It’s not just about money in financial services
Information is imperative!

“We’re very happy with the solution,” Wiegand says. “Now our agents have all of the information they need at their fingertips. Any time that we use it, it reaffirms why we are happy to have the tool that we have now … The biggest thing is the natural language speech search. There are hundreds of different ways you may ask a question. Before, you had to know the hierarchy of the system.”

The IntelliResponse solution provides a number of different benefits, Wiegand explains. Bank executives can see the “journey” from question to answer, with the analysis going to the bank’s rapid cycle improvement team for any necessary tweaks. The goal is to continue to reduce the time to answer customer queries while ensuring the customer receives the needed information.

The solution also has reduced the average call handling time by 46 seconds for 10 percent of the calls. Reducing the average customer interaction time by one second is equivalent to one full-time employee, according to Wiegand. The bank hopes to expand the time savings to 20 percent of its calls. Huntington will also be adding a couple of employees to analyze its Internet-based information to see if it can improve the bank’s self-service efforts, further deflecting contact center communications.

Understanding employee feedback

Some financial service providers aren’t typical banks, credit unions or insurance firms, but instead companies that provide financial solutions for specialty markets. One such company is Diamond Mind, which offers payment solutions for the K-12 market.

The 12-year-old company has grown every year, leading to an expanding workforce. But the company didn’t want to lose its corporate culture while adding workers, says Marty Zug, Diamond Mind’s chief financial officer. As the company expanded from 11 to 20 employees, executives wanted to keep a pulse on the culture as well as obtain employee feedback for actionable knowledge that would fuel the company’s further growth, according to Zug. So the company started looking for a knowledge management solution that would enable it to get feedback from employees and to benchmark it over time.

Diamond Mind turned to 9Lenses, with which its CEO already had a connection, Zug says. A demo of 9Lenses’ Business 360 application convinced Diamond Mind officials that they didn’t need to look elsewhere.

Business 360 enables companies to customize (including adding or subtracting) queries for employees on how they feel the company is doing, where it is improving, where it needs to improve and on similar matters on a 1-9 scale. Employees are also able to add free form comments, including how they might be able to improve a specific company area. Additionally, they can tag certain topics as core strengths or weaknesses of the company.

Diamond Mind issues the Business 360 queries every six months, keeping most of the questions consistent to measure changes in company performance, Zug says. 9Lenses analyzes the answers and commentary, then provides feedback. One finding, for example, was that Diamond Mind employees strongly supported the “fun” committee’s work (holiday parties, other events), so funding for that committee grew from virtually nothing to $16,000 annually.

“The group is trying to bring the company together and enhance our culture,” Zug says.