Redesigning CX: How Great Southern Bank delivered service excellence and improved operational efficiency with Optus
Great Southern Bank has been supporting customers and the community for almost 80 years. Today, with 414,000 members, it’s one of Australia’s largest customer-owned and customer-led banks. To evolve and better serve its customers, it needed to refresh its on-premise contact centre service and transition to a cloud-based solution, optimising business operations while also elevating the customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX).
To honour the unparalleled customer service ethos at its core, Great Southern Bank was committed to partnering with organisations that were leaders in customer experience services and also technology.
By partnering with Optus for expert advice, and the deployment and management of NICE CXone, it achieved significant improvements in customer wait times and agent efficiency, while simultaneously futureproofing its operations and improving its employee engagement and satisfaction.
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The Situation A legacy IVR system hinders access for vulnerable customers
Great Southern Bank's existing on-premise contact centre solution posed challenges to its customer service operations, hindering operational efficiency and impacting customer satisfaction. With the aim to lower wait times and abandon rates, the bank realised the urgent need for a strategic overhaul. Looking forward to their future, they knew they needed a flexible solution which aligned to their ambition to leverage AI in responding to customers within seconds, not minutes.
Before engaging Optus, Great Southern Bank’s telephony platform lacked omnichannel capabilities through which customers could easily access its service centre. With a large amount of its work focused on fraud prevention and scam loss, delivering timely service to the bank’s most vulnerable clientele—its financial crime customers—was a top priority.
"We needed to make radical change [to our contact centre] and turned to Optus to help us with that transformation."
Naushad Ahmed Chief Operating Officer, Great Southern Bank
The Goal Driving efficiency & improving overall customer statisfaction
Having gone more than a decade since refreshing its contact centre system, Great Southern Bank knew that it could do better—so it sought out the help of a partner to design and deliver a customer and employee experience that met modern business standards.
In collaboration with Optus, Great Southern Bank set ambitious goals to drive business performance and enhance the overall experience. The primary objectives included moving to the cloud, reducing wait times, improving first-call resolution and increasing operational efficiency and customer and employee satisfaction ratings. The partnership with Optus was instrumental in formulating a comprehensive strategy to achieve these goals.
The Solution Optimised systems leading to better customer outcomes
Through the expert support of Optus and the advanced technology available through NICE CXone, Great Southern Bank was able to build a refreshed, cloud-based, omni-channel IVR system. Advanced AI capabilities were also part of the refresh for enhanced operational efficiency and customer engagement, such predictive analytics and reporting. Now, contact centre agents are able to more efficiently address customer needs, and supercharge first call resolution.
CXone has helped Great Southern Bank redefine the customer journey and streamline all of its customer service processes into a single, easy-to-operate system. Through the IVR refresh, the Great Southern Bank team is empowered to more effectively handle Quality Assurance (QA), workforce planning, Interaction Analytics (IA) and non-voice customer engagements (email and chat).
By leveraging the capabilities of CXone – not only in the contact centre, but also in its IT services and backend operations teams – Optus is helping Great Southern Bank realise the value offered by NICE CXone technology. By integrating advanced AI functionalities, such as real-time customer sentiment analysis, lets the bank anticipate and respond to customer needs swiftly, improving overall CX.
"Optus is very centralised around customer experience, but also the experience of their people — that's the synergy. We want to make sure that we take care of our people so that they can take care of our customers. Optus has enabled us to do that."
Annie Brett Head of Contact Centre, Great Southern Bank
The Results Better technology boosts employee engagement, customer satisfaction and business performance
Following the technology migration with Optus, Great Southern Bank saw a significant improvement—both in terms of customer and employee experience, and also business efficiency.
For its customers, the new system meant a significant reduction in wait times, down to 29 seconds, on average. This led to a 100% uplift in customer satisfaction, according to Great Southern Bank’s year-over-year NPS scores. Its new average wait time is now 8x faster than the industry average for banking call centres—and this has been accomplished with fewer agents, highlighting the efficiency of its new IVR.
Employees have also experienced notable improvements. According to global Gallup survey data, the bank’s employee engagement metrics rose to the 90th percentile after the new IVR refresh. This coincided with a stark drop in attrition (consistently high in call centre environments). While the industry average sits at 27%, Great Southern Bank recently hit its lowest contact centre attrition rate ever at 17%.
The Future Better customer experience and business performance through ongoing technological innovation
While Great Southern Bank is already leveraging CXone’s AI insights to analyse customer sentiment, it sees still more opportunity to leverage advanced technology to deliver enhanced customer and employee experiences.
Finding the right balance between risk management, innovation, business performance and ever-changing market and customer demands will be key for Great Southern Bank over the coming years. Ultimately, with the support and guidance of Optus and NICE, Great Southern Bank is confident they can leverage Digital Customer Experience and Artificial Intelligence technologies to benefit its business, its employees and its customers moving forward. This is only the beginning.
"The infrastructure and technology have enabled the team to execute meaningful changes to help customers."
Annie Brett Head of Contact Centre, Great Southern Bank
Further information
To find out more about partnering with Optus, contact your account manager or request a call back below.
Customer profile
Great Southern Bank
Founded in Brisbane in 1946, Great Southern Bank has been supporting Australian customers and the community for almost 80 years. As one of Australia’s largest customer-owned and customer-led banks, with corporate offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, it provides banking services to more than 414,000 Australians. It proudly champions its mission of helping all Australians own their own homes.
Industry: Financial Services
Website: www.greatsouthernbank.com.au
Location: National
Goals
- Customer Service
Solutions
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NICE CXone Omnichannel
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NICE Workforce Optimisation
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NICE Interaction Analytics
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NICE Quality Management
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Optus SIP Carriage
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Optus IPVPN
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Optus 24-hour support services