How British and Irish Banks can Streamline Customer Service for COVID-19 Loan Schemes

Proactive outreach, AI, automation, predictive routing and calling will be essential for reaching out to the most vulnerable business clients.

The UK government launched the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) in spring 2020, to assist the UK economy following the outbreak of COVID-19. CBILS is a crucial part of the UK government’s initiative to get credit flowing to firms urgently needing it, especially those facing a significant and immediate loss of cash flow. 

Multiple schemes for business loans

In addition to the CBILS, three other prominent schemes are designed to support UK businesses of various sizes: Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), and Future Fund.

Accredited lenders need to manage the high-level of demand for loans

British Business Bank operates CBILS via its accredited lenders. There are over 100 of these lenders currently working to provide finance.

They include:

• high-street banks
• challenger banks
• asset-based lenders
• smaller specialist local lenders

Providers in the Republic of Ireland also seeing high demands for loans

The Republic of Ireland has its own lending scheme, the COVID-19 Credit Guarantee Scheme (CCGS), provided by the Government of Ireland. The scheme is currently available through a wide range of lenders, that includes leading banks and credit unions. 

Stepping up customer experience 

Proactive outreach, AI, automation, predictive routing and calling will be essential for outreach to the most vulnerable clients while ensuring proper staffing levels. Since many banks have shuttered their branches, they are leveraging the contact centre as their client experience hub. They are standing-up special, dedicated remote teams to facilitate the loan application intake and review process to ensure fair, fast and efficient processing for their small business clients. 

A recent Talkdesk Research™ report, The CX Revolution in Financial Services and Insurance, in which 220 global financial services and insurance firms and more than 900 of their clients and policyholders were interviewed, found that 63% of clients believed one poor experience would motivate them to switch banks—just one. In addition, 82% of financial services and insurance firms believe their contact centre is a strategic asset and a differentiator. They see the contact centre as a hub for their client experience with omnichannel spokes into the web, chatbots, apps, email, SMS and social to deliver a cohesive and delightful experience. For some banks and lenders, the contact centre replaces the retail footprint, left by the closure of branches.

Talkdesk CX Cloud™ is the market-leading, secure client banking solution designed to integrate every client engagement across channels and lines of business. With Talkdesk’s award-winning cloud-native solution, banks can rapidly deploy integrated communications across a flexible, secure platform to deliver differentiated client experiences that build and retain loyalty. Talkdesk CX Cloud is designed for the “new normal” where banks can deliver speed and trust at scale. 

• Speed: Designed, implemented and deployed in days, not weeks. 
• Trust: Over 30 cybersecurity certifications, licenses and international data privacy compliance
• Scale: Deployed in more than  1,800 enterprises in more than 75 countries across the world 

Helping lenders quickly set-up dedicated COVID-19 business loan contact centres

Managing emergency programs like CBILS and CCGS can be done in multiple iterations, or integrating the Talkdesk CX Cloud into your overall contact centre platform, leveraging:

• Workforce Engagement Management to empower agents to deliver exceptional client service from home
• Predictive Dialing to triple or quadruple connect rates
• Proactive Notifications to decrease inbound call volumes
• Guide is an AI-powered, self-service knowledge base for agents and customers 
• Agent Assist to supercharge agents with intelligent guidance
• Live Chat to increase real-time client engagement
• Studio to seamlessly manage and configure call flows
• Video Conference integration for white glove service
• Omnichannel to provide integrated communications across email, chat, messaging apps, and social media
• Remote enables your agents and relationship managers to securely and confidently work from anywhere, office, home or client site on their mobile device 
• 60+ API integrations, including AWS, Salesforce, Zoom, Slack and Microsoft

Talkdesk CX Cloud helps to reduce agents average speed of answer (ASA) and client average wait time (AWT), improve agent productivity and increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. 

Need help? Don’t let the high-levels of demand for COVID-19 business loans overwhelm your contact centre, contact us today to help you find immediate solutions: https://www.talkdesk.com/call-centre-solutions/financial-services/banking/