Bank of Ireland’s contact centre investment delivering faster and better customer services

Bank of Ireland's contact centre investment delivering faster and better customer services

• 8 out of 10 customer calls are resolved first time, with 9,000 fewer calls transferred to other teams
• Average call answering speed down to 10 seconds
• Complaints relating to customer account call handling have halved

Earlier this year, Bank of Ireland announced a €34 million investment in its contact centres including on new telephony and customer management systems. Analysis of key customer servicing statistics - over the last 12 months - show better customer outcomes and a faster customer service response is being delivered.

In the period, more customer calls were handled and completed by the agent the customer spoke with first time, with no need to transfer the customer to any other agent or team. Over 80% of customer calls were resolved first time in March 2024, up from 76% in March 2023, whilst Bank of Ireland saw a drop of over 9,000 call transfers between agents from March to May 2024, compared to the same three-month period in 2023. Customer calls were also answered considerably faster, now only taking 10 seconds on average to connect to an agent.

Part of the investment package is in Conversational Interactive Voice Response (CIVR) technology, which understands customers spoken requests and connects them first time with the right team to deal with their query. Calls are constantly analysed, with the data used to simplify customer journeys, routing of calls to agents and resolve customer queries faster.

Total complaints relating to contact centres (e.g., call waiting times, too many phone menu options) are down 35% in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, with specific complaints relating to the various menu options causing prolonged delays down 42% during that time.

Customers will continue to see the benefits of this ongoing investment as further innovations are introduced in the coming months, including enhanced fraud prevention measures and an enhanced number of self-service features on the Bank of Ireland mobile app.

Susan Russell, CEO, Bank of Ireland Retail Ireland said:"When our customers contact us, they want to be served right first time. The investments we are making are helping us do just that, serving more customers faster and better. While we know we have more to do, I'm pleased to see our investments bearing fruit and we are ambitious to do more."

In addition to this investment in contact centre services, Bank of Ireland is also undertaking a €60 million investment in a range of branch improvements including the replacement of the entire ATM fleet and spending of €50 million on customer fraud prevention and protection measures including investments in new technology.