Loraine Lawson
Good day and welcome to The Buzz, a Bank Automation News podcast. I’m Deputy Editor Loraine Lawson. Recently I interviewed Dan Michaeli, CEO an co-founder of Glia, a digital customer service platform that connects voice, video, and browsing. Michaeli is the co-author of Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an Onscreen World. We talked digital customer service, starting with what trends he’s seeing now.Dan Michaeli
We are we are seeing increased usage across the board. You know, one of the one of the areas that we’re seeing a lot of traction with right now is what we call on-screen voice. So you know, when when you are on digital banking, or were you on mobile banking today that the servicing experience within these self serve journeys, tends to be either messaging based, right, where I’m chatting back and forth with somebody. Or you have to basically dial a phone number that’s displayed on these self serve experiences, and leave them behind. Right? So let’s say that you’re in your banking app, or you’re in online banking, and you have a deeper question that you where you need to connect with a human agent. What we’ve seen is it traditionally, a lot of those most most people call right, they say, Okay, I got, I’ve got a dial this phone number, the phone numbers display prominently at the top, I dial that number, then I, I lose my context entirely, I don’t the agent that handles my call, first of all, I have to go through an IVR, I have to get to the right person, once I get to the right person, they have no idea who I am, they have no idea why I’m calling right. And we’re sort of starting from scratch, right. And then in addition, they can’t really help me or teach me how to self serve in the future, because they’re not meeting me in the self serve journey, they’re not meeting me on screen. Now, what we’ve seen a very sharp increase in is the usage of onscreen voice where instead of, you know, displaying that number at the top and having the customer member, dial that phone number and leave the digital banking experience, leave the loan application, leave mobile banking, and start from scratch in a telephony centric experience, they can click a button that says talk to us now. And the agent knows exactly where I am contacting them from, they can see in real time, what the customer is doing, and then they can jump in and collaborate with the customer to guide them to resolution. So that’s, that’s instead of having a voice conversation through a phone through a legacy phone experience, we’re having it through that on screen experiences. It’s a part a core part of my digital journey. Right? So it’s, it’s what we call on screen voice.Loraine Lawson
Now, are there reasons, the question for me is Are there particular size base that you typically deal with — are you sort of mid to small banks smaller, larger?Dan Michaeli
All. We we have institutions we work with, with all sizes of institutions, we have, you know, banks that have over 100 billion in AUM, and we have, you know, very small banks that are in the hundreds of millions of au m as well. So we really run we really sort of run the gamut there in terms of the types of clients that we work with and serve. Ultimately, the most important factor here is that the institution really understands the value of customer experience and digital customer service, and what that can drive in the way of differentiation. So there really isn’t a limit in either direction of the types of institutions that we work with,

Loraine Lawson
but I asked because it seems like some of that is functionality that larger banks have already had. So I wondered if you were saying go down to the, to the smaller, medium sized banks more or if there’s any trend that way.

Dan Michaeli
You know, there are there are a variety of, you know, institutions have tried to solve this challenge of of customers at reaching, reaching banks through the digital experiences, but having a disconnected phone experience is a challenge that banks of all sizes face, you know, and they’ve they’ve solved it using a variety of methods, right? They’ve tried to solve it, but Okay, well, I’ll introduce chat, I’ll have a chatbot. Maybe I’ll have a video banking solution. But the challenge that even the largest banks that have tackled this face is that all of those are disjointed. So if I start a chat moving from a chat into then a voice conversation, right and not having to pick up the phone, that that’s, that’s something that hasn’t been solved. And what Glia offers is a what we call it channel, this architecture, it doesn’t matter. If you start in chatter, if you start in video banking, all of it is considered an interaction. And it’s exactly the same, you can move between those different modes of communication completely seamlessly. So ultimately, yes, there are institutions that have solved for the challenges of digital customer service, using a variety of tools. But But what Glia provides is that seamless components, so still very much of a need, at any level, and at any size.

Loraine Lawson
So you have actually written a book on digital customer experience. is it called Digital customer experience? Or is it called something else?

Dan Michaeli
It’s called Digital customer service. And the subtitle is transforming customer experience for an on screen world. So going back to that concept of on screen customers are on screen, we are normally an arm’s length away from any screen, you know, that we own. And our premise here is that there is a there’s the need for a fundamental reinvention of the customer service function. You know, a lot of these functions at F eyes have in organizations, broadly speaking, have digitally transformed, you know, but customer service has notoriously lagged behind in its digital transformation. That’s really what the book is about. It’s a playbook about, you know, how to reinvent customer service for a digital first world for an onscreen customer. And there’s charts, there’s diagrams, there’s frameworks, in terms of how the leading organizations in the world are actually doing this today, and seeing a great deal of success.

Loraine Lawson
Um, so let me ask you the same for every technology, broad technology category has sort of a holy grail, what is the holy grail for digital banking experience?

Dan Michaeli
for digital banking, or for digital customer service?

Loraine Lawson
or digital customer service? Sorry.

Dan Michaeli
I just wanted to make sure I was understanding the question, so yeah, just just yet. No worries. So So yes, the way to think about it is, the Holy Grail is a standard a, basically a transformation of the standard. So today, you are completely expecting that if you want to talk to somebody at an institution or out of business, you’re basically going to have to dial a 10 digit phone number, and go through a painstaking, you know, press one for sales, press two for service, you know, getting to the agent, the agent not being connected to what you’re doing online, and then not being able to meet you there in that journey. I mean, that’s a completely expected experience today, the holy grail of digital Customer service is that the standard, what you expect, is now that I can click a button and right on my screen, just like we’re doing with zoom, right now, I can have an interaction with the bank, you know, or with the business. And I don’t have to leave that digital experience. If I want to talk to somebody, I don’t have to restart my interaction somewhere else I can completely continue with what I’m doing digitally. And and have those interactions with any mode that I choose and shift between those modes completely fluidly. If I want to start with a chat, and go to a video banking session, that’s a one click of a button, right? So the holy grail is moving from category to standard. That’s what we see happening in the next few years. And it’s already happening today. Businesses are completely reinventing the way that they serve their customer base because we’re digital first people today. So we have to be serving customers with a digital first mindset.

Loraine Lawson
So what’s the biggest mistake you see banks making and digital customer service

Dan Michaeli
Well, I would argue that the biggest mistake is assuming that they have to Well, I would say it’s assuming that ultimately they can, they can still have, they can limit it to basic messaging interactions that digital means basic messaging is effectively the biggest mistake. Because ultimately, the end Look, it’s it’s a, it’s a belief that banks have, because that’s how traditionally, you know, things have been you have your phone experiences, and you have your digital experiences, right? And banks don’t often think of them together, they don’t often say okay, well, if I want to have a verbal a voice conversation, a high touch conversation, they’re gonna have to dial a phone number, you know, and that’s how they’re going to get in touch with us. And I’m not advocating to get rid of phone numbers, if you want to put a phone number on a TV ad on a bank statement on a billboard, then that’s a perfectly fine way to promote people getting in touch with you. But if I am on a, an online banking experience, I am looking at a screen, there’s no reason to have a phone number display there, if I can have that same voice conversation, right? In digital banking, you know what I mean? So it’s the biggest mistake that I see is that peep, the banks will assume that once they have messaging or bots, basic, basic interactions over messaging deployed, they don’t have to continue to think about other types of interactions that they could move digitally, like voice or like, video, you know, those are equally important to bring into the digital experiences.

Loraine Lawson:
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