Equiniti develops a more consumer-centric service with Knowledge Management
The Customer Experience Opportunity
Equiniti was established 10 years ago when Advent (a private equity firm) acquired a number of financial service providers and brought them together under the Equiniti Group brand. Floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2015, the group is comprised or more than 40 individual businesses and continues to grow rapidly, with the acquisition of an average of four businesses per year.
The group employs 4,500 staff, primarily in the UK, and offers a unique combination of financial, data and technology-driven propositions. Primarily a business-to-business service provider, group activities see Equiniti engaging with over 25 million UK citizens every year.
Seventy percent of the FTSE 100, along with some of the UK’s largest pension schemes, rely on Equiniti to help them navigate an increasingly complex and regulated environment.
In addition to its B2B customers, Equiniti provides a range of consumer stockholder services; including Self-Trade, an online stockbroking service.
Adapting to a new breed of shareholder
Share dealing went through a renaissance in the early 2000s, with the advent of online stockbroking. However, the online experience was still somewhat limited in its scope and did not meet the high expectations of an increasingly tech-savvy population.
Equiniti spotted the opportunity to develop a more customer-centric, technology driven proposition. One that would enable an “invest anywhere” culture.
An execution-only stockbroker with 180,000 customers, it handles around £5bn of assets under administration. Self-Trade enables UK residents to invest in stocks and shares or administer their ISAs and pensions in an online environment.
As consumers have become more digitally enabled, their expectations of any online service have been raised. Self-Share customers range from complete novices to experienced traders, so online support needs to cover the full spectrum of questions and answers.
A compelling reason to change
The average consumer uses multiple media to interact with an increasingly wide range of digital services. They move freely from one device to another and expect a consistent, intuitive experience across multiple platforms.
With this in mind, Equiniti was looking to re-develop the Self-Share application; to deliver the first truly responsive solution and enable customers to self-serve on any platform, on any device.
Equiniti’s legacy system featured a static FAQ, with limited search functionality. For experienced customers it relied on them knowing exactly what they were looking for within the FAQs. For new or inexperienced users, it was a maze of complex and unfamiliar terminology; leading to confusion and session abandonment.
The financial sector was a little slow to catch on to the digital revolution. That has changed dramatically in the past five years. With the cross-fertilisation of ideas from the retail sector, the financial services market has become a digital innovator. It was important that Equiniti establish a position at the leading edge of technology if it was to offer a differentiated service.
Choosing the right technology partner
Customer service for Equiniti had undergone its own evolution in recent years. The call centre became the contact centre, which in turn became the experience centre. An integral part of omni-channel support is the effective management and automation of intelligence. So, when it came to choose a technology partner, Equiniti insisted on a knowledge expert.
After carefully considering its options, Equiniti chose to partner with Transversal (now part of Verint). Integrating a third-party technology was a bit of a departure from business as usual for Equiniti. Not quite in the realms of a leap of faith, they were reassured to see Verint working with a number of brands they respected.
Setting quantifiable objectives
When it comes to setting KPIs for any new technology, it can sometimes be difficult to avoid over-simplifying objectives. To simply provide a “better service” is laudable but makes ROI calculations difficult. With the new-look Self-Share, Equiniti established a clear set of objectives and metrics by which they could measure success.
- Offer a consistent, platform-agnostic experience
- Increase customer advocacy for Equiniti
- Realise a growth in customer investment volumes
- Make it easier for customers to access the right information 24/7
- Improve NPS
- Monitor systems usage over time
- Analyse adoption rates internally & externally
- Make it simple for the product team to manage “big data”
- Deliver management information to support improved decision making
- Have zero impact on the critical path
Systems design and deployment
When it came to systems scoping, stakeholders from across the business were engaged. However, when it came to the design phase, the project team was deliberately kept small to ensure a smooth process.
The partnership between the visual designers, UX team and Transversal’s development team worked well and the system was quickly designed, built and delivered to plan. Internal testing was carried out subject matter experts and contact center teams before launching the system as a part of the new website go-live. The mapping of legacy FAQs to the new system ensured SEO got a kick-start, as the system was seeded with 170 questions and answers.
The in-house team at Equiniti was relatively small, with little spare capacity to support the roll-out. They quickly realised that Verint could add value here as, under tight timescales, they wouldn’t need to divert scarce resources internally to support the early stages of deployment.
Early signs of success
Today, Equiniti is the only online stockbroker offering a fully responsive solution; delivering a consistent, engaging experience across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. From a starting point of 170 questions and answers, the system has grown to over 700 query strings after the first three months of use. User adoption has been excellent, with 50k user sessions and 20k questions answered since launch.
Changes in policies or fees usually generate an increase in call volumes to the experience centre. Since the introduction of Verint, the system has handled an increasing number of these enquiries, providing support on a 24/7 basis and contributing toward call avoidance targets.
Employees have embraced the system, which makes user voting, quality scores, and feedback visible, helping to enhance the purpose of their work.
Looking back, and forward
Categorizing data proved challenging, but the process made Equiniti aware of the importance of knowledge management. The self-serve knowledge base was a challenge but it demonstrated just how important knowledge management is.
The self-serve knowledge base will continue to grow over the coming months as new benchmarks for knowledge are established and insights are actioned.
Web self service is just the beginning of the digital transformation journey for Equiniti. Going forward, they are looking to expand the benefits of knowledge automation by deploying Verint solutions across the experience center; delivering further improvements in customer experience and employee productivity.