Introduction
Enhancing service capability with innovative features for better customer retention is a competitive mandate for almost all banks today. Back in 2012 the trend was towards expansion of self service, with service differentiation in channels and contact centers becoming increasingly important.

Kotak Mahindra Bank, the fourth largest private sector bank in India by asset size, sought to improve the service capability at its contact centers. To do so, it implemented innovative processes, aided by technology, to address the challenge of significant numbers of waiting calls due to heavy peak time volumes. The bank brought in service innovation by enabling its interactive voice response (IVR) system to automatically call back customers rather than customers waiting on the phone in a queue. The project won The Asian Banker ‘Best Self-Service Banking Project Award’ for 2012.

This project has delivered stronger customer satisfaction and significant cost savings to the bank. With fast paced technology development, the bank has continued to expand on its contact centre service capabilities to further enhance customer experience.

The challenge

Presently, Kotak Mahindra Bank has a distribution network of over 1310 branches and serves more than 4.6 million customer accounts with its contact centres playing an important role by handling around a million calls per month. As the Bank’s customer numbers steadily increased, it resulted in a a significant surge in the volume of inbound calls.

This rise in call traffic meant a longer waiting time in queues for its customers resulting in customer dissatisfaction and significantly high rates of call abandonment. During the long wait times calls occasionally dropped-out unexpectedly due to telecom network issues leading to further dissatisfaction among customers.

In order to manage the problem of aggravated traffic during peak hours...

Categories:

technology,

Technology & Operations,

Keywords:Kotak Mahindra Bank, Interactive Voice Response

Introduction
Enhancing service capability with innovative features for better customer retention is a competitive mandate for almost all banks today. Back in 2012 the trend was towards expansion of self service, with service differentiation in channels and contact centers becoming increasingly important.

Kotak Mahindra Bank, the fourth largest private sector bank in India by asset size, sought to improve the service capability at its contact centers. To do so, it implemented innovative processes, aided by technology, to address the challenge of significant numbers of waiting calls due to heavy peak time volumes. The bank brought in service innovation by enabling its interactive voice response (IVR) system to automatically call back customers rather than customers waiting on the phone in a queue. The project won The Asian Banker ‘Best Self-Service Banking Project Award’ for 2012.

This project has delivered stronger customer satisfaction and significant cost savings to the bank. With fast paced technology development, the bank has continued to expand on its contact centre service capabilities to further enhance customer experience.

The challenge

Presently, Kotak Mahindra Bank has a distribution network of over 1310 branches and serves more than 4.6 million customer accounts with its contact centres playing an important role by handling around a million calls per month. As the Bank’s customer numbers steadily increased, it resulted in a a significant surge in the volume of inbound calls.

This rise in call traffic meant a longer waiting time in queues for its customers resulting in customer dissatisfaction and significantly high rates of call abandonment. During the long wait times calls occasionally dropped-out unexpectedly due to telecom network issues leading to further dissatisfaction among customers.

In order to manage the problem of aggravated traffic during peak hours...

Categories:

technology,

Technology & Operations,

Keywords:Kotak Mahindra Bank, Interactive Voice Response