Standard Bank optimizes operational efficiency with Amazon Connect

Standard Bank is one of the largest banks in Africa, with over 50,000 employees serving more than 18 million customers across 20 countries. Founded in 1862, the bank has grown to be a leading financial services organization, providing personal and business banking, wealth management, advisory services, and more.

Standard Bank’s contact center operations underpin its customer service delivery across diverse banking portfolios. With over 5,500 agents handling close to 40 million customer interactions annually, the contact center was a critical touchpoint. However, the bank’s previous on-premises contact center platform was reaching end-of-life. This presented major operational risks as well as limitations in achieving their digital transformation objectives.

Envisioning the future

As Standard Bank accelerated its journey to becoming a cloud-first organization, contact center modernization represented a key milestone. The bank evaluated multiple solutions, establishing three primary criteria for their selection process:

• First, they sought a comprehensive cloud contact center solution with robust omnichannel capabilities.
• Second, the new platform needed to provide optimization opportunities through advanced analytics and data-driven insights.
• Finally, they prioritized a solution that would support agile delivery methodologies and enable rapid innovation cycles going forward.

The cloud-native architecture and pay-as-you-go pricing model in Amazon Connect aligned with Standard Bank’s goals of optimizing costs for their contact center operations. The service eliminates the need to deploy and manage on-premises software infrastructure that faces end-of-life and end-of-support challenges over time. Instead, it provides continuously updated cloud capabilities.

“We believed Amazon Connect would materially de-risk historic challenges of deploying software,” said Bryan Botha, CIO (Personal and Private Banking) at Standard Bank.

Remarkably, Standard Bank executed this massive migration in under a year – a feat that traditionally spanned three to four years at the bank. During the cutover, there was also no major disruption in service experienced by customers.

Amazon Connect offered Standard Bank the advanced analytics and reporting capabilities they required to gain deeper insights and drive operational efficiency. Amazon Connect captures comprehensive interaction data across voice and chat channels, allowing for powerful insights using built-in analytics capabilities.

“We can analyze why customers call repeatedly, and that has shaped our digital service strategy – something we lacked quality data for previously,” said Brett Bossenger, Head of Voice at Standard Bank.

Digital transformation driving outcomes

After Standard Bank moved to Amazon Connect, their customers found it more convenient to engage through multiple channels. The shift led to a 56% increase in chat volumes and a 7% decrease in voice calls. However, Standard Bank even handled the remaining voice calls more efficiently, improving answer times by 6% and reducing missed calls by 42%.

For agents and their supervisors, processes like call monitoring, coaching, and feedback have become more streamlined and effective with Amazon Connect capabilities.

“The system has empowered agents with real-time performance data, fueling professional growth. We’ve been able to accredit our whole team through training programs while sustaining service excellence,” said Bossenger.

Customer sentiment metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) have also risen steadily post-migration over 20 points. The bank has maintained strong service levels as analytics and insights enable greater operational efficiency.

“Amazon Connect has empowered us to truly own and transform how we run our contact center business. We’ve taken that ownership seriously and seen the results in stellar customer and operational outcomes,” said Bossenger.

Visualizing what’s next

As the bank continues to trailblaze, Standard Bank is harnessing the continuous innovation in Amazon Connect to unlock new opportunities. The ease of making changes, piloting other Amazon Connect capabilities, and optimizing consumption-based costs is part of their ongoing product lifecycle.

“Our previous change cycles were lengthy and costly. With Amazon Connect, we achieved a pace of execution unimaginable before,” said Nazreen Boda, Head of Client Solutions.

With Amazon Connect, the bank has been able to streamline processes, drive efficiencies, and ultimately deliver superior customer experiences. Standard Bank’s customer-centric digital transformation, underpinned by Amazon Connect, has ushered in a new era of agility and set the stage for future market leadership across its diverse financial services offerings.

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