Company: Talkdesk (submitting on behalf of our clients)
Company Description: Talkdesk® is a global cloud contact center leader for customer-obsessed companies. Our automation-first customer experience solutions optimize our customers’ most critical customer service processes. Our speed of innovation, vertical expertise, and global footprint reflect our commitment to ensuring that businesses can deliver better experiences across any industry and through any channel.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Use of Technology in Customer Service - Financial Services Industries
 Nomination Title: WaFd Bank
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated achievement since July 1, 2020, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
Written answers below.
- Briefly describe the nominated organization: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 180 words used.
Founded in Washington state in 1917, Washington Federal Bank (WaFd Bank) is a retail and commercial bank operating more than 200 branches across the US, with $20 billion in assets. More than a century later, WaFd Bank continues to provide one-on-one, friendly, and professional service through frictionless banking solutions for retail, small business, and commercial clients. WaFd Bank's goal is to provide a superior client and user experience with state-of-the-art technology and ease-of-use tools. It’s doing this by building digital innovations to make banking services and support easy to use for all clients—regardless of how clients prefer to connect (phone, video, chat, or in person). WaFd Bank's priority is to “meet clients where they bank.” Dustin Hubbard, CTO at WaFd Bank and Pike Street Labs, has been tasked with making Washington Federal Bank digital-first. The Pike Place Labs team has implemented multiple new technologies to improve the customer and employee experience, including rebuilding the online banking portal to provide customized experiences for clients that address commonly requested transactions like money transfers, automatic bill pay, password resets, and much more.
- Outline the nominated achievement since July 1 2020 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 220 words used.
After redesigning the online banking platform, WaFd Bank turned to its contact center. Previously, it used a Cisco UCCX system that was spread across disparate platforms with solutions “bolted on” instead of integrated. The system was dated, lacking essential reporting, and had limited features and functionality—it became an obsolete solution that required too much maintenance.
WaFd Bank and Pike Street Labs saw an opportunity to double down on their investment in Amazon Lex and conversational AI, with a custom-built Talkdesk integration to bring the entire system to life.
Building on this, WaFd Bank wanted to improve client experience by reducing the time and effort it took for clients to verify their identity on the phone. It used to take clients upwards of 4 and a half minutes to verify their identity and connect with a support agent.
WaFd Bank replaced its legacy contact center solution with Talkdesk. The solution directly integrates into the core banking platform, leverages Amazon Lex in chat as well as voice, and drives a menu of self-service tools. Now, clients can reach agents in only 28 seconds, reducing time spent waiting by almost 90% and inbound calls to agents were reduced by 30%. Potential cost savings, from a conservative estimate of 20% of call deflections, is approximately $1 million annually with the voice authentication component alone.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 205 words used.
- WaFd Uphot :Today, people expect excellence and convenience at their fingertips. Consumers don’t delineate between banking and other retail, online, and digital activities; they want the same ease of use everywhere. In this article, WaFd Bank's Chief Technology Officer, Dustin Hubbard, gives a peek behind the curtain into the journey of overhauling a tech stack of this magnitude—from the challenges that were overcome along the way, to the amazing results they had from the start.
- How WaFd embraced Amazon Lex’s conversational AI to improve and speed up telephone banking: In this article, learn how WaFd Bank is transforming their customers banking experience using AI to replace legacy IVR.
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“Redmond’s Pike Street Labs Driving Digital Innovations for WaFd Bank" How Redmond-based Pike Street Labs is developing technology to make its parent company, WaFd Bank, a digital banking rock star
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Announcing Talkdesk 2022 CX Innovator Winners: WaFd Bank recognized as a CX Innovator with one award win and two honorable mentions in the Talkdesk 2022 awards judged by an independent panel of leading industry analysts.
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Talkdesk WaFd Press Release: This official release touts WaFd Bank's success in implementing the Talkdesk CX Cloud, a core element to its success bringing modern technology front and center in client experience.
- Explain why the achievement you have highlighted is unique or significant. If possible compare the achievement to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 206 words used.
WaFd expects their innovative investments to deliver a digital- first banking experience with advanced AI capabilities to save costs and decrease voicemail volumes and call-abandonment rates. These improvements will help increase customer satisfaction and elevate employee experience by providing fast resolutions for many common banking transactions through self-service. They also plan to expand use of voice biometrics to non-call center applications such as authenticating wire transfers. Using voiceprints instead of easily hackable identifying information and email or SMS authentication, they can substantially reduce the risk of wire transfer fraud, which is one of the hardest scams to resolve in the banking industry.
For employee experience, when WaFd’s call center head was asked about their new contact center, the response was “We love it. Our managers and agents are happy with this change because it simplifies our lives.” As the Talkdesk/Amazon Lex environment is an omnichannel solution agents can assist clients in a single interface regardless of the origin of the inbound connection.
WaFd Bank has cultivated an enviable Net Promoter Score, a key measure of client satisfaction. Over the last couple of years NPS has gone up significantly, from 12 to over 50; well above the industry average for bank NPS score of 34 (Source).
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