Imagining a world with ubiquitous Remote Expertise – well at least in Banking

We recently returned from Cisco Live where this year’s theme was IMAGINE. Innovation was everywhere, there was even an IMAGINE Lab. That theme ignited some memories for me about when Cisco initially came out with a solutions called Remote Expert. At that time, several years ago, it was the cutting edge of what we could do with video within the business world. I was taken by the impact this technology could have, and began to IMAGINE how someday this concept and technology could be used globally by society to help individuals or groups answer critical questions and solve big problems. That video would become pervasive as it has, but also there would be a way to curate expertise, where you could do a live video chat to research or find answers from those who have that specific knowledge. Well, we are on our way with Siri and Alexa, but not there yet. Someday!

The Remote Expert solution at Cisco has continued to evolve and has been a very effective approach for Retail Banking. In a bank the Remote Expert provides a fully immersive, virtual face-to-face interaction that replicates the “physical expert in the room” experience by connecting a pool of centralized experts based in a call center or another office with the customer sitting in a branch or brokerage. Why is this a need in banking? The bank branch is a critical aspect of the Omni channel and needs to provide the entire set of products and services offered. However, it’s definitely not cost effective to have an expert in all the services from personal and business accounts through mortgage and investments.

Having Remote Expert capability allows the bank to match the erratic customer demand for the expertise they need across an entire physical branch network without having an expert sitting within each branch. It allows the bank to increase availability of experts at peak times to augment what expertise currently sits in the branch. In addition, the bank can then offer their entire expansive product line in all branches at all times at a price the customer can afford. Having expertise physically located in each branch is totally cost prohibitive. The price of services without Remote Expert would be so high, no one could afford them.

In addition, as financial institution are burdened with more and more regulation, the risk of selling complex advisory products increases. The banks are looking for ways to meet regulatory requirements while reducing risk and lowering costs. Remote Expert will do both. An added benefit is how Remote Expert lowers the cost of training and supervising a dispersed physical sales force across a large geographical area. This technology allows the bank to keep everyone updated and trained using the existing video capability. Just another cost saving benefit.

Cisco, along with our partner Moderro are delivering Remote Expert solutions to bank branches, as well as in the form of a standalone unit. The autonomous unit allow the bank to go to the customer, extending reach to wherever there’s market need.

The Remote Expert solution allows the bank to:

◉ Maintain the customer intimacy and satisfaction while introducing new product lines to existing branches without deploying a physical sales force

◉ Reducing/replacing a physical sales force with a centralized sales force to optimize expert usage

◉ Deliver smaller footprint branches, with fewer staff members selling more complex products at a price that is acceptable to the bank

◉ Increase assisted self service capability in banking hall to reduce service staff

◉ Reduce sales distribution risk (the risk of miss-selling)

◉ Reduce costs

◉ Increase revenues