Traditional brick-and-mortar banks in the UAE are on the digital warpath. Emirates NBD-owned Liv and Mashreq Neo are just two examples of how venerable FSI institutions in the Emirates have embraced the digital revolution and, far from being outflanked by startups, have emulated their business models to pluck loyal customers from digital-native consumer bases.
Success in these areas has required facing up to the many realities that other banks across the region, and around the world, have ignored. The tradition of siloed departments and workforces stands in the way of data sharing. Complex workflows make action slower. The more modern bank, with its slick customer onboarding and transparent processes, is a threat that cannot be matched by banks that are stuck in neutral.
“If legacy players adopt unified platforms, they can play in the same sandbox as the nimblest newcomers.”
One way a legacy FSI entity can reinvent itself from the inside out is to adopt a platform-based technology that can effortlessly integrate the latest and greatest tools as they emerge—tools like generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). This unified and homogenised ecosystem makes life easier for employees and customers alike and streamlines reporting, auditing, security and compliance. Let’s examine this in more detail as we delve into four ways to deliver better customer service by managing the tech mix from a central platform.
1. Automation with GenAI
The UAE’s track record on AI is well known. And the potential for the country’s banking sector to adopt GenAI is far-reaching.
When virtual-assistant bots are tied into a unified platform, they can guide human agents to the customer and product information most relevant to the real-time issue in front of them. These capabilities can also be used for self-service, something the digital-native customer craves and expects, and which is a natural part of offerings like Liv and Mashreq Neo. By starting with the bot service, the bank sifts out more standard queries for resolution by AI. And because human-like understanding comes as standard with GenAI-powered large language models (LLMs), the customer experience is considerably more positive than with previous generations of automated helplines.
Beyond the quality of conversation outcomes, the bank gets more. Chat summaries allow subsequent AI and human conversations to pick up where the previous session ended. Notetaking is automated too, allowing human agents to move on to the next customer more quickly. This is even the case in voice calls, where transcripts are required. The GenAI assistant goes further, drafting knowledge base articles from completed sessions to facilitate organization-wide information sharing. What we see emerging is a knowledge-driven powerhouse of customer delight and brand loyalty.
2. Employee experience
A significant proportion of customer frustration comes from having to catalogue their issue from scratch every time they contact the bank. Single-workspace solutions are a natural benefit of central-platform suites. Businesses can simplify routing across channels and departments and optimize workforce engagement. This means greater productivity, quicker responses, faster resolutions, and happier customers.
3. Upsell and cross-sell
In a legacy bank, current accounts are handled by one department, savings by another, long-term investments by another, and mortgages, loans, credit cards, insurance and wealth management by others. Each of the agents in each of the departments is trained separately and equipped differently. As such, even when an opportunity to offer a new product is discovered, the customer experience is fragmented as they are sent to various departments and their relationship with each begins as if they were a new customer.
Single-platform environments greatly improve upon this. First, AI can identify the upselling or cross-selling opportunity instantly. Second, integrated workflows can shrink approval times to—in some cases—instantaneous green lights. Third, the AI can step in again to take an employee through even the most complex products with little need for consultation with colleagues. If the customer needs more expertise, the handover, as we have already seen, is smoother because of the single-platform approach.
4. AI for the big picture
The unified platform is built on a common data store that represents the rich knowledge and experience of the bank—experience built up over decades. If harnessed effectively, this knowledge corpus can be a strong advantage in the digital era. The centralized platform will come with easy-to-use connectors to widely used applications, meaning the platform morphs to fit the unique requirements of the business. This allows the business to introduce a unified suite of tools, including AI that, in a very real sense, gets to know the business better than even its longest-serving employees.
With this infrastructure, the legacy bank is poised to introduce other kinds of AI, beyond the GenAI sensation. Predictive analytics can examine market trends for investment opportunities. Social listening tools can “survey” existing potential customers in their digital salons to discern their pain points and identify the need for new products or services (or even just additions to existing digital experiences that would boost satisfaction and net promoter scores). Because of the integration options associated with unified digital workflow platforms, this “background” AI can feed the frontline GenAI to either automate action for customers or advise human agents in real-time of opportunities to enhance experiences.
Strike gold
Lower entry barriers in digital economies allow new players to emerge overnight and challenge legacy banks. Mainstay players can no longer take for granted that they will lead in technology. Just having the staff and resources to develop bespoke core-banking solutions is no longer enough when workflow platforms exist to bring out-of-the-box agility and scalability.
If legacy players adopt unified platforms, they can play in the same sandbox as the nimblest newcomers. But because of their historic buildup of market and transaction data, not to mention their sizeable customer base, a legacy bank can more easily reach the heady heights of Liv or Mashreq Neo and partake in the UAE’s digital-banking gold rush.
