How Ethoca Consumer Clarity can reduce issuers’ call center costs

Managing customer interactions and inquiries has become more complex for issuers in recent years.  Cardholders use multiple channels, like mobile apps, online banking and call centers, to access their accounts and seek a wide variety of information to address whatever questions or concerns they have.

Their needs can range from getting basic account information to payment transaction details—as customers often look for specifics when they don’t recognize a purchase on their statement or think they were charged incorrectly.

Interactions with issuers directly affect cardholders’ impressions of those companies and important customer satisfaction metrics, such as the Net Promoter Score® and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)—underscoring why issuers need to prioritize their customer experience.

At the same time, call center operations are getting more expensive, with labor and facility costs rising. One survey featured in Harvard Business Review found that every live service interaction can cost companies upwards of $10. 

To strengthen their customer satisfaction ratings and bottom line, issuers increasingly must consider implementing more cost-effective ways to better support their customers. By doing so, not only can they reduce their operating expenses but also create a customer experience where cardholders get the information they need sooner, no matter what channel they’re using. 

Four ways Consumer Clarity pays off 

Ethoca Consumer Clarity helps issuers enhance and streamline their customer experience by providing more relevant information to cardholders about their purchases—when and where they want it, whether digitally or over the phone.  

Here are four ways it can help issuers improve their customer experience:

1. Reducing purchase confusion upfront—and providing self-service tools

The first place most cardholders review their purchase history is their mobile banking app or the bank’s website—as digital channels are the first line of defense in helping customers resolve a question or concern. Customers increasingly prefer self-service and don’t always want to take the time to call the bank.

Questions about a charge often arise as the cardholder reviews their purchase history due to confusion caused by lack of clear transaction details, such as an unrecognizable merchant name. Issuers using Consumer Clarity can prevent this confusion before it leads to customer calls, disputes and ultimately costly chargebacks by giving consumers more purchase details within their digital banking channels. It allows them to recognize their purchases without having to contact the issuer or raise a dispute.

While every call into a call center is expensive, self-service interactions reduce call volumes and on average only cost 10 cents, the Harvard Business Review article says.

2. Giving consumers more control over their purchases

A big portion of issuers’ calls are to help customers perform a specific action. Giving consumers more direct control and self-service features within their digital channels—such as their banking app—can allow them to manage their own transactions without needing live support from the issuer. Additionally, providing more information upfront can help reduce first-party fraud chargebacks that result from purchase confusion. 

This can include things like Subscription Controls, which let consumers better manage their recurring payments. After seeing which transactions are subscriptions, cardholders can cancel them directly through their digital banking app—helping those merchants and issuers avoid costly transaction disputes.

3. Increasing first-call resolution rates

First-call resolution—resolving a customer’s concern in one call—is the gold standard. It can reduce operational costs and, of course, significantly improve customer satisfaction. By providing more information about a transaction to call center and back-office teams in one place, Consumer Clarity provides answers to customer questions faster, reducing the need to rely on multiple systems to find all the relevant purchase information. 

It can also shorten average call-handle times—a key metric for many call centers—and have a direct impact on cardholders’ experience. The quicker they can resolve their issue, the more positive of an interaction they will have. 

Conversely, not resolving a customer’s issue during the first call often contributes to an impression of having received bad service. And poor service costs companies an estimated $1.6 trillion annually due to customers leaving, according to Accenture.  

Consumer Clarity can help by providing an issuer’s call center with an easy-to-use portal for reviewing in-depth cardholder purchase information, including skew level order details, email address, delivery address, and also include if a refund was provided on a given purchase. This greatly raises the odds that the question or concern will be resolved in the first call without the representative having to dig up information and call them back. 

4. Reducing call transfers

Reducing the number of times issuers need to transfer a customer call improves the experience while lowering operational costs. One analysis found that 9.9% of contact center calls are transferred, according to Live Agent—which only drives up costs. 

Supplying customer service and branch employees with enhanced purchase details can reduce many general inquiry calls, no matter the source. Providing more detailed insights into transaction information—especially in a consolidated way —can also improve operations by reducing the numbers of applications a call center team has to juggle to answer a customer’s question. 

Tools like Ethoca Consumer Clarity are easy to implement with web-based portals and API integration, allowing for more customized and automated experiences. They allow employees to access the same information quickly.

Keeping costs in check

The operational costs associated with delivering a great customer experience are increasing, and issuers are wise to seek ways to reduce them. Ethoca Consumer Clarity offers a cost-effective way to enhance and streamline your contact center operations while delivering the self-service experience that today’s consumers expect.

To learn more about Consumer Clarity, view our demo here.