With more apps, services and devices to connect and communicate with than ever before, enhancing the customer journey has never been more critical for banks and financial institutions as they embrace the digital transformation, where increased convenience and a differentiated experience builds long-lasting loyalty and retention.

To support banks and financial businesses in their drive to create an omni-channel experience and boost the way they interact with customers, Xura, Inc reports it can create a richer path to customer communication, with the launch of its suite of financial services solutions.

Xura’s financial services suite of solutions is claimed to enable intelligent, secure and personalised two-way dialogue across any device, website and app, while saving significant time and money. Xura’s global SMS network, for example, provides seamless, security-optimised routing with superior quality and a decade’s operational experience to banking customers, ranging from simple authentication transactions, to instant delivery of time-sensitive information, which can be rapidly deployed with the highest level of security (ISAE 3402 certified), and privacy compliance.

In addition, the forge SDK by Xura, which is based on WebRTC technology, enables real-time, next generation customer interactions, including VoIP calling, video chat, instant messaging, encrypted file- and screen- sharing, presence and recording, all at the touch of a button. With user context at the core of the offering, when a customer clicks to communicate with their bank or financial services provider via an app or website, their call can firstly be routed to personnel in the customer branch who may know the customer or diverted to a bank’s agent in a call centre.

When a session comes through, the customer is already authenticated and the agent can access the customer’s transaction history so they can resolve issues by pulling relevant contextual information from the user’s mobile app or web screen preventing users to repeat information. Bringing the most appropriate agent and contextual information translates to a faster call resolution and personalised service; in other words, substantial cost savings and improved customer experience.

Eric Bilange, EVP Enterprise at Xura, commented: “Xura has a deep and extensive history in enabling secure and scalable communications services, such as SMS, MMS, Voicemail and IP messaging, to mobile operators globally.  Our digital communications product portfolio, innovation, expertise and operational excellence, which has been built over the last 20 years, perfectly complements the financial services sector as it moves to real-time, contextual omni-channel services.

“Today consumers want a service from their banks that replicates the messaging experience and the familiarity they have become used to with over-the-top services such as WhatsApp. With Xura, retail banks and financial services companies can easily add rich communication features into apps and websites with the added element of the human dimension, providing immediate, authenticated interaction with appropriate bank personnel without having to visit a branch, for example. We are already rolling this out in some parts of the world, and our solutions not only help financial services organisations differentiate themselves, but they will experience clear results with communication efficiency and customer satisfaction, as well as offering the customer peace of mind that their enquiry is getting the direct attention it deserves. All messages (chat, video, voice and file) can be delivered safely with the flexibility of our architecture, and we can enable options like SMS fall-back, as well as other endless possibilities to streamline communications by integrating our forge SDK with mobile banking services,” continued Bilange.

Partnering with industry renowned WebRTC expert, Dean Bubley, Xura has commissioned a whitepaper through Dean’s independent analyst house, Disruptive Analysis, outlining some of the use-cases and opportunities for WebRTC in the finance sector, including the role of PaaS (Platform as a Service) offers.

Dean Bubley, lead analyst at Disruptive Analysis, said: “Banking, insurance and related sectors have been at the forefront of commercial WebRTC adoption already, and this trend looks to broaden and deepen further. This reflects a general high level of investment in mobile and digital applications across the finance industry, and a perpetually-evolving role of human communications in many functions, as the industry’s products and processes change.  While self-service and messaging/notification channels will continue to evolve, so too will voice and video – and WebRTC is probably the single most important innovation to allow that to occur and it will be the vendors in this space that will drive this.”

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