Optus transforms CX for Great Southern Bank with Nice CXone

Optus has rolled out a contact centre solution for Great Southern Bank (GSB) using Nice CXone. 

Following the implementation in two of GSB’s national hubs, Optus is rolling out the contact centre solution across more bank locations.

The project has overhauled the bank’s contact centre operations, delivering a more positive customer and employee experience all-round. Implementing NICE CXone, the financial institute has reduced wait times, streamline interactions, and provided enhanced customer support.

GSB COO Naushad Ahmed said the partnership with Optus and Nice has been crucial, allowing the bank to adapt quickly and maintain high customer satisfaction.

“With CXone, GSB knows that more than 80 per cent of customers consistently have their calls answered within 30 seconds, which is a significant reduction,” Ahmed said. 

Particularly in the past two years, Ahmed said the bank was approaching partnerships with a different mindset as it continues to outsource more of its technology solutions.

“Part of our strategy going forward was identifying about 40 critical partners that we want to invest in, because that is what’s going to make us different from the rest of the other banking organisations. So partnership means a lot to us as an organisation,” Ahmed said.

Prior to engaging Optus, GSB used an on-premises Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution, which produced poor customer experience regarding wait times, resolution rates, fragmented customer service channels and a lack of scalability. 

“I’ve been in banking for nearly 20 years and we always used to do these great looking features of apps or solutions for customers, but behind the scenes, it’s held together with tape,” Ahmed said. 

“The poor person who’s actually charged with actually making a customer’s query a reality, had to go through multiple screens and tasks, and we never used to focus on CX and that’s what just led us to CXone. 

“This was a fully integrated solution that was head and shoulders above what we had, but also fit really nicely with our IT modernisation plan that the new CEO embarked on in 2019 and coincidentally, COVID hit at the same time. On the same day we went live, we had to send our staff to work from home.”

GSB head of customer contact centre Annie Brett said it has been able to scale the CXone platform across its banking operations including its hardship and financial crime team, providing one repository with a central source of truth and data to understand customer sentiment, feedback and how to enhance responses across the value chain.

Optus vice president of delivery, Danny Price said the partnership was about delivering a meaningful experience for both customers and employees. 

“This collaboration with NICE underscores Optus’ commitment to unique proven expertise in CX transformation and innovation that directly enhances Great Southern Bank’s performance, customer experience and strengthens operational efficiency through employee experience,” Price said. 

With a refreshed IVR system and comprehensive support, Great Southern Bank can now more efficiently manage customer interactions and provide immediate assistance in times of financial distress or potential fraud. 

In the months ahead, Ahmed hinted it had an AI strategy in play and plans to integrate AI features like auto-summarisation of customer phone interactions and Copilot to enhance efficiency and customer experience.

“Due to our size, we can be nimble and take a few chances. I’m really excited about how the platform will enable more employees to be more customer centric, not eliminate them, but give them more tools to create a magical customer experience,” he said. 

Nice A/NZ vice president Rod Lester added through the use of generative AI, it created products that organisations can adopt and consume in a quick manner. One example was its auto summarisation tool, which he said was the fastest consumed product. 

“At a pure commercial level, it’s removing two minutes of average handling time,” he said. 

“We’ve seen a massive spike in customer satisfaction and we can measure that in the platform.

“Our Copilot capability, which GSB is going to be implementing, there’s so many use cases such as live messaging. Typically live messaging an agent can handle three live interactions, what we’re seeing now is it can be seven to nine – productivity has gone through the roof.”