Financial services are increasingly taking place online. Userlike connects us with our customers in the Digital Age.
Volksbank Lahr has been around for over 150 years, serving their customers’ needs in the region. But these needs have changed. Customers are increasingly using the Internet for banking. To connect with them in the Digital Age, Volksbank Lahr added Userlike to their website.
The online business has turned into an important pillar for Volksbank Lahr. "Many customers want to manage their financial services online," says Florian Störk, who is responsible for everything digital at Volksbank Lahr.
The online service experience hadn’t been optimized yet. Too often, customers had to wait in the queue, even for simple questions. "Time is crucial if you want to, say, report a stolen credit card," Störk explains. "We wanted to add chat to our website as a fast and modern way to interact with our customers in real-time."
It took a while until Störk saw the value of live chat specifically. "At first, I was looking for a tool that could do it all: text chat, video, ticketing, CMS... So when I first heard of Userlike, I wasn’t too impressed. It was ‘only’ live chat."
But Störk would soon change his mind. "I realized that these all-in-one solutions were too complex for our purpose - not to say pricey. We wanted something that we could implement without much technical knowledge. It also had to be flexible and easy to use."
Time is crucial if you want to, say,
report a stolen credit card.
Störk names three main reasons for choosing Userlike: "First, the software. Userlike is straightforward. It doesn’t lose itself in a myriad of features that would make it overly complex. Second, the fair price-performance ratio. Third, the company. The Userlike team always reacted quickly to our concerns and solved every issue we had to our full satisfaction."
And they would have a lot of questions. "As a bank, we have strict requirements regarding matters like data privacy and compliance. We didn’t want to put our reputation on the line," Störk explains.
Volksbank Lahr directly noticed that chat had been an unmet need. "I was surprised by the high frequency of chats and by how the customers using it got right to the point. They immediately saw the benefit and started interacting."
The operators were a bit anxious at first. "For our younger team members, Userlike felt familiar to messenger apps like WhatsApp. Some of the older ones, however, were afraid they wouldn’t be able to handle the tool and type fast enough. A crash course washed their worries away by showing the intuitiveness of the tool. They now enjoy working with this fresh, new medium."
I was surprised by the high frequency of chats and by how the customers using it got right to the point.
When all operators are occupied, a chatbot jumps in and keeps the customers busy, so no chat gets lost. Volksbank Lahr plans to expand the chat and involve more departments.
Their customers mostly use the chat for answers to quick questions. What to do when their credit card gets blocked, for example, or how to raise their limit when they’re on vacation. "It’s onsite, so there’s no need to download anything," Störk says. "You can access the chat without any barriers, whatever device you’re using, wherever you’re at – via a computer, a smartphone, or Facebook Messenger."
At Volksbank Lahr, the customer decides how to start the interaction. An analysis of the chats and ratings showed that customers were much more satisfied with the service than before the introduction of Userlike.
Störk regards live chat as a competitive advantage. "Our customers see that service doesn’t have to be complicated. They enjoy the benefit of getting help while being addressed personally."