Introduction
Hi everyone, this is Belinda Simmons and I’m a solution principal here at Medallia. I’m honored today to have Ashok Meka from UMB here joining me to discuss the journey that UMB has been on, and their mission is to really exceed customer and community expectations.
UMB’s Journey with Medallia
Thanks Belinda, glad to be here. 110 years, we always exceeded customer expectations, and with Medallia’s help, we went to the next level. We started our journey with Medallia in 2018, with the customer survey program. We uncovered a lot of customer insights based on the customer feedback. We always focus on listening to the customers. Based on the feedback, we improved ourselves, we provided better customer experience. In 2021, we started our speech program, With speech, we have 100,000 calls per month. That’s close to 1.2 million calls per year. That’s a lot of data. With AI models and Medallia’s help, we were able to uncover a lot of customer insights. We changed our entire customer experience program.
Speech Program Implementation
So with the speech implementation, what were the main problems you were trying to solve? So, before implementing the speech program, our quality management process was tedious. It’s hard to listen to each and every call and rate that call, and get insights from those calls. With speech, we were able to get a quality score for each and every call, and it gave us insights on what our customers were calling us about. We got lucked out on automatic dispersion, it changed our customer experience program.
Impact of Automatic Dispersion
That’s awesome, so with that dispositioning of calls, were you able to alleviate some of the calls into the contact center? Yes, so with the automatic dispersion, you’ll get to see every line of business: What are the customers calling us about? And we gathered all those insights and worked with the product team, So we made enhancements to our online presence, We made enhancements to product offerings, which did result in fewer numbers of calls coming into the customer center.
Success Metrics and Customer Satisfaction
So what other metrics — besides the number of calls — what other metrics do you look at to measure success? Customer satisfaction is really important to us. We always strive for a better customer experience by providing an unparalleled experience, and then customer satisfaction at the associate and satisfaction with the brand, Net Promoter Score, NPS, first call resolution: We would like to solve the problem within the first call, that’s very important to us. Within the first year, we have seen 15% improvement in NPS scores, and more than 20% improvement in first call resolution and satisfaction with our associate.
Best Practices in Program Implementation
Congratulations, that’s amazing. Thank you. What are some best practices you would recommend in implementing a program like this? Your insights are as good as your data, you need to get executive buy-in. You can get that by providing a return on investment and value proposition. With executive buy-in, you are solving two problems: You are providing a solution at the enterprise level, at the same time, you’re making a difference and providing a greater customer experience. Make sure to define your success metrics. Include your business groups throughout the journey: Communicate to them, keep them posted, and make sure you are delivering the product, what you’re signed up for. And if it does, you can deliver amazing results.
Personal Impact and Cloud Migration
Ashok, I’m really interested in what’s the biggest impact this program has had on you personally? Medallia is a great partner to work with. We have clear business requirements and we signed off on the design, and we came to know that we can save human resources and money, by moving our data to the cloud. That changed the entire service center program on how to take care of unstructured data, which resulted in millions of dollars of savings for just one thoughtful insight from Medallia. And with that change, we were able to deliver the project much ahead of the timelines, and we delivered 100% of our goals. So it’s a game-changer for us. Before that, we used to store data on premises, all those call recordings, 1.2 million calls. With Medallia’s recommendation, we were able to move that data to AWS cloud. That resulted in entire processing time improvement, at the same time cost savings to UMB.
Impact on UMB and Future Plans
What’s been the biggest impact to UMB? The biggest impact is we are able to provide the great customer experience, and one of our core strategies are customer experience improvement. We always look at every project, is it aligning to our core strategies, and is it aligning to our core values and needs? And Medallia Speech program did align with the customer experience improvement strategy and we are able to deliver unparalleled customer experience with that.
Future Plans and Customer Feedback Program
Can you just tell me what’s next on the journey? It is just beginning. We just scratched the surface. Now we’re going to work with the product teams and our line of business owners how to generate more revenue and how to be cost-effective and how to provide a better customer experience at the end of the day. That’s our goal, and with the speech, we’re going to do that.
Customer Feedback and Closed-Loop Program
How are you following up with your customers based on all these insights? We have a formal closed-loop feedback program where we look at customer insights and based on the line of business, our closed-loop feedback ambassador will reach out to the customer personally, and they resolve the problem and they address the concern, and by doing that, they close the loop. The main goal is to not just look at customer insights, take actions on it. Make changes to the product offerings. The end goal is to provide unparalleled customer experience.
Conclusion and Thanks
Ashok, thank you so much for participating in the session with me today, I really learned a lot and I’m so thankful that you’re a customer. Thank you for having me today, and Medallia is a great partner to work with.
