Raiffeisenbank: WhatsApp customer service channel reduces cost per contact by 10x

Challenge

RBA was spending significant funds and resources on customer calls. The bank’s customer contact centers were using toll-free numbers – and while these are free for inbound customer calls, they incurred considerable costs for RBA. Workloads for the bank’s contact center agents were heavy, owing to the significant amount of time an agent spent with a caller. This resulted in long waiting times for customers calling the toll-free number.

At the same time, the bank also recognized that their clients wanted to use different channels of direct engagement to avoid calling queues. Although Viber and Telegram were added as channels to the bank’s contact center to improve the customer experience, the bank wanted to integrate one of the most popular chat app into the platform: WhatsApp. For this, they needed a WhatsApp Business API solution provider.

Solution

RBA recognized Infobip as a partner that had the expertise to integrate WhatsApp Business Platform within the current contact center communications suite. Adding WhatsApp provided them with an instant, reliable, and secure channel that customers actively used. 

This enabled the sending of transactional messages and time-sensitive notifications in a quick, convenient, and reliable way, while also allowing bank customers to communicate directly with RBA. The channel costs a fraction of the price of outbound toll-free numbers and was fast and simple to integrate.

Result

RBA noticed a positive impact after just one month, and received affirmative feedback from both customers and call center agents. The bank also observed lower contact center costs, since clients were choosing WhatsApp over the toll-free number – which proved to be 10 times more cost-effective. 

After a successful first month using the channel, RBA fully integrated WhatsApp. This resulted in a 19% boost in their net promoter score (NPS) across all chat apps, clearly increasing the overall customer experience.

RBA has also observed that WhatsApp is four to five times more popular than other instant communications channels amongst its customers.

With the capacity for people to submit questions and receive answers in real time, WhatsApp has also helped RBA improve relations with potential clients and assist in the onboarding process.

Looking to the future, RBA plans on working with Infobip to introduce a WhatsApp chatbot; that will help with FAQs as well as qualify customers who require additional support from a contact center agent.