1 March 2022
"I can't remember the last time I walked into a bank branch. In this respect, the digital bank is already a reality for many customers. However, there is still work to be done, because not everyone embraces the digital age so easily. For those customers, I want to ensure that, in the change we are going through as a bank, the personal and human touch is preserved."
Roxanne Happé is Business Expert Contact Center within ABN AMRO's Customer Care & Operations business unit. "I started as a counter clerk at ABN AMRO, helping customers with their questions about payments, savings, loans and insurance in a personal setting. It gives me a good feeling when I can do something for the customer. Help them realise their dream by facilitating the financing of a house, for example. It is not just about giving 'good news', I have also had many difficult conversations and it is precisely in those situations that you can make a difference. As a volunteer, for example, I worked for many years as a financial coach for Victim Support through the ABN AMRO Foundation, helping relatives of crime victims get their financial affairs back in order. But also in my former role as a Special Asset Management employee, to give customers with payment problems a new perspective – an experience that has strongly influenced the way I look at my own career.
In Special Asset Management, it is sometimes difficult to balance the interests of the customer and those of the bank. Rules, procedures and processes sometimes hindered me in finding the right balance. I therefore opted to change jobs and started working as a Management Consultant. Where possible, I try to design processes in such a way that we never lose sight of the customer as a person. We cannot expect empathy from a computer, but we can from a digital banker.
A personal bank in a digital age
“My colleagues and I are given every opportunity in the Contact Center to truly be there for the customer. We know what questions customers have, we see where things sometimes go wrong during online contact, and together we assess and think about how things can be improved. Innovations in this area follow each other in rapid succession and the bank also makes a lot of time and budget available for this. We now offer several solutions for the most common service operations, and chatbot Anna is used to give customers quick answers to their questions. But we also try to remain a bank that is close to our customers by offering help videos, manuals, webinars, a walk-in consultancy at a branch and guidance from one of our financial care coaches. We also keep a close eye on how our customers use our resources. For example, we see that the percentage of seniors who use our banking app is higher than the number of seniors who use Internet Banking. This means that we are also seeing a very clear shift in the preferred channel in this group."
Captivate, bind and retain
“Another project I am currently leading is ‘Best Place to Work’. Many talented people work in the Contact Center, where they have a unique experience what it is like to deal with customers. To secure that expertise, we are making plans to retain these talented professionals within the bank, by involving them in innovation and providing opportunities in other departments within the bank. Because customer experience always makes you a better banker, wherever you work. By combining this customer knowledge, we are able to build a digital bank that is not about zeros and ones, but about people. That puts customers first and uses technology to manage their finances better, faster and more efficiently. In the end, that is what makes everyone happy.”
