At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak many banks were quickly pushed to implement payment suspension schemes for their customers under the supervision and coordination of the National Banks and the European Banking Authority, with legislation enabling a credit deferral for a period of up to 9 months. The implementation of these large-scale suspensions changed the rules by which banks operated their customer support units and created new challenges for these institutions.
For the OTP Bank, the volume of incoming customer requests rose by 125%, adding pressure on call center teams. The sheer volume of calls led to longer handling times and higher costs. In this demanding context, OTP Bank, a bank that has defined itself by the level of care it offers to clients, felt even more pressure to improve the customer experience quickly. Thus, it sought a technology solution that would be fast to implement and successful in relieving overloaded call center agents while allowing them to handle even more calls.
OTP Bank chose to deploy OCTAVIAN, an AI-powered conversational application developed using DRUID technology. Available directly on the bank’s website, OCTAVIAN was designed to provide customers with round-the-clock personalized information about the OTPDirekt or OTPay digital products, as well as guide them through online demanding the credit payment deferral.
In the background, by integrating with UiPath RPA technology, OCTAVIAN validates customer data inputs, checks their eligibility against a set of clearly pre-defined criteria, and, in the end, decides whether the application can be validated.
It then proceeds to upload the form into the bank’s BPM system. All included, this translates into a 30-times faster process, as the time needed to process the request drops from 10 minutes to a mere 20 seconds.
The Economist Intelligence Unit survey found that, going forward, 77% of banking executives are convinced that unlocking value from AI will be the key differentiator between winning and losing banks. This inflection point paves the way to a rapid reimagining of operational banking models and a more significant focus on improving the digital experience.
Banks like OTP Bank, which have already seized the opportunity to institutionalize game-changing ways managing customers interactions, will be excellently positioned to accede to the forefront of tomorrow’s banking world.