Mike Heininger
With tons of mobile banks in waiting positions, offering a faster, more digitized, and cheaper product, traditional banks need to make their move to stay relevant.
On top, a significant change has been approaching in the last years, and now has finally arrived: PSD2.
Banks know this better than I would, but to explain in essence: PSD2 is the Revised Payment Services Directive from the European Union, passed in the Council of the European Union back in 2015. With it came the mandatory implementation of “SCA” - Strong Customer Authentication. The extension of the implementation ended originally on December 31st, 2020 for the EU, with Germany and Austria extending the deadline to March and Switzerland to Summer, meaning banks need to act.
And this is where we come to the fun part: SCA requires electronic payments to be done via multi-factor authentication. So if you’re using 3-D Secure you need to be sure that you have set up your account with the credit card issuing bank to comply with SCA, otherwise you will not be able to make any electronic payments through your credit card.
As mentioned before, the deadline to implement SCA for banks is ending meaning there’s an increased volume of people now either stuck sitting in front of their computer wanting to buy something online or maybe trying to transfer money to a friend who covered your last coffee, or or or. Even older generations are used to not only making use of the credit card in a store but actually doing real electronic transactions through the web. Especially during COVID, this group of elderly users increased.
So if the multi-factor authentication did not get set up in time, banks will have to deal with A LOT of customer requests.
I guess it’s as easy as that: Imagine yourself being in the process of ordering your spouse’s birthday present, your fridge being empty and wanting to get food delivered, having an emotional meltdown and just so much needing to buy the latest iPhone - and then, you can’t finish the purchase at the 3-D Secure step because you did not activate your multi-factor authentication until now or lost your password you set up months ago but never used until now.
What is going on at that moment? What do you do? You’ll grab your phone, call your credit card’s issuer bank, and demand to get this resolved in that exact moment! You need to get this fixed and you are not happy about the situation. Now imagine what the calling experience will look like? I don’t think you would enjoy it - waiting times, being routed several times, and so on. Frustrating and nerve-wracking.
Now, I know that this is not the bank’s fault, nor would a customer receive a better experience with a different provider but still: this horrible experience will stick in the customer’s mind, giving them one big push to think of moving away.
And this is what banks can not afford.
Banks need to avoid losing clients at all costs - it is as simple as that. If a customer leaves, they will never come back and maybe they would even tell their friends and family about this great offer they received with the competing bank, making this an even greater impact.
So while customers might forget to update their 3-D Secure information, banks can’t afford to give their clients a bad experience when once these clients urgently need banks to react.
And this is where the voice factor plays an essential part. Implementing a smart solution for the phone system is key to giving those nervous clients the service they expect and need. Successful banks have already understood the need to invest in proper voice communication, most importantly into their service line. An example would be a well-known bank in Austria: knowing about the change that would come upon everyone, they were looking into viable solutions on the market. The biggest topic to tackle: how can these potential calls from clients be responded fast and in the right way to give them a sense of trust for a quick resolution. How to even fully automate the customer requests to handle them 24/7 without the need to ramp up the team.
Phone solutions on the market that focus on intelligent automation and instant voice response can ideally support banks in this challenging situation. Being able to route a call about 3-D Secure directly to an intelligent, automated system that explains the requirement of this setup, the necessary next steps, and can potentially even resolve the call is no longer a dream of the future but actual reality with the technology from today.
Yodel is providing such services as a SaaS (Software as a Service) product to thousands of SMBs worldwide and likewise to enterprises via our custom solution services. Normally, when I tell this story in front of banking managers, I call the service line of the bank during the presentation and play their on-hold announcement. In most cases I can do most – if not all – of my presentation while the “valued customer waits until his call is important”.
So why not go ahead and call your own bank’s service line and ask for help with 3-D Secure. If you’re not happy with the phone service, then your customers will surely not be either.
