Tradition, Leadership and Innovation in a Single Bank

With a very complete Unified Communications and Contact Center solution, Avaya's technological platform provides important tools that allow Banco Galicia to fulfill its objective of remaining as the number one institution of universal private banking in Argentina, supporting its effort to improve its customer satisfaction and add value to the business.

More than a century of existence

Technological firsts

Founded in 1905 by members of the Escasany, Ayerza and Braun Menéndez families, Banco Galicia is one of the most traditional financial institutions in the country, with 2,7 millions clients. With 100% Argentine capital, the private bank has more than 330 branches spread throughout the national territory. After more than a century of existence, the Bank has not only overcome various complicated conditions in its environment, but it has also made successful acquisitions to expand its range of services.

It has a strong presence in all market segments, both individual and business: retail, wholesale areas, industry, commerce, services, as well as in small and medium businesses.

Due to the standardization of financial products, Banco Galicia uses customer satisfaction as a differentiator, which has contributed to improving its profitability and driven its growth, causing it to be the number one bank in Argentina. Investing in technology solutions has been a fundamental strategy it its desire to be one of the most recognized entities in its segment.

“The IT department is the main contributor to innovation for commercial headquarters, business continuity and the availability of services,” says Marcelo Caiafa, Head of Unified Communications at Banco Galicia. “Our main challenge is to add value to all operations, innovate processes and, above all, provide efficiency.”

Tied to the wiring

In 2014, they planned to build a new Data Center in addition to the two they already have Buenos Aires. They had a classic TDM central, which due to its technology kept them absolutely tied to the wiring and the physical installation. “The location of the new data center in a more distant location, 10 kilometers away, forced us to migrate to an IP platform, where the wiring was not a restriction and the volume of the telephone exchange and consumption were really in line with the new technologies”, narrates Marcelo.

From there they called different suppliers. One of them was Cisco with ICE, another was the provider of TDM, Genesys Interactive Intelligence and Avaya, who were evaluated using a decision matrix. “The Avaya platform was the winner for the benchmark of its local implementations, its leadership within the Contact Center market and its highly competitive economic offer, three important values for which we made that decision”, highlights the Head of Unified Communications.

Progressive installation

“It fulfilled all the technical requirements that we demand: the softswitch telephone exchange, interoperability with different systems, and the incorporation of speech analytics, workforce management, and social networks.” he says.

The proposed solution included Avaya Communication Manager, Avaya Call Management System, the complete suite of Avaya Aura Application Enablement, and Avaya Session Manager for the integration management of the IVR platform. The management of chat, email, multichannel, social networks are managed with the Avaya Customer Connections Social Media Contact Center Manager, and staff desktop solutions supported by Avaya one-X Agent.

Avaya Advanced Desktop Analytics understands call context, and is able to assign calls to designated agents. Additionally, once the call is connected, we can identify the customer, by bringing in their CRM data, and recording voice and all digital channel interactions.

The migration strategy was gradual. The implementation started in 2015 and they finished migrating the last of the 600 positions in March 2016. “We progressively migrated the different sectors of the Contact Center: investments, clients, claims, business, foreign trade, and telemarketing. In that cycle, the QM, recording and reporting solution was put into operation. During 2016 functionalities such as social networks and workforce management were incorporated”, he explains.

The migration strategy was gradual. The implementation started in 2015 and they finished migrating the last of the 600 positions in March 2016.

Corporate banking culture

“One of the main indicators that we manage, is operational efficiency, which is an aspect where the stability of the Avaya platform stands out. In five years, we have had no serious incidents, and the availability of telephone service has been greater than five nines; in the asynchronous services of chat, mail and social networks we have reached four nines. And above the five nines in the recording service.”

The Avaya suite allows us to meet all of our requirements, and continue with the plan to incorporate value-added services, and strengthening the platform into the future. Today, Avaya's portfolio of solutions is used by nearly 1,000 agents.

“We have almost 80 private banking positions assigned to answer telephone inquiries, along with high-income banking officers, foreign trade and other sector positions. Over 100 First Contact Resolution (FCR) agents, derive calls to the corresponding group cell, so the external client has the best experience and can obtain a quick response to their demand for product acquisition, value status, or receive the best advice”, says Marcelo.

“With the old platform, metrics and reporting management required a lot of work from the support area and a significant amount of personnel. Now we have a much more modern Contact Center with consolidated reporting systems, improved quality parameters, Integrated data warehouse indicators, and agile dashboard management. All of this provides us a real-time view of the operation at a glance, along with asynchronous views of social networks and chat.”

“We can evaluate the performance of those who attend the telephone service, modify the position of the agents and carry out an adequate provisioning of the staff and the availability of resources, which added lots of value,” he maintains.

“When the customer experience is the best possible, they are more satisfied. Based on the quality of service we provide, customers consistently choose us. When our technological platform was closed, we were without interaction with the rest of the systems. Now going from TDM to IP technology, we have greater functionality and communication is more dynamic” he admits.

Vital channels

For performance management, coaching processes, learning and continuous improvement customer service, they have screen and audio recording through the ACD telephony management suite. “With the e-learning module, the WFO suite allowed us to streamline the officers' skills and course processes and reduce agent choice times.”

By integrating the Avaya solution with the existing virtual adviser (Chat Bot) across the different Contact Center channels, we help to efficiently manage referrals to care officers.. “It answers almost 90% of the queries - he explains - without the need of the operator. If the ChatBot does not understand the client's request, he passes it to an agent and with this we are able to increase the quality of the user experience.”

One of the immediate challenges is the deployment of speech analytics solutions, video, Avaya Proactive Contact dialer for outbound campaigns integrated with CRM. Additionally, the Contact Analyzer solution needs to have complete traceability management that provides valuable data and consolidate reporting in the data warehouse.

The Head of the CU (what is CU?) area intends to automate some QM (QM?) quality of service functions in the medium term. “From a technical standpoint, automation is absolutely critical and desirable from a functional point of view. It is only a matter of planning and time; with the other platform automation would not be possible.”

“From this we are able to contribute to the profitability of the organization and management of business risk, providing excellent indicators of continuity and availability of services. The primary value of the IT area is that we contribute to the rest of the organization,” says Marcelo Caiafa.