Absa transforms digital customer service with DataEQ

After observing a steady increase in its social media conversation, banking giant, Absa, sought a solution that would allow it to better serve customers on social media and understand their valuable feedback. The bank’s social media conversation ranged from customers looking for service to those sharing their experiences with the bank’s products and services.

Absa’s aim was to improve social customer service amidst rising demand for support on digital channels and in turn, tap into the volunteered online feedback to make operational customer journey improvements. Since implementing DataEQ’s CX and Social Customer Service solutions, Absa has significantly improved the time it takes to respond to customers on social media and improved its customer experience by utilising real-time insights gleaned from social data.

Customer Service

Prioritising the most important customer conversations, optimising workflow and responding to more customers.

The major challenge with social media customer service has been identifying the customer conversation that requires attention, amidst the high volume of irrelevant noise. DataEQ’s Crowd provides a level of human analysis on Absa’s conversation that AI-only tools cannot. Using DataEQ’s Engage social customer service tool to find and respond to the conversations that require service, the bank’s team has been able to save time and focus on responding to the most important customer needs and risks. After three months of using DataEQ Engage:

• Average response time to customers seeking a response on Twitter improved by 13.6 hours
• The response rate to prospective customers looking to join the bank increased by 17%
• Engage surfaced 20% more cancel conversation from indirect conversation allowing the bank to save more customers.

Customer Experience

Improving customer experience and managing risk with real-time monitoring.

Since 2017, Absa’s overall Net Sentiment score has improved by 7 percentage points, the most significant improvement by any South African bank over the period. By monitoring the feedback they receive on social media from customers and stakeholders, Absa has been able to gather a real-time measure of customer satisfaction and reputation. DataEQ’s powerful Analyse platform has enabled the bank to drill down to the specific conversation themes that are driving customer complaints or praise for each Business Unit.