Virtual staff speed up bank queues

Co-operative Financial Services has automated a credit checking process to free up staff and help treat customers consistently.

The CFS' "excess queue" procedure has been automated to carry out the daily task of accepting, rejecting and returning cheques, direct debits and standing orders which come in to the bank overnight.

A nine-strong team used to manually review more than 2,500 accounts and decide whether to return or process such payments, depending on the account profile of each customer.

silicon.com Financial Services

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The procedure has been automated to create a virtual team of 20 employees working simultaneously to get through the excess queue around four hours earlier each day than the original system.

Joanne Master, business systems manager at Co-operative Financial Services, told silicon.com: "It doesn't matter how many processes you put in place and how many procedures you train your staff in, interpretation of procedures or mistakes can happen with a manual process."

Master said the automated system is "100 per cent correct every time" and makes sure customers are treated fairly because "every decision is made in the same way and the same process is followed consistently for every customer."

The staff replaced by the Blue Prism Automate system are now working in more customer-facing roles.

Masters added that with more staff working on outbound customer calls the bank can quickly identify customers in financial difficulty and proactively call them to discuss their accounts, rather than react too late.