Leaders Talk: Do the Strong Execution for Make Things Happen

December 17, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) in collaboration with Verint, presented Leaders Talk discussion with the theme “Digitalization in Financial Services.” In this leader’s talk, CC-APAC invited professional speakers of the contact center in the Asia Pacific. 

One of the speakers is Apirom Sutthinats, Contact Center Manager (Sales and Renewal Division), Roojai, Thailand. Apirom explained the challenge of digitalization and also the opportunity for financial services institutions. She said the challenge is they are really difficult to encourage and educate people. They are too difficult to tell everyone that online services were the best way to serve people for this time. This online makes flexible, and people can manage what they want anytime. 

She also shared that when the pandemic comes, she sees that the people’s behavior is changing. People are mostly more on their mobile phones and that is a mobile phone becomes the more essential into their life. Then, she advantages that situation now. They take the opportunity, such as improve a lot of customer experience, customer engagement, customer relationship, and also customer satisfaction. 

She also explains that people are not easy to adapt or accept this fast change, especially in this time everything is self-care online. “What do we need to do to handle these challenges, when we do change anything online?” ask her. Before we share with our customers, we need to prepare the training and ensure our staff clearly understand the rationale behind that change, such as what is the benefit to them? And also the benefit to the customer.

Same as another speaker, Apirom also gives tips to leaders to develop digital financial services. She said that leaders in the contact center are playing a really important law in business contribution, especially when it’s related to the customer. 

Therefore, leaders must be able to deal with any situation, such as paying attention to the customer, making what we doing currently better, and serve to the customer better. 

And also, as a leader, we always need to find a way to make our people work smart, minimize unnecessary work, and use technology or innovation to improve our contact center operations to work more efficiently. The last thing is execution. Not only plan and talk, but how strong our execution and action to make things happen. Therefore, she believes that everyone can make that change. (ANF) 

Leaders Talk: How to Build Momentum for the Leadership in Contact Center

December 17, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) in collaboration with Verint, with the theme, “Digitalization in Financial Services.” This event is invited four professional speakers from the Asia Pacific contact center. 

One of the speakers who was invited to this discussion is Novie Marlika. She is Vice President Customer Experience, OVO, Indonesia. In this discussion, Novie Malika said that OVO are contribute the solutions to this challenge, especially financial literacy and inclusion. Why financial services? Because she thinks, financial literacy is an important thing in the country for the economic process. “The challenge is always to find the right products and services that are easy to use, secure, and affordable,” said Novie. 

Novie also said that is why OVO particularly adopts the open ecosystem approach, such as being open to collaborating with other stakeholders. By doing this, Novie thinks OVO can expand from digital payment, also can over-like investment insurance bonds to meet the growing needs of the community with ease. 

Not only that, Novie explains that is basically on the challenges, but the way OVO sees the digital payment as a gateway to the larger digital financial ecosystem, whereby it is an opportunity for financial institutions. Then, “During these four years, I think, OVO has received a positive acceptance amongst Indonesian people and to the general public itself,” said Novie. She also thinks OVO is committed to continuing to bring financial literacy and inclusion through accelerating digital transformation in Asia.

Novie also shared tips for leadership development. She said that the main word for the leadership in the contact center is building momentum. Before building momentum, there are things that we need to do. First, we need to keep up with our customer’s needs. “What do we say by keeping up with this customer’s needs?” said Novie. We have to ask them to join our journey. Because it’s digital, we have to understand them, and we should make it easier for our users to understand. 

In the long term, she thinks when we keep up with the customer needs is not about how we reach the specific finish, but we need to create a higher purpose. And we also need to consistently adapt to the changing environments. 

When the pandemic comes, we need to send more people to work from home. Then, they can stay safe, but on the other side, we need to make sure our operations will be able to monitor and run smoothly. 

The last from this, we need to gain CSAT. Then, it’s not only learning the satisfaction level, but we need to learn the dissatisfaction level. Furthermore, we need to look from a bigger lens, such as from social media. We can see the satisfaction level that we want to achieve from all those activities, such as in terms of efficiency, in terms of operational excellence, and also can see are they achieved all the performance or yet. 

The second thing we need before building momentum is to set up our team for success. She said that whenever we will start something new, we need to give our teams a higher purpose, such as why we need to go there. 

Therefore, she said that we should help agents with the suggested actions, and they need to do some escalation. She explains that we also need to optimize our contact center with data analytics. Then, of course, “Improve ourselves and it makes sure that we’ll be able to help all the operations,” said Novie. As a leader, we have to stand by and make sure that we provide the solutions, even though we do not have the answers to that agent’s problem. As a leader, we don’t have all the solutions in the world for all the cases. But we can help all the team to drive a solution for us. (ANF) 

Leaders Talk: Have a Competences Before Starting the Digitalization

December 17, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) present Leaders Talk discussion with the theme “Digitalization of Financial Services.” CC-APAC invited four professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers is Ridwan Nugraha, SVP, Customer Experience Center Head, PT Bank BTPN, Tbk, Indonesia. Ridwan explains what the challenges and opportunities during this pandemic situation are. He said that the challenge is how we can both create our unique value proposition. For example, the product is easier, smarter, safer, like finance for their daily activities via smartphones. 

The opportunities of this are very huge. He talks about the megatrends, for example, such as the smartphone penetration, internet penetration, and Indonesian population for the Asia Pacific is more than 270 million, and also this is dominated by the millennials. 

“So, I think it’s it’s quite promising that Indonesia is still an emerging country with very high potential for digitalization, as well as digital finance,” said Ridwan. He calls it of opportunity as well as, “Peluang sekaligus panggilan.”

At the end of the discussion, Ridwan shared some tips before starting the digitalization of financial services. He said that we should have competence. Competence means that we have strong knowledge, skill, and experience. We can earn it and also enrich it by navigating carefully. 

Furthermore, don’t forget to keep upgrading ourselves to stay relevant because he thinks that we can do it in various ways. The next is we can do self-learning or collective learning, such as joining the ICCA or the CC-APAC Awards. Then, the key is to keep on learning, be courageous, and be confident in all we do. 

And also, Ridwan said that contact center leaders work with others, they are not working alone. We should learn to lead by example. Then, we need to show good examples to our people, such as attitude, openness, and full accountability. “Don’t forget to keep fun at work, because the happy customers come from employees,” said Ridwan. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: 4 Things That Should We Do in This Transition Period

December 17, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) in collaboration with Verint discussed the “Digitalization of Financial Services.” We invited four speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

One of the speakers is Reni Septiana, Senior Vice President Center of Digital, Halo BCA, PT Bank Central Asia, Tbk, Indonesia. The discussion started by talking about the challenges and opportunities of digitalization for its company. Reni said that there are two challenges they are facing. First, namely internal challenges. This is related to the coefficient of user-friendly, secure, and safe digital services. The second is an external challenge, like dealing with customer acceptance who depends on all of the digital services we offer. 

Reni also said that there are still new opportunities that they can optimize, even BCA is during those hard challenges. “The digital banking strategy has enabled us to get the business opportunities in the middle of a fast-moving customer transition into digital banking transactions,” said Reni. 

BCA keeps developing and making innovations, especially digital best initiatives for banking transaction services, such as mobile banking. Furthermore, this digital banking transaction plan avoids physical contact in the transaction conducted through mobile banking, such as online account opening. 

Also, Reni shared her tips for starting the digitalization of financial services. The first tips are resourceful and innovative. What is the meaning? It means that we should digitalize all business activity, such as services, business processes, and customer relations. And also, we can automate and make it efficient through bottom-up innovations, such as local programming and big data. The second is implementing agile working because BCA has a motto. “We have our motto is from good to great and great to agile,” said Reni. 

And the third is to believe that stability and change is powerful polarity. Stability means ensuring that the current business model is solid, efficient, effective, and stable. Then, the change means implementing those changes, which is necessary to be more competitive in the future. Next, we can play roles as a leader, such as becoming role models, collaborating, personnel appreciation, agility, responsiveness, and looking forward to meaningful goals. And also, don’t forget empathy and persuasiveness. “Always humble and serve others,” said Reni. And the last one is reliable on growing people and extra miles. (ANF)

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: New Challenges of Digitalization in Financial Services

Friday, December 17, 2021 – The seventh Leaders Talk hosted by CC-APAC in collaboration with Verint discussed “Digitalization in Financial Services,” by inviting four professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The first panelist is Reni Septiana, Senior Vice President Center of Digital, Halo BCA, PT Bank Central Asia, Tbk, Indonesia. The second panelist is Ridwan Nugraha, SVP, Customer Experience Center Head, PT Bank BTPN, Tbk, Indonesia. The third is Novie Marlika, Vice President Customer Experience, OVO, Indonesia. And the last one is Apirom Sutthinats, Contact Center Manager (Sales and Renewal Division), Roojai, Thailand.

The discussion is started by talking about the challenges and opportunities of digitalization in financial services. First, Novie Malika said that OVO are contribute the solutions to this challenge, especially financial literacy and inclusion. Why financial services? Because she thinks, financial literacy is an important thing in the country for the economic process. “The challenge is always to find the right products and services that are easy to use, secure, and affordable,” said Novie. 

Novie also said that is why OVO particularly adopts the open ecosystem approach, such as being open to collaborating with other stakeholders. By doing this, Novie thinks OVO can expand from digital payment, also can over-like investment insurance bonds to meet the growing needs of the community with ease. 

Not only that, Novie explains that is basically on the challenges but the way OVO sees the digital payment as a gateway to the larger digital financial ecosystem, whereby it is an opportunity for financial institutions. Then, “During these four years, I think, OVO has received a positive acceptance amongst Indonesian people and to the general public itself,” said Novie. She also thinks OVO is committed to continuing to bring financial literacy and inclusion through accelerating digital transformation in Asia.

There is another challenge that Apirom Sutthinats shared. She said the challenge is they are really difficult to encourage and educate people. They are too difficult to tell everyone that online services were the best way to serve people for this time. This online makes flexible, and people can manage what they want anytime. 

She also shared that when the pandemic comes, she sees that the people’s behavior is changing. People are mostly more on their mobile phones and that is a mobile phone becomes the more essential into their life. Then, she advantages that situation now. They take the opportunity, such as improve a lot of customer experience, customer engagement, customer relationship, and also customer satisfaction. 

She also explains that people are not easy to adapt or accept this fast change, especially in this time everything is self-care online. “What do we need to do to handle these challenges, when we do change anything online?” ask her. Before we share with our customers, we need to prepare the training and ensure our staff clearly understand the rationale behind that change, such as what is the benefit to them? And also the benefit to the customer.

Ridwan Nugraha explains what the challenges and opportunities during this pandemic situation are. He said that the challenge is how we can both create our unique value proposition. For example, the product is easier, smarter, safer, like finance for their daily activities via smartphones. 

The opportunities of this are very huge. He talks about the megatrends, for example, such as the smartphone penetration, internet penetration, and Indonesian population for the Asia Pacific is more than 270 million, and also this is dominated by the millennials. 

“So, I think it’s it’s quite promising that Indonesia is still an emerging country with very high potential for digitalization, as well as digital finance,” said Ridwan. He calls it of opportunity as well as, “Peluang sekaligus panggilan.”

The last, opinion from Reni Septiana. Reni said that there are two challenges they are facing. First, namely internal challenges. This is related to the coefficient of user-friendly, secure, and safe digital services. The second is an external challenge, like dealing with customer acceptance who depends on all of the digital services we offer.

Reni also said that there are still new opportunities that they can optimize, even BCA is during those hard challenges. “The Digital Banking strategy has enabled us to get the business opportunities in the middle of a fast-moving customer transition into digital banking transactions,” said Reni.

BCA keeps developing and making innovations, especially digital best initiatives for banking transaction services, such as mobile banking. Furthermore, this digital banking transaction plan avoids physical contact in the transaction conducted through mobile banking, such as online account opening.

At the end of the discussion, all panelists give their closing remarks and tips about the development of digital finance in Indonesia. Are you curious about want kind of tips that they are shared? Then, stay tuned for another article on the CC-APAC website. (ANF)

Re-imagined Customer Experience by Doing Proactive Outreach to Your Customers

November 26, 2021 – As we know, before announcing the winner on CC-APAC Awards Ceremony 2021, CC-APAC held the CC-APAC Conference 2021 with the theme CC-APAC invite invited two speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

The second speaker is Endang Rachmawati. She is Webex Customer Experience Specialist, Cisco. Endang said now in the pandemic situation, everybody has to work and interact from home and also do everything online. Therefore, the organization has to make sure that they consider their business process for being engaging with their customer. When customers go into their contact centers, they should make sure that the agent will be able to answer the query fast and accurately. 

Endang shared that customer experience is largely broken. What is the problem that makes it broken? She said that because there’s no proactiveness from the organization. If the company will inform them of any critical issue, such as some suspicious activity on their credit card the customer would appreciate it. Then, the customer doesn’t have to make a call, they would know and understand what happened. 

And another thing that makes the customer experience broken is when the customer wants to communicate with the organization, they should be forced to ask by a call. There’s no other channel that the customer will be able to use because when they call the contact centers, it will take some time before they get the solution. 

Endang said that we understand those problems the majority because the organization only focuses on the contact center view, such as on the purchase and the service. In the real fact, she said that customer journey happens before it gets into the contact centers or even after. Then, with our solutions, we will give you a view of an end-to-end customer journey. 

She explains that we understand that improving the customer experience isn’t gonna be easy but it’s quite complex. Because every organization has a different division, they have different sets of solutions and applications. And also, they have different ways of communicating with their customers. 

Customer Care will talk differently to their customer, sales and marketing will have their tools to talk to the customer, then it’s quite complex in making sure that it is going to be one streamlined communication with the same customer. Therefore, this mess is something that we are trying to solve.

The good news is Endang said she have delivered the future of customer experience with the all-new Webex contact center, which is now available in ASEAN. With Webex contact centers, we are re-imagining customer experience in which we are doing proactive outreach with our customers. 

Endang explains that we would be able to notify them, such as doctor appointments, any suspicious on a customer credit card, any orders delays, any pickup notification, and any online ordering status. Make sure that we are notifying you of anything urgent. Then, these will proactively reach out to your customer.

That would certainly go to reduce the number of calls that the customer needs to make into the contact center when the customer needs it. Endang said that it could be a channel of their choice is not just voice. It could be WhatsApp, Facebook, or even WeChat. We don’t have to make them wait. 

We can pick themselves and when they get into the agent, we are empowering the agent to make sure that the problems are solved. She also explains that agents could solve queries faster and accurately. In the end, our service will give positive sentiment to the customer. 

How do we do this? Endang said that we are doing it with automation that is done in a digital service driven. Then, in this digital service-driven interaction, we are doing a lot of automation that we could do in proactively reaching out to the customer before getting into the contact center when it is necessary. Endang said that we are also empowering the agent to do a cross-sell and upsell proactively to the customer. 

She also said there is another thing if we do that will be engaging the customer with our organization. She said we will be able to major it by providing feedback, asking the customer to fill up the feedback to any touchpoint before, during, and after the contact center. (ANF)

Give Your Customers a Smart Start to Their Journey

November 26, 2021 – Before heading to the summit of the CC-APAC Awards 2021, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) held a CC-APAC Conference with the theme, “Asia Pacific Best Practices and Case Studies of Contact Center Innovation.” We invited two speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry.

One of the speakers is Olivier Georlette, a Managing Director, ASEAN, and Strategic Accounts NICE. One of the speakers is Olivier Georgette, a Managing Director, ASEAN, and Strategic Accounts NICE. Olivier said now people are beginning the journey looking for information on how to self-serve or how to address what they need on the website or the mobile app.

But it can be created many challenges for us. One of them is most of the information that people received is not coming from our official website rather it comes from another competitor that has the same industry. Then, what should we do to make information that people or our customers looking for is coming from our website?

Olivier said the first one is we should utilize knowledge projection. He said that knowledge projection is very important. The knowledge projection can help basically to put what the customer looking for on top of the search. We also can provide content that will help the customer easily resolve their wish.

With the knowledge projection, we help drive our content and start the search for the customer. And also, we can ensure the company optimizes the culture, audience, or web search then, our content that customers looking for can appear first in the google search.

Olivier explains this is a significant improvement that can help because when it is the first touchpoint when people start their journey with Google. That can help them go to our website to get the right information with those digital entry points.

Then, Olivier said the second point is the predictive intent. Using the traditional service approach start with the journey initiated by the customer, we can understand the customer history, such as where they come from, and also their characteristic. With that, Olivier said we can reach the customer and can predict what they want before they tell us.

The last point is guided conversation. Olivier said that it can be like automation or robotic. He said when people start their initial journey, entry point, and when they go through our company website, sometimes the steps to complete the process can be very confusing.

Therefore, we can guide customers on our website to a successful resolution. “If you have the right guidance on your website or your application, it can help to ensure that the success rate is higher and less friction. Customer will achieve on the website most easily,” explained Olivier.

Olivier said that we also can provide this guidance will pop up some messages. It can make customer life easier, increase sales, and increase subscriptions. Then, these are three key things that can be a smart start in the journey of the customer. Have the customers be able to achieve their wish or achieve a resolution by self-service using these three technologies. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Focus on the Customer Experience, Not the Technology

October 29, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) discussed the “Cloud Contact Center Strategy.” We invited three speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

One of the speakers is Hunady Budihartono, Country Manager, Genesys. Hunady shared his opinion about the cloud from the operational side. He said that COVID becomes uncertain. When the change going to happen, everybody was working from home and suddenly we have to put more agents at home. Then, that kind of uncertainty becomes the challenge.

Because of that change, now people also don’t want to be face-to-face. They want to make sure that 65% of them can work online. Therefore, that situation pushes everybody to go to the cloud. But before that, we have to think about what kind of cloud we want to do. Then, there is one direction to go and COVID just accelerated the adoption of the cloud.

Also, Hunady has already mentioned before the benefit of the cloud is flexibility. Flexibility is become the key compared to on-premises uncertainty. It means that when we want to add on our capacity, we must be ready right away at the center. But the other really important thing is time to market. Like when we try to start with a contact center, with all the premises we may need like what, three months four months to be up and running. That’s where he thinks the cloud becomes a key.

Hunady also gives some tips regarding this discussion. Hunady said that the first thing we want to make sure of is embraced the change because the direction is so clear. If we want to go to the cloud, then we can go today, next year, or the next two years depends on your face, but don’t be against it. That’s why we must change our mindset because it’s easy to go into the cloud that is easy to get out of the cloud too. Hunady said that the cloud makes the vendor like us vulnerable way compared to all premises.

Because previously we buy, we cannot change for the next three to five years. Then, we are in the worst position compared to all premises but that’s the direction. Hunady thinks that is for our good means we must focus on service, not focus on technology.

Hunady said that we need to change our mindset and flexibility. We need to focus on the customer experience, don’t focus on the technology, or don’t focus on something else, focus on our customers. Because with the cloud, the rest is taken care of, such as security, capabilities, and scalability. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Add Additional Channel for Better Contact Center

October 29, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) present Leaders Talk discussion with the theme “Cloud Contact Center Strategy.” CC-APAC invited three professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers is Tommy Ng, Vice President, CCAM, Country Director, MT Microtel Technology Sdn. Bhd. Tommy shared their opinion about how a manager can utilize the cloud in the contact center. He said that some people think they are not ready for this technology or it’s too dangerous. They also ask, should they do it or not. But Tommy said that the contact center now has no choice. We have to make sure that the user, staff, or employee are safe. 

It’s one of the key things that we have to consider before thinking anything else about how do we sustain our business because if we don’t, we will lose all our employees. Therefore, in this situation, we have to adapt technology that where we want is our staff to be safe because they can take care of our business and also our clients.

Tommy also said that remote working is convenient. But there are two reasons that we have to consider before doing remote work. The first one is infrastructure. The second one is we have to be able to access anywhere. But there are a lot of considerations from the security department to say to allow everybody from anywhere. Therefore, let cloud providers take care of this security issue.

Tommy shared tips and closing remarks on today’s discussion. He said that the main concern for the new generation is we should nothing to worry about data. Now, customers don’t store our number. “If they want to contact anyone, they will find the number on Google and they will call it,” said Tommy. Don’t be too sentimental because you want to keep that number. Tommy said he has the statistic that after a while, people will forget about the old number. Then, that is not a concern. 

Now better we think of the additional channels that we can add benefits, like embark into AI. Then, that is one of the key things that must go because AI will help a lot besides just on the interaction. It gives you a lot of insights. It is not just helping the customer, but we also can help the agent with this assistant AI. So, the agent experience becomes better. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Does Something Difference to Make a Business Change

October 29, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC), Leaders Talk: Cloud Contact Center Strategy, which invited three professional speakers in the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers who was invited to this discussion is Vikas Kumar. He is Solution Director for ASEAN & Strategic Accounts, Nice Ltd. In this discussion, Vikas explains that this time we have to learn and also unlearn a lot from the past. Because pandemics and lockdown make people change, they could no longer go out, have a face-to-face meeting, and do things like that.

Therefore, this is making a contact center became a kind of front door or first place to go whenever people needed any help or had a question from the business. Some people who never called up, never written email, or never chatted with the contact center, know they are doing that. 

People who were already comfortable doing face-to-face sales now had to go and build their contact center to be more scalable, easy to access and make their staff can answer many of those questions. He thinks that where the overall scale, speed, and efficiency that the cloud can provide it because now we can build up that speed sense into what the contact center can offer.

Vikas also shared the benefits of using the cloud in the contact center. He said that there are two key areas of benefit. He said that the first one is a machine cloud and the second one is a human cloud. Machine cloud is where we get the benefits of scalability. When we talk about cloud, we have a huge capacity which means we can have a data scale, find more patterns, and find more models. Then, the machining cloud will help us to reduce costs and increase speed.

The second one is the human cloud. He said that the human cloud is involved in the millennial style of working. The human cloud is more flexible, can be accessed from anywhere, can be accessed by any type of device, and mobility.

Vikas Kumar also gives a closing remark and his tips about today’s discussion. He thinks that the first one is we should be open about this. The service providers or vendors with technology providers have to be very open about what they can do and what they cannot do.

The most purpose of doing things differently is that we want to make a change to our business. Then, it can make something that is different.

Sometimes some things will have to change both on the people side. A lot of IT teams have been very comfortable taking care of a particular platform. But on the other side, there is an IT team that understands where the technology is going and they are ready to acknowledge it. Also, they are very open to getting retrained to learn new things.

The last thing is he said that we have to prepare for the pitfalls.  If there are any changes, which is that you want? Put back or keep a plan to be ready. He thinks that when you migrate, make sure that you have the right backups you have the right plan in place. At least in the short term, you will have a fallback option. (ANF)