Put AI to Work for Dispute Resolution and Customer Service: Insight from ServiceNow

Is the weight of legacy technologies holding your financial institution back in time? In the ever-evolving financial services landscape, the burden of disconnected people, processes, and technologies hinders the delivery of frictionless customer service. Join ServiceNow's financial services experts to discover how you can transform AI success into customer service victories across onboarding, servicing, disputes and more.

Transcription:

Kristin Streett (00:09):

Everyone, thanks for joining us for the luncheon, and please just continue eating and do what you need to do. But if you have questions as we're having this conversation, please just raise your hand. I mean, we just had a nice conference with a lot of interaction. Just want you to feel like you're able to leave this nice lunch with some information you can take back to your organization. So I'm actually going to present a little bit of research to you, which I think is sometimes helpful because it's objective and and it gives you something that you can anchor to and look at in terms of transformation. So I'm going to share some research with you. We have our disputes team here. We have Steph Garrow from Visa is our partner. She's up here in the front. She's an incredible resource. She knows so much about the industry and so much about disputes.

(01:03):

And Vidya Balakrishnan is here from ServiceNow. She's our VP in charge of our financial services product team and product management and the delivery of the solutions that we bring to market for financial services. As well as some of you may have seen Tom do the demo yesterday, but we've had a lot of conversation around disputes, so I'm just going to allow that to be a Q&A. If you have questions, we can talk about that. And instead, what I'd like to start with is just some fact-based research that might be helpful to you and you might find curious and have questions about. So I thought that might be a little bit more of a fun dialogue. ServiceNow sponsors a lot of research with American Banker first and foremost because we feel like it helps financial institutions, including banks, to innovate and have access to information that they need.

(01:55):

Sometimes it's expensive to sponsor research, so we do it on behalf of banks so that you guys can internalize this information and take it back to your organization. And then we learn from it too. We take a lot of that data and we pour it into the way we view our platform and the services that we build and the way that we build them. We talk to our product partners, many of which have been here at this conference. We talk to our customers, they serve on advisory boards and it informs everything we do. Our customer is at the center including the development of our disputes capability. So this is going to be a body of research that ServiceNow conducted, geez, was it about six months ago? And it's about 1300 banks globally, 1100 banks globally that we surveyed with varying C-suite roles across different types of banks, commercial, retail, full service.

(02:55):

And the information that we were asking was across three different domains. It was sort of like, how are you looking at customer transformation? How are you looking at risk mitigation and risk practices? And then how are you looking at AI and generative ai? And so at the end of this, we'll have the QR code that you can download if you'd like video after her session yesterday with Visa, also shared that QR code. But this research is public. You can share it with whomever you want. You're welcome to use the data or call us if you want help digesting it. So one of the main things that we, I'm uncovered through some of the data and this first body of research is just going to talk about the customer experience. So what are banks doing? What are they setting out to do for transformation? We've talked about the fact that digital transformation has been this panacea, this utopia that everyone's been trying to accomplish for a number of years, but we're falling short.

(03:53):

And banks actually told us that they feel like they're falling short in this survey. And so when we asked them what are the types of benefits that you were looking to achieve and where did you fall down the most, these were the top three areas that they came back to us with. And they said, we thought we were going to reduce costs. We were not able to do that to the extent that we were hoping we thought we would get higher profitability, but we didn't. And we thought we were going to be reducing silos by consolidating platforms, et cetera, and were not. But there was a small group of banks that were sort of standing out from the data. You always kind of look for outliers if you're outliers, if you're a data person. And about 30% of the banks that were surveyed consistently answered the same.

(04:44):

So it made us kind of question that, what's going on there? Who are those banks? What are they doing? And so we decided to call them pacesetters and because they are doing something different. So we took the data out and we said, what are those 30% doing? Let's just look at it from their perspective. And they're making progress across seven different pillars. And you'll see 'em here on the left and the right here on these screens. So they're leading in all areas of business transformation. And this is measured by how far are they into their implementations and are they advanced in their implementations of transformation? And the answer was yes. So when you look at this data, it's not like they're hoping to have these results. They actually are achieving these results. So the green here will represent the pacesetter versus the blue. That's which is the peer in their cohort. So across these seven areas, pacesetters are really, really outpacing their peers when they look at their alignment of their digital strategy with their business strategy. So the business is saying that we have to find these new markets, we have to find these new customer segments to sell into. And the bank is saying, our digital strategy maps to that really well and we're successful. So pacesetters are doing that. 96% said yes, we are doing that, and we're versus 56% of their peers, which is really interesting.

(06:20):

ServiceNow really has a very strong opinion, and I think you guys might agree, is that whatever the customer experience is, there's an employee backing experience to that. It just mirrors just on the inside how that experience is being orchestrated. And so pacesetters have productive employee experiences. 95% were saying that they are more productive employees versus their peer group, which is saying 51%. Were saying, yeah, we have a productive employee experience as far as engaging customer experience. 95% from the pacesetters are saying, we like our customer experience, our engagement is good. When we did some research with American Banker last year on CX and humanizing the customer experience, we took a look at where are banks seeing that they're falling down in their investment and their execution against customer experience. And 54% said, we still have a ways to go. We're not at all, or we're only somewhat satisfied with our mobile experience or online banking experience, our digital channels, et cetera.

(07:34):

And it lists it all out. It's great research and you can still access it on the American Banker website, and I'm happy to share it with you as well after this. So yeah, so pacesetters are doing those things and they're doing those things because they're putting the customer at the center of the experience and they're defining their strategy around what the customer is asking for. They're also optimizing their tech infrastructure. I think we all recognize that there's many different silos inside our organizations that have different tech stacks, different investments, different contractual obligations that are making them sort of beholden to their existing infrastructure. But pacesetters are breaking the bonds that chain them down, right? It's looking at their tech infrastructure. They're consolidating many of the banks that we talked to or actually naming their vendors of choice and saying, these are the ones that we're doubling down on because we understand their roadmap and we see where they're going in the future and we see our growth is tied to their trajectory and we want to be with 'em. They're resilient. Their systems are secure. 87% said yes. Look at the 32% saying We are not resilient. We don't think our systems are secure.

(08:51):

It's an eyeopener for us. Obviously, we all manage risk to payments. So when we double click in here, it's kind of interesting to see where some of those responses are. Pacesetters are also, they have enhanced governance and compliance around their practices, around their policies, their processes, et cetera. And they're able to scale those business processes much more effectively. I thought this was kind of a shocking number and disparate Delta as well. 82% of pacesetters said we can scale our business processes versus 33% of their peers. It's really, really interesting. So we continue to go down the journey of what is the pacesetter and how can we learn from them? So while many are still on their journey and very early, they do stand out from their peers on some other transformation related metrics. They're 1.5 times faster to get to value. And they're, when we talk about those unrealized benefits from the very first slide, if you lay 'em out here and you look at Pacesetters that when we said they were the 30% that actually are achieving these things, 59% are saying, we are reducing our costs, we're increasing our revenue, we're getting greater productivity operationally, our products and services are more relevant and aligned and strategically, our decision making and our internal process management is accelerated 47% saying that they feel that they're doing that and they have a stronger competitive advantage as a result.

(10:27):

So 42%. So really compelling and interesting statistics around how they are actually achieving the kind of results that everyone's setting out to. So it's sort of like, well, why and how? Right? And pacesetters are connecting those experiences, those services across those platforms, their people, their processes, their tech stacks and departments are working more effectively to deliver personalized, intuitive, and less friction in their experiences. So when you look at pacesetters, you sort of say, well, what are they worried about? They're doing so great. What are their challenges? And they listed them here, and it's sort of like this may not even be on the radar of the peer group. They're exclusively focused on these three things, compliance with data privacy regulations, the high cost of customer service, excuse me. And that software development, it needs to keep pace with their change. They're not worried about just some of the fundamentals that we covered on those seven pillars.

(11:33):

And so 97, 90 5% of pacesetters are halfway or midway through their implementing of their customer service experience, and they're infusing AI into those experiences. Many in banking when I meet with our customers are, they're still investigating. They're still looking at ai. They want to understand the modeling. They're taking small steps. I think we've heard that in some panels. Hey, we're going to start small. We're going to understand where's the data coming from? How are you using LLMs and how's that going to impact my business from a risk perspective? Also, just as a sidebar, American Banker has an amazing research body of work that they published about a year ago. It's the AI guide to transformation, I think. And so I think that's something that if anyone's interested in, I'd be happy to connect you with that as well. But a lot of our data validates what we're seeing in American bankers data, which is kind of refreshing and nice, but it also helps us to validate the fact that this actually is, it's real, right?

(12:42):

So the areas that customers are beginning to optimize with ai we're really broken into three key segments. And again, this is the CX side of the equation. So 49% of pacesetters are looking to use AI and to infuse it into their customer onboarding experience. And then lending and servicing, 41% are looking at that area. So a lot of process, a lot of manual disparate teams trying to serve customers across different types of technologies. And then finally, yesterday, we actually showed you this in our session, how are we using AI for payment servicing? If you get a dispute that comes in, how can we use AI to personalize that experience? To summarize some of the work for the agent, for the customer, with great integrations to customers and partners like Visa, to be able to get them their information more quickly. AI is meant to accelerate, not meant to slow down. And so it's great to see that this is where those pacesetters are investing their AI dollars, and it aligns with the work that we're doing with our platform and why we're doing that.

(13:55):

Alright, so this is sort of my fun concentric circle slide. When I say that Pacesetters are putting customers at the center of everything, they really are. I was at a previous American banker conference in New York City and we heard from Di Maray who was at the time, she was in charge of retail for Ally Bank. And she said, we literally put our customers in the center of our meetings. They have a seat at the table. And so when we make decisions, we ask for everyone's opinion, and then we take a minute and we reflect on the fact, what would the customer want us to do intentionally, outright, the customer is sitting here and they would say to us, what? And they have that dialogue to really put them at the center and understand. So the spirit of that is what we see with Pacesetters, right?

(14:46):

They're doing more than other banks to digitize their customer experiences. They're generating greater business benefits and ones that'll continue to multiply. They're accomplishing that in these ways. So what do you think five different ways, 54% are improving their customer data, privacy and security, which we talked about. They're simplifying their customer onboarding, they're personalizing their marketing and their customer interactions, and they're analyzing their customer needs and behaviors. And then finally, they're providing that seamless omnichannel interaction, which is really great. So finally, of all of these things, where are they really shining is on the right hand side here. So pacesetters are increasing their customer engagement versus their peers. They're increasing their business growth and they're increasing their self-service success. And so when you think about how do we get to our customers quickly, it's helping to get the volume out of the front, right? Of all of that ingestion, that intake processes, getting that volume out, having customers get to their information quicker via self-service so that you can use your other teammates to do more high value tasks and more complicated requests.

(16:05):

So really awesome work that they've been doing here. And we just wanted to highlight some of these trends for you so you could take a look at it. This is the actual research paper that we have, and you're welcome. I'll just leave it up on the stage while we take some if you guys have questions, but it'll segment out for you here on the CX spectrum risk management spectrum, and also from an AI perspective, and I'll go much deeper, I just kind of gave you the highlights to sort of see, hey, well, if I'm looking to make some change in my organization, who could I benchmark against and what should I be looking for and what are they doing? It's easy to say, oh, x, Y, Z organization is a leader in this space. It's another thing to say, I actually know what they're doing.

(16:48):

And we could do the same thing in our organizations. So we're happy to share this with you. If you reach out to me on LinkedIn or here after the meeting, I'm happy to get you some other research that I've referenced. But it's great to be able to take that back to your organization and use that as an objective way to prove out your business case or even to help inform your creative thinking around solutions you're trying to build for your customers. So any questions before I let you return to eating? And we have our disputes experts here as well, if you have questions about that or what we're seeing from a trend perspective. Oh, thank you. And it's okay if you don't. We just want you to enjoy your lunch. We just want to give you a little bit of information that you be able to consume and share. But happy to take any questions too. All good? Yeah. Thank you so much. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Safe travels back to your respective homes, and let ServiceNow know how we can help you in any way. Appreciate you.