In recent years, the financial services industry has undergone many changes, ranging from tumultuous economic conditions to heightened customer expectations. Through all of these changes, customer experience has remained essential to attracting and retaining customers.

Customer experience goes beyond improving customers’ perception of a brand and directly impacts revenue. In fact, an improved customer experience can increase business revenue by 10-15%, Zippia reports.

At the same time, financial services have transformed how and where their employees work. According to survey findings from Scoop, the financial sector is one of the top five most flexible industries when it comes to hybrid and remote work. Many financial services teams are now distributed around the world and need secure, scalable ways to stay connected to their employees and customers.

Reimagining legacy tools and processes to support these industry changes is no small feat. However, by leveraging the right technology, financial services organizations can better serve their customers and communicate more effectively across their lines of business.

To help illustrate our point, we’ve gathered a few key takeaways from customer success stories in the financial industry. After exploring these companies’ use cases, it quickly becomes apparent that Webex can significantly elevate both the customer experience and the hybrid work environment.

Reduce operating costs with unified collaboration tools

Businesses are constantly aiming to keep up with the rapidly evolving technology ecosystem, and the financial services industry is no exception.

Finding the right collaboration tools is one piece of the puzzle. It’s also important that financial services organizations deliver a unified collaboration experience that drives adoption while reducing organizational costs.

Premier America Credit Union (PACU) knows this well. When its bank locations had to close their doors and start providing virtual services, PACU leaned into its relationship with Cisco partner Axelliant to find out how Webex could power an all-virtual banking experience for its customers.

PACU’s transition to remote work with Webex was a success; in just a few days, PACU employees pivoted to remote work, allowing them to continue serving customers safely and securely. This led to the PACU team adopting the full Webex Suite, enabling the organization to reduce operating costs and drive user adoption.

Webex is now a part of PACU’s hybrid work experience, providing a unified collaboration platform for staff training, all-hands announcements, onboarding, and virtual member appointments.

“We’re growing and we’re hiring more team members in different areas including branch services, contact centers, and IT. We’re evolving and implementing different cloud-based components within the Webex solutions package without interrupting our business and that is exciting,” Janaki Rao, PACU’s SVP & Chief Technology Officer at PACU, says.

Provide customers with a top-tier self-service experience

For financial services organizations, creating a seamless customer experience is essential. But launching an intuitive self-service customer experience is what can set them apart from the competition.

First Horizon Bank is doing just that by leveraging Webex Contact Center to serve its 1.1 million customers.

After transitioning to Webex Contact Center in 2021, First Horizon Bank was able to easily onboard its employees to the system. In fact, Jason O’Dell, VP of First Horizon Bank, says that his team was able to onboard 1,500 agents in just five to ten minutes.

From a customer experience perspective, First Horizon Bank has increased its customer self-service rate to 87%, reversing steady declines in recent years. This has given First Horizon’s 750 agents more availability to reallocate time, energy, and resources on more complex customer challenges. 

Implement scalable systems to power secure hybrid work

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the financial services industry’s adoption of hybrid work. Now, hybrid work is a standard practice for many financial institutions because it delivers inclusive and flexible experiences for remote workers.

Take UniCredit, a pan-European bank, for example. Face-to-face interactions were a core part of the bank’s day-to-day operations. But when the COVID-19 lockdown began in Italy in February 2020, the bank had no choice but to shift its operations to a virtual environment. In just one day, the number of employees connected to VPN increased from 4,000 to 60,000.

Thankfully, UniCredit was already using Cisco’s Telepresence platform, so leaning into Webex to provide a cloud-based solution to power UniCredit’s remote work plan was a natural choice.

The bank quickly secured 7,000 emergency Webex App licenses, ensuring seamless business continuity.

While Webex initially served as an emergency solution, UniCredit has continued to scale their implementation of Webex’s cloud collaboration solutions to power ongoing remote work for its employees.

“The acceleration of remote work has evolved our corporate culture at UniCredit. Since July last year, over 295,000 Webex meetings have been organized involving 2.19 million returning participants,” Daniele Tonella, CIO at UniCredit, says. “Our people have remained motivated and productive while working from home, and Cisco Webex helped make this adjustment easier.”

First Horizon Bank has also embraced a hybrid approach to work by leveraging Webex to communicate with internal stakeholders and customers.

“Folks are able to work from home and still have all the same features and functionality as if they were sitting at their desks,” O’Dell says. “Webex has made for a smooth transition and utilization of services.”

First Horizon Bank’s commitment to improving its employee and customer experience with Webex has paid off. Before the pandemic, First Horizon had about 200 active Webex users. Now, the bank is seeing over 1,800 active users every month.

“Webex is the center of our strategy,” O’Dell says. “It’ll be an integral part of communicating and sharing ideas with our colleagues, and I think it is central to our success and collaboration with both our peers and external partners as we move forward.”

Streamline collaboration through powerful integrations

For financial service professionals, the ability to quickly communicate with internal teams and customers across multiple platforms is essential.

When employees can escalate a 1:1 chat conversation to a meeting all within one platform, it eliminates the complexity of navigating between multiple platforms. With seamless collaboration integrations, teams can solve challenges faster.

Aozora Bank’s move to hybrid work called for an update to its on-premises phone system. The bank needed to move to a cloud calling solution that easily integrated with meetings, messaging, and more.

By tapping into Webex Calling, Aozora Bank was able to integrate its new cloud calling solution with Webex Meetings and Webex Devices.

“Cisco is the de facto standard for network and communication products, and we have confidence in what they do as a reliable provider throughout our long business relationship,” Tomoyuki Yamada, Managing Executive Officer & Chief Technology Officer, Aozora Bank.

Support simple, secure banking experiences with Webex

Financial services organizations trust Webex to deliver secure collaboration, elevated customer experiences, and connectivity from anywhere.

To find out how Webex can support your customer experience and hybrid work efforts, get in touch with our team of financial services experts here.