Why Ethical Sales Enablement is Essential in Fintech

  • Nigel Cannings, CTO at Intelligent Voice

  • 05.12.2022 01:18 pm

Sales enablement has become an increasingly important part of business strategy throughout the course of the last twenty years, enabling companies to maximise the potential of every customer contact while enhancing productivity and efficiency. However, as technology develops to provide ever more sophisticated sales enablement, it is integral that businesses consider the ethics behind their strategies and ensure that any actions they take are for the good of the customer as well as the business.

Why ethical sales enablement is so important in fintech?

According to FCA research, 46% of adults display one or more characteristics of vulnerability at one time or another. This may characterise itself as a negative life event, a health condition, low capability, or low resilience and it can result in poor decision-making. Whether through intensified stress levels, impaired perspective, or changing attitudes towards risk-taking, among other things. Finance is an area where risk can be ever-present and a poorly thought-out decision holds the potential for enormous, life-changing ramifications. A persuasive service agent equipped with powerful sales enablement technology could easily – even unintentionally – encourage those risky decisions to be made. So, what’s the solution?

Could speech AI be the answer to ethical sales enablement?

Speech AI has undergone a massive transformation in the last five years. Moving from rudimentary keyword flagging in recorded data to the provision of real and near real-time analysis of sales calls. Now, with the right combination of tech, businesses can monitor calls, using speech technology to record and analyse data. Artificial intelligence enables the highlighting of speech features, which can support phone and video sales while alerting service personnel when they are dealing with a customer who may require additional support. But how does this work?

How does AI promote ethical sales enablement?

One of the most important developments in AI in recent years has been in the advancements in  Natural Language Processing (NLP). In essence, this is an algorithm that allows computers to understand human language in a much more sophisticated way, to better understand what is being said and why, eg by determining sentiment and intent.

When Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is combined with NLP, it becomes possible for vulnerable customers to be automatically identified, through the flagging of speech features such as hesitation, reluctance, vagueness, and disfluencies. When these features are detected, sales personnel can be guided through the best course of action for each individual. Whether that means the use of on-screen prompts, or transferring the call to a more experienced team member enabling the business to provide the best possible service while ensuring compliance with Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) consumer protection standards but there’s more to it than that.

Why speech AI isn’t just about ethics?

While voice tech is proving to be one of the most fail-safe methods for managing the identification and service of vulnerable customers, it also provides businesses with versatile and effective sales enablement tools.

Sales enablement strategies are, by their very nature, complex. Their successful deployment requires employee training as well as vast swathes of data and it can be difficult to provide employees with that data without distracting them from their customer and disrupting the flow of the call. With speech AI, sales enablement can become responsive, enabling the provision of real-time data and insights, such as the most effective language and conversational style for each individual customer. Allowing your sales team to deliver the best customer experience, and the best products or services to meet each customer’s needs, at the same time as guaranteeing the meeting of the highest ethical standards.

This same technology can also be used to identify potentially fraudulent transactions. Providing a three-for-one solution.

Speech AI is still in a process of evolution. The data it is able to work with is increasing continuously, as more channels of communication (like video) are added. This means that the power and capability of voice tech are only going to grow and as it does, its uses will develop too, allowing not only greater sales enablement capabilities, and even higher ethical standards, but advanced service levels for all.

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