As most of you already know, the former Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin has joined Exotel as a mentor and angel investor. Arun is a telecommunications veteran and served as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Vodafone Group from 2003-2008. His career began in 1984 at...
Today, there are 9700 non-bank finance companies (NBFCs) in India, across infrastructure financing, microfinance, gold loan, investment companies, etc. addressing a market size of Rs. 30 lakh crore They serve a significant part of the financial and borrowing needs of India’s nooks and crannies.
Being able to speak to customers, answer questions, and solve problems is critical to the success of an NBFC. Yet, many NBFCs continue to use legacy systems that are not equipped to solve today’s challenges. In this blog, we’ll talk about the five most common challenges faced by customer-facing teams in the NBFC sector, and how cloud telephony can help solve these challenges.
1. Lack of operational visibility and accountability structures
One of the biggest problems that NBFCs face is that they have no visibility over the calls made by field agents. When field agents call from their mobile phones, it becomes impossible to accurately track key operational metrics such as no. of attempts, no. of calls made, the call duration, etc. It is equally difficult to monitor agent performance and review it.
With a cloud-based telephony solution, each agent is assigned a virtual number. When the agent places a call from his/her mobile phone, it is routed via this number and the call is tracked and recorded automatically. This gives your IT and operations leaders a clear view of everyday customer interaction. It also helps ensure SLA compliance, regular training, and effective management of remote agents.
2. Data privacy concerns
Individual agents having ready access to the personal information of the customer is a huge data privacy risk for any NBFC. When agents are on the field, the risk of data exposure is also extended to those in their vicinity.
With cloud-based telephony, agents don’t need to access customer data at all. They can use Exotel’s virtual number to request a call to any customer that the system initiates and connects automatically.
3. Inability to adapt to remote work
As the pandemic forced NBFCs to work from home, many customer-facing teams adopted a VPN set up for remote support. However, it incurred high installation costs and had issues of reliability, voice quality, and scalability.
With cloud telephony, these concerns are eliminated., NBFCs can retain their toll-free number, in fact, even use the same IVR, but route calls through an API to agents on-site, field agents, as well as the mobile phones of relationship managers. Cloud telephony has no installation costs, is quick to set up, reliable and scalable on-demand.
4. Lengthy call queues
Call volumes at NBFCs vary with time. During peak seasons, festivals, etc., call volumes increase and waiting lines become lengthy, hurting customer experience. During such times, the system needs to be able to transfer calls to field agents and other available staff. On-prem, siloed solutions can’t do that.
The ability of cloud telephony to spread calls across all available agents, irrespective of their geographic location or the device they owned means that call drops reduce, more calls are answered, and fewer customers wait in line.
5. Scalability
Most on-prem EPABX solutions come with a limit on how many channels and agents they can support at a time. Scaling brings with it the burden of significant CapEx. With TRAI threatening with fines for unreasonable wait times, this problem is more urgent than it used to be.
Cloud-based telephony can scale — up and down — dynamically and without any capital expenditure on the infrastructure at all. Onboarding an agent is as simple as giving them a mobile phone and assigning a virtual number to them.
Future-Ready Communication with Cloud Telephony
Even before COVID struck, NBFCs needed a simpler, more efficient, and secure solution for customer-facing teams. The pandemic has, in fact, made the decision easier. With everyone working remotely and experiencing the flexibility and efficiency it brings, cloud telephony is a natural choice for NBFCs looking to scale.
In case you’d like to find out more about how cloud telephony can help, you can set up a consultation call with our expert here.
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