Protecting Customers While Growing: Balancing Regulation & Growth in Highly Regulated Industries

The Intersect of Regulated Industries & Value

A familiar narrative echoes within the corridors of today’s banking institutions. It speaks of an ambitious bank that meticulously structured its operations to navigate the complex sea of regulatory measures. Their mission was clear: to uphold every decree and statute to the letter, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for compliance.

However, in this laudable pursuit, they encountered an unanticipated consequence: the systems designed to safeguard and protect began constructing barriers. The customer experience, once fluid and accommodating, needed to be more manageable; each regulatory checkpoint, while critical, added layers of complexity for customers interacting with the bank’s services. Lengthy authentication procedures, albeit necessary, and intricate steps for simple transactions inadvertently shifted the customer journey from convenience to challenge, casting a shadow on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Rigid scripts and protocols curtailed consultations once rich with dialogue and understanding. Customers seeking service and a relationship with their bank began to feel more like entries in a ledger than valued patrons. A bank so focused on the minutiae of regulation inadvertently diluted the essence of customer connection. The result was a tangible impact on their customer loyalty metrics—numbers that spoke of dissatisfaction.

Businesses that operate in highly regulated industries face a distinctive challenge: ensuring compliance while delivering an exceptional customer experience. Banks, Health Insurance organizations, Telecommunications, and Airlines continuously seek to build trust with their customers – offering safe & secure digital self-service channels, ensuring customer data privacy, and guaranteeing accurate and up-to-date information. At the same time, these organizations are expected to maintain the highest level of convenience while operating under stringent legal and regulatory requirements. 

Navigating Regulatory Constraints in a Highly Regulated Environment

In the Contact Center space, managers must meet major business objectives to ensure operational success:

• Regulatory Compliance: Deliver personalized and efficient customer experience within stringent regulatory requirements.
• Innovation and Technology: Implement and integrate compliant technology solutions that augment efficiency and personalization.
• Training and Development: Continuously train staff on compliance and customer service excellence within the changing landscape of regulations and customer expectations.
• Operational Efficiency: Maintain quick response times and efficient customer service processes amidst increasing regulatory paperwork.
• Customer Expectations: Balance fast and frictionless service with compliance protocols requiring additional verification steps.

The Missed Opportunity Costs of Over-indulging in Compliance 

Over the past 15 years, enterprises have invested heavily in systems designed to streamline customer interactions – hoping that machines could consistently deliver on these expectations at scale. However, the pendulum may have swung too heavily towards automation and missed the individual customer(s) in their pursuit of compliance fulfillment. Data shows that when customer service professionals focus more heavily on the process, they ignore opportunities for cross-sell or upsell engagements. By focusing too much on the rules, businesses lose the opportunity to generate more revenue. 

For example, a customer service professional incentivized to resolve a customer’s request about their phone plan – may take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade said customer. Disruptive technologies like Generative AI, Emotion AI, and Conversation AI can address these kinds of missed opportunities.

Harnessing Real-Time AI for Revenue Growth

Cogito’s advanced AI goes beyond mere compliance checks; it guides agents to cultivate genuine connections with customers while navigating the necessary protocols. Cogito harnesses the potential of real-time AI to provide live, in-the-moment assistance to customer service agents. By analyzing the vocal, lexical, and behavioral cues of both the customer and agent during a conversation, Cogito’s AI offers real-time guidance to enhance communication’s empathy, clarity, and effectiveness.

By analyzing communication in real-time and offering nuanced guidance, our AI supports agents in maintaining a conversation that feels personal and respectful of the customer’s time and experience while ensuring all regulatory requirements are met.

Cogito’s solution combines the nuance of Emotion AI, the specificity of Conversation AI, and the domain area knowledge of Generative AI.

For example, operations leaders seeking to improve commercial outcomes without missing key requirements can design their own dynamic conversation cues that are adjustable as needed and triggered in real-time customer interactions. These cues helped the organization identify and fulfill a host of new sales opportunities.

Banks and other institutions now have the opportunity to redefine their narrative. Together with Cogito, they can reforge customer paths that are secure, compliant, intuitively human, and deeply connected. This balance is not just possible; it’s essential to ensure that the drive for regulation fortifies rather than impedes customer loyalty and trust.