Banks and businesses operating in the finance industry, including insurance companies, investment firms, credit unions, payment processors and fintech organisations, are all facing specific challenges when it comes to handling interactions with their customers and prospects.
And many of those can be addressed with the right contact centre software built specifically for the banking and financial services industry.
Here’s what you should be looking for in contact centre software for banking and finance, along with an overview of some of the best solutions for the industry to help you make a more informed decision.
Features to Look for in Contact Centre Software for Banking and Finance
Security and Compliance
Security and compliance features are some of the most critical factors to consider when evaluating contact centre software providers. The financial industry is highly regulated – and, obviously, you need to comply with a wide range of financial regulations and standards to ensure customer data protection and minimise the risks for your business.
These include TCPA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS, to name a few. That is why data encryption, user authentication, permission-based access controls, secure data storage, and other compliance-related features are essential.
Advanced Inbound Call Management
Businesses in the banking and finance industry often have to deal with large inbound call volumes. A contact centre software solution that offers a solid set of inbound call management features will help your team handle incoming calls effectively while also maintaining high FCR rates and CSAT scores. These include:
- Multiple call routing rules: For example, with skill-based routing, callers are connected to agents with the most relevant skill set and expertise, allowing you to reduce handle times and increase FCR. While with priority routing, high-priority customers are connected to agents first, bypassing the queue and ensuring they receive faster service
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR): IVR systems enable callers to access information through pre-recorded voice prompts, perform certain transactions or connect with the relevant department or team of agents, eliminating the need for your reps to route calls manually. That reduces human error and streamlines the entire inbound call handling process
- Call queuing and queue callback: Along with call routing and IVR, call queuing allows you to manage large inbound call volumes in a more organised and efficient way. On top of that, a queue callback feature enables callers to request a return call when no agents are available immediately, so they don’t have to wait on hold
Outbound Auto-Dialing
Whether it’s upcoming payment reminders, fraud alerts, new product promotions, appointment scheduling or survey collection – reaching out to customers or prospects proactively is much more efficient with auto-dialling tools.
Auto dialers can automate the outbound dialling process and help you increase the efficiency of your outbound calling campaigns. If your financial business heavily relies on outbound calling, look for a contact centre solution that offers auto-dialling with features like:
- Predictive dialing
- Campaign management
- Unproductive number detection
- Automated voicemail drop
- Dynamic local caller ID
- TCPA compliance
- Number reputation management
Omnichannel Engagement
Today’s consumers across industries increasingly prefer to engage with businesses through different channels. Based on a Salesforce study, 71% of customers prefer using different channels based on the context.
A contact centre software solution with omnichannel capabilities will enable you to integrate multiple communication channels in one platform and support your customers across all touchpoints, helping you improve CX and customer satisfaction.
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AI Self-Service Chatbots
Self-service is on the rise, with more consumers preferring to resolve issues on their own without having to contact customer support. In fact, according to the stats published by Outgrow, 74% of customers would choose a chatbot over a human rep to look for answers to simple questions.
At the same time, Gartner predicts that by 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for nearly a quarter of organisations. The ability to integrate AI chatbots, enabling your customers to get self-service support, will help you reduce the inbound call volume and the workload on your team.
Integrations with Third-Parties
Being able to integrate your contact centre software with other critical tools your business is already using (like CRM systems, helpdesk software, marketing automation tools, or team collaboration apps) is an important aspect to pay attention to when evaluating providers.
It will allow you to automatically synchronise data between your systems, streamline workflows and give your agents instant access to critical customer data, enabling them to deliver more personalised experiences.
Customer Support
Last but not least, pay attention to the availability and responsiveness of the provider’s customer support. Ideally, you should be able to get round-the-clock support across multiple channels regardless of your subscription plan.
That becomes particularly critical in case of tech issues that may cause disruptions in your operations and affect your overall service quality. When shortlisting contact centre vendors, you may want to inquire about things like:
- Is customer support provided 24/7?
- What customer support channels are available?
- What’s the average response time for support requests?
- How does the provider handle outages and critical incidents?
Top 6 Contact Centre Software Solutions for Banking and Finance
1. VoiceSpin
VoiceSpin offers a highly secure cloud-based VoIP telephony and omnichannel contact centre software platform that is built to serve the needs of many industries, including banking and finance.
With a range of advanced inbound call management features, including multi-level IVRs, custom call routing, call queuing and queue callbacks, you can ensure your support reps can handle any volume of incoming calls effectively.
VoiceSpin is also known for its AI auto-dialling solution, which is one of the most advanced auto-diallers in the market, offering features like intelligent lead distribution, local caller ID, automated voicemail drop, DNC list filtering, number reputation management and more.
Additionally, VoiceSpin’s omnichannel communication platform enables you to integrate multiple digital channels like email, live chat, SMS and WhatsApp and engage with your clients across all of them.
What’s more, VoiceSpin integrates with the leading CRM systems and offers custom integration options and custom development through open APIs.
Key Features:
- Call routing and IVR
- Call queuing and queue callback
- Call recording and live call monitoring
- Power and predictive dialing
- Omnichannel messaging
- Bulk SMS text messaging
- AI speech analytics
- AI call summary
- Custom reporting
Pros: Offers a solid range of AI tools, access to local numbers in 160+ countries and 24/7 support across all plans.
Cons: AI-driven features like AI dialer, speech analyser and AI call summary are only available with the highest-tiered plan.
2. Five9
Five9 is a cloud contact centre platform that offers lots of features businesses in the banking and finance industry can benefit from.
With advanced inbound call management features (such as skilled-based routing, IVR scheduling, call queuing, and agent scripting) and omnichannel messaging capabilities (including a virtual agent, chatbot, SMS, and social messaging), Five9 enables customer-facing team to handle voice and digital customer interactions across multiple communication channels.
Five9 also offers an auto-dialling solution that supports multiple dialling modes and includes features like answering machine detection, local caller ID, real-time DNC list management and automatic voicemail, making it a great tool for proactive customer outreach.
The platform natively integrates Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft, Oracle and Zendesk while also offering custom integration options. Many features and capabilities of the Five9 platform come as add-ons, contributing to the overall cost of the solution.
Key Features:
- IVR and skill-based routing
- Multiple auto-dialling modes
- Omnichannel messaging
- Call recording
- Real-time, historical and custom reporting
- Agent scripting
- AI summary and AI insights
- Agent assist
- Workforce management
Pros: Offers 24/7 customer support on all plans and custom CRM integration options.
Cons: Has a limited list of pre-built integrations with CRM systems.
3. CloudTalk
With robust security and compliance features, CloudTalk is a great choice for businesses in the finance and banking industry. IVR, skill-based routing, AI smart routing and VIP queues ensure that your customer-facing team can handle incoming calls effectively and maintain customer satisfaction, while an outbound dialer and SMS messaging allow you to proactively reach out to customers and prospects.
CloudTalk can be integrated with a range of CRM systems, helpdesk software and other business apps, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Intercom and dozens more, while also offering integrations through APIs.
Additionally, CloudTalk includes many AI features, such as call transcription, AI call summary, sentiment analysis, and topic extraction.
Key Features:
- IVR and skill-based routing
- AI smart queuing
- Call recording and live call monitoring
- Outbound auto-dialling
- SMS texting and WhatsApp messaging
- Analytics and custom reporting
- Real-time dashboard
- Call transcription and summary
- Workflow automation
Pros: Offers many AI-driven features and local numbers in 160+ countries.
Cons: Limited customer support options and integrations with third-party tools aren’t available for the lowest-tiered plan.
4. RingCentral
RingCentral is a cloud-based omnichannel contact centre platform that allows you to handle customer interactions across voice and 20+ digital communication channels.
With a wide range of features, including skill-based routing, IVR, queue callback, call recording, an outbound dialer with multiple dialling modes and voice broadcasting and omnichannel capabilities, RingCentral makes it easy to handle inbound and outbound communications with customers across channels.
In addition, RingCentral offers many team collaboration features (including team messaging, audio and video conferencing and file sharing) and AI capabilities, such as intelligent virtual agent, AI agent assist, AI summaries and more.
What’s distinctive about RingCentral is that it offers 400+ pre-built integrations with CRM systems and business apps, making it one of the most integration-friendly contact centre platforms.
Key Features:
- IVR and skill-based routing
- Queue callback
- Call recording
- Preview/ predictive/ progressive dialer
- 20+ digital and social channels
- Real-time and historical reports
- Intelligent virtual agent for voice and digital
- AI summaries
- AI assist for agents
Pros: Offers a large library of ready-made integrations with third-party apps and open APIs for custom integrations.
Cons: Customer support is predominantly AI-based, making it difficult to reach a live representative.
5. AirCall
AirCall offers a cloud-based contact centre software solution with advanced inbound and outbound call management features and SMS text messaging. That includes shared call inbox, IVR, smart call routing, call queuing, queue callbacks, conference calling, power dialling with unlimited simultaneous outbound calls, advanced analytics and many more.
In addition, you can leverage AI-driven features, such as AI call summaries, key topic recognition, talk-to-listen ratios, but these are only available as paid add-ons.
Like other contact centre solutions listed here, AirCall offers 100+ ready-made integrations with third-party tools as well as access to API developer support. Salesforce integration, though, isn’t available with the lowest-tiered plan.
Key Features:
- IVR and smart routing
- Flexible call distribution rules
- Call queuing and queue callback
- Call recording and live monitoring
- Reporting and advanced analytics
- Power dialer
- SMS and MMS business text messaging
- Call transcription and call summaries
- Key topic recognition
Pros: Offers a rich library of integrations with third-party tools, international numbers from 100+ countries, and 24/7 customer support.
Cons: While AirCall includes many advanced call management features,the platform lacks omnichannel capabilities.
6. Talkdesk
Talkdesk offers both voice and digital engagement solutions for businesses in many industries, including financial, banking and insurance.
With Talkdesk, you can route incoming calls based on IVR selection, caller data or agent skills to optimise the caller experience. You can also take advantage of a preview dialer and automated event-triggered SMS notifications for proactive outbound engagement.
What’s notable about Talkdesk is that it offers industry-specific solutions, such as Talkdesk Autopilot for Banking that allow you to deliver self-service support to customers with voice and digital virtual agents integrated across channels.
Additionally, Talkdesk integrates with a solid range of third-party tools, including CRM systems, helpdesk software and collaboration tools. It also offers APIs and SDKs to connect and synchronise other applications.
Key Features:
- IVR and skill-based routing
- Real-time dashboards
- Digital engagement (email, chat, SMS, social)
- Preview dialer
- SMS text messaging
- Custom reporting
- Performance management
- Workforce management
- AI virtual agent and agent assistant
Pros: Offers 70+ out-of-the-box integrations with third-party business apps and a range of industry-specific AI capabilities.
Cons: AI-driven features are only available as paid add-ons, contributing to the overall price.
While there are many contact centre software solutions in the market, not all of them suit the specific needs and challenges of businesses and organisations in the banking and finance industries.
All the platforms listed above offer advanced security and compliance features and call management capabilities, AI and automation tools and integrations with third-party systems, making them great solutions for the banking and finance industry.