Contact centre assurance, automated end-to-end testing and monitoring firm Hammer is on a mission to support and accelerate the cloud migration plans of financial services firms.
The sector is a key market for Hammer, illustrated by the fact that it already supports the day-to-day operations of six of the top ten global banks and seven of the top ten insurance companies.
The Hammer business was created from the acquisition of Empirix by Infovista last April. Since then, it has launched Hammer Voice Explorer, an innovative solution to analyse, document and auto-generate test scripts for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. A critical component that fast tracks the delivery and assures a seamless adoption of cloud contact centre technologies.
It has also announced a new international channel partner programme and grown its solution engineering and professional services teams in both the US and Europe.
Driving home the message
Its executives are busy driving home the message that, along with other enterprises, financial services organisations must carefully plan their moves to the cloud to make sure their contact centres are a well-maintained "front door" to their business.
Richard Rodwell is Managing Director of Sales and Channels for the Asia Pacific region and pushing a world view for the company.
Rodwell says: "Through our test automation, system monitoring and service insights, we are in a unique position to assist financial services firms in addressing the challenges they face in today's cloud migration strategy.
"While CCaaS has helped accelerate the adoption of digital contact centre channels through innovative machine learning and automation technologies, challenges with service quality and performance have not gone away"
Poor channels
Rodwell says that in some cases, certain channels in financial services "simply don't work" and that sometimes it is best to focus on fewer channels that deliver a consistent customer journey and “familiar” experience.
He cites analyst house Gartner, which recently said that email wasn't appropriate in many banking settings, as banks could not deliver the responsiveness or timeliness demanded by their customers.
"Some may have written it off, but voice is the default for many customers, and many banks are seeing an increase in calls, especially when it comes to complaints, complicated queries and high-value transactions."