a supplier of software, hardware and services to the United States and international markets.
Prior to joining Cisco, Leonard Selvaggio was Avaya’s Director of Financial Services Industry
Marketing where he was responsible for shaping and implementing the company’s business
strategies in financial services.
Leonard Selvaggio holds an M.A. degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Throughout
his career, he has served on committees at the American Bankers Association, Bank
Administration Institute and the Wall Street Technology Association. He is a member of
Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), a global,
nonprofit standards development organization serving the insurance industry and related
financial services industries.
Q: What do you think are the top three to five
challenges faced by the retail banks today, both
from a customer perspective as well as from the
bank’s perspective?
A: Let’s start with today’s consumer. In broad-brush
terms, consumers have ever higher expectations for
the level of service they receive from their bank. They
expect anytime, anywhere access to their money. They
want to see it, move it, use it. Right now. They also
expect their bank to know them as individuals.
These consumer requirements alone are pushing banks
to innovate. Almost all banks have a multichannel presence, but are still working towards providing a
compelling and consistent experience. Getting to a
single view of the customer is part of the mix here.
As customers move from getting money from an
ATM, to transferring funds via a smartphone or
tablet, to calling into a contact center to resolve an
issue, or applying for a loan online or in a branch,
banks are faced with tracking these interactions via
siloed channels or tracking them through a customercentric
model. So, the simple-sounding solution --
delivering anywhere, anytime banking via any device
-- creates challenges across the front, middle, and
back office for every bank.
Q: What are the trends in the
retail banking industry that
banks have either planned for
or would be embracing in next
one to two years as part of their
roadmap?
A: If we look back just a few years,
we see the transition from a focus
on cost savings and operational
excellence to a renewed focus on the
customer and customer experience
as the number-one priority. I like a
headline I saw last year: “Moving
from Efficiency to Proficiency.”
The proficiency is in delivering the
customer experience.
But let’s not be fooled: cost savings
are still in every conversation. This
is why virtualization is part of
every conversation. If we look at
desktop virtualization, the timing
is perfect. The old barriers of
network performance and line costs
are dissipating. It used to be that a
thin desktop meant a degraded user
experience and loss of functionality.
Not so now. Virtualized desktops
deliver a rich user experience, crystal
clear video, and fast performance.
Software management is greatly
simplified. Branches have fewer
moving parts and consume less
power.
Desktop virtualization puts
increased pressure on the data center
and the network. The network must
be secure and intelligent. The answer
in the data center is not to rack and
stack more of the same servers, but
to move to fabric computing. The
benefits start with simplicity, and
extend to improved performance
at lower cost. This is a fundamental
architectural change that financial
services firms are embracing, and it
will play out for the next five years.
Q: What are Cisco’s initiatives
and investments in the retail
banking segment to stay ahead
of the curve?
A: All indications are that video is
becoming more pervasive. Cisco’s
recent Index reports that “the sum
of all forms of video (TV, video
on demand [VoD], Internet, and
peer to peer [P2P]) will continue
to be approximately 90% of global
consumer traffic by 2015.”
What does this mean to banking?
Video is of growing importance
across all delivery channels. When
I challenge bankers to name a
channel that will not be using video
in the next five years, the easy
answer is the IVR, the interactive
voice response system. I may have
to concede that one, but IVRs have
given way to voice portals, and voice
portals are supporting video. ATM?
Video for promotions. Contact
center? Video-enabled agents and
subject matter experts. Internet?
Streaming, on-demand, financial
literacy, branding, promotion,
interactive video....that’s just a
start. The branch? Digital signage,
surveillance, training delivered ondemand
and by streaming, access
to remote experts in other branches
and contact centers, kiosks, desktop
video, tablet video, video phones.
But the point is not just video, but
video, voice, and data all supported
on a network and data center
architecture that does not degrade
or compromise performance
or security. Of course the next
questions are: is your bank ready to
video enable your channels today?
Where is it in your planning?
Specifically in retail banking, one
of our leading solutions is Cisco®
Remote Expert. This solution
connects a customer—regardless
of the mode or media they use
to interact with the bank—with
the most appropriate and available
expert regardless of where the
expert is within the bank. The
purpose is to deliver a high-quality
customer experience, meet their
immediate need, and provide an
opportunity to up sell and cross sell.
When applied to the branch, the
solution enables a bank to provide
the full suite of their products and
services at video-collaborationenabled
branches. It is too expensive
to staff every branch with onsite
experts, yet customers expect that
level of service. Fail to deliver that
service and customers can take
their business across the street to a
competitor. Banks are applying this
solution to help in home mortgage
lending, wealth management, complex problem resolution, small
business lending and commercial
lending, just to name a few areas.
Q: Give us your perspective
on the collaboration of Cisco,
HCL, and VCE to team up and
transform the way banks are
going to engage with customers
and transform (re-align) their
channel strategy (distribution
and service)?
A: The HCL Branch Transformation
solution adds important technology
and process components to the
Cisco Remote Expert solution. And
running the combined solution
in a VCE environment delivers
an optimized result. The HCL
FinEdge™ solution, which is a
customer relationship management
application specifically designed
for banks, provides the know-yourcustomer
elements, and it records
the sales activity so there is continuity
in the customer experience and
the ability to apply analytics for
continuous improvement.
In the Cisco Remote Expert branch
example I described earlier, when
an existing customer requests
assistance, let’s say for retirement
savings, the first thing that is done is
to gather the customer information.
FinEdge™ delivers the complete
customer profile right to the
branch personnel who are helping
the customer. As the branch staff
discovers the customer’s needs
and requests a video session with a
remote expert, the profile goes with
the request.
Most branch-based Remote Expert
sessions take place in branch
consulting rooms to provide privacy
and foster open communications.
As the video session starts, the
expert can greet the customer by
name, giving a personal touch and saving the customer the bother of
repeating information the bank
already has on file. As the expert
interacts with the customer on
high-quality audio and video, the
FinEdge™ application is gathering
data and tracking the sales process.
Many interactions that start in one
channel extend to other channels
as a natural course. The retirement
planning session started in a
branch with a remote expert can
extend to web interaction, phone
calls, and follow-up sessions with
the remote expert. The HCL
FinEege™ application tracks all of
these interactions, helping to deliver
a personalized and compelling
customer experience. It delivers
on the promise of intelligently
managing customer interactions
that occur over multiple channels.
The VCE environment gives a bank
a lot of flexibility in deployment
options. At this time, the ability to
run on a hosted on-premises basis
in the VCE environment helps to
save up to 40% in CapEx. This
is very attractive to banks that
are weighing CapEx and OpEx
costs. The VCE component of
the HCL Bank Transformation
solution combines industryleading
compute, network, storage,
virtualization, and management
technologies into pre-tested, prepackaged
units of infrastructure
ready for deployment.
Q: Some CXOs may think
that such a transformational
solution is a luxury or nice-tohave.
Can this solution provide
early adopters the competitive
advantage, and if so, how?
A: Clearly a new normal is emerging.
Part of this transformation is
consumer driven. When you look at
the channel computing architecture, it has not evolved much since the
mid 1990s when client-server and
Ethernet technologies won the
day. This traditional architecture
typically includes underutilized
hardware, server sprawl, multiple
vendor relationships, non-uniform
IT processes, and rising operating
costs (space, power, cabling, and
hardware). As advanced as those
architectures were, their time has
passed. But they still persist in
every bank.
This is an industry that prefers
evolution rather than revolution.
The changes in the consumer
environment and in the operating
environment are happening
now. Those banks that do not
address these issues risk offering
mediocre customer service
and as a result, experiencing
higher levels of customer attrition.
Virtualization, be it on-premises
or off-premises cloud, has
moved from the planning to the
implementation stages. The HCL
Bank Transformation solution has a
key advantage in that it provides a
bank with many options on where
to start. It also gives the bank an
opportunity to tailor their business
application and architecture roadmap to fit their corporate goals.
When you ask about early adopters,
I have to pause. When I look at the
major components of the HCL
Bank Transformation offer -- CRM,
unified communications, business
video and converged infrastructure
-- those components are no longer
in early adopter status. Those banks
that take advantage of the complete
offer will be implementing proven
capabilities. This removes risk. It will
also provide competitive advantages
in improved and differentiated
services. |
