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Techsylvania is the place where business & tech meet to take it to another level. Our conference has been the place where people come to get inspired, find out the next in tech and learn from some of the brightest minds\u2019 do\u2019s & don\u2019ts.<\/em><\/p>\n Each year, renowned professionals have stepped on the main stage of Techsylvania to spark ideas and passions among our tech community, by using their most fierce weapons: their knowledge and expertise.<\/em><\/p>\n Reframed in 2020 into a virtual event, Techsylvania returns in 2021 again as an online experience. Addressing hot issues, facing stark challenges, and learning from the industry change-makers \u2014 all available under one virtual roof.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2021, Techsylvania brings it all to the next level, focusing on exploring today \u2014 how to spot and create opportunities in a not-so-favourable environment, in order to innovate tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n In an exciting interview with\u00a0<\/em>Alexandru Mihalache, Head of Transformation, UniCredit Bank<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n we have discovered how the banking industry experienced the latest digital transformations and what are the plans for constant innovation.<\/em><\/p>\n 1. The banking industry has experienced many shifts in consumer behaviour during the last years and adopting a digital mindset to adapt to these is key. How would you describe your company\u2019s approach and path to innovation and what are some of the technology solutions you\u2019ve found most suitable for your industry?<\/p>\n UniCredit Romania has always been an early adopter of new technologies and we invested a lot in innovation over the past few years; our strategic focus, both for large companies and in the retail segment, has been on promoting digitalization, with the aim of consolidating our top player position in the digital banking segment.<\/p>\n As such, we have been constantly bringing innovative digital banking solutions to the Romanian market even before the pandemic and, after the COVID-19 crisis start, we decided to accelerate the implementation of digitalization projects already started. The adoption of a multi-channel service model was stepped up, leveraging on our investments in mobile banking, contact centres, internet banking and paperless branches.<\/p>\n Throughout the years, UniCredit Bank has brought numerous innovative digital banking solutions to the Romanian banking market, including the digital signature, contactless payments with Apple Pay and Google Pay, a new, innovative e-commerce solutions, modern Mobile Banking and Business Mobile applications, private individuals clients possibility of EUR withdrawals from BNAs, and a very smart artificial intelligence \u2014 Ioana The Robot, that helps our colleagues in the call centre streamline the interactions with our private individual clients on this channel \u2014 to name only a few.<\/p>\n We believe that the banks who will be successful in the future need to be simple and effective, to provide their clients with a high-quality experience, with banking products and services that truly matter to them, wherever and whenever they need them. And this is the line we follow in our business.<\/p>\n 2. Doing banking on the mobile phone is a must-have, but do you imagine banking shifting towards a branchless model?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think that after the experience generated by the pandemic we will stop this accelerated digitalization trend, as it brings numerous benefits to customers, especially to companies.<\/p>\n If we look in our portfolio, this trend of adopting digital tools in everyday activity is obvious: around 97% of transactions and payments are performed in the digital environment and during 2020, 87% of the total documents used by the Bank in relation to customers were available for digital signing.<\/p>\n The digitalization of banking services is not a forced trend but has many cost and time benefits for companies, and most already appreciate this. Slowly but surely, customers are adopting this trend and, in these conditions, the winning banks are the ones who are prepared \u2014 and even anticipate \u2014 these needs. On the other hand, banking is and will continue to be an activity in which the human relationship is very important; therefore, the branches will continue to play an important role, operating together with the digital channels, with an optimal balance between the two.<\/p>\n 3. What about artificial intelligence: is there a place for AI in the banking system?<\/p>\n As I mentioned before, we already have a Robot \u201ein our team\u201d. At the beginning of 2020, we implemented Robot Ioana in our Contact Centre \u2014 an AI-enabled voice-assistant that interacts with private individual customers using Natural Language Understanding (NLU) capabilities in the Romanian language, as part of our digital strategy of being there for our customers 24\/7, with a fast and reliable approach. We use Ioana\u2019s NLU capabilities to ensure an easy customer experience when calling the Contact Centre and understand the reason for the call while deciding the best way of managing the query, whether it\u2019s directly by Robot Ioana, through self-services available or by consultants.<\/p>\n Our aim is to serve our customers immediately when they need us, without having to wait in queues. Currently, 23% of our calls are managed by Robot Ioana from end to end, without any interaction with agents and with zero waiting time to receive assistance. This percentage is growing month by month as we are constantly developing new skills and new vocabulary for Ioana. Besides the reactive support, Ioana is involved in running several initiatives with the purpose of facilitating proactive support for our customers.<\/p>\n Since the launch of Robot Ioana, she has been interacting with more than 100,000 private individual customers every month. This brings several benefits, including reduced agent talk time (for the calls that Ioana cannot handle end-to-end, she summarises the reason for the call for the agents while performing part of the customer identification checks); positive effects on the Abandon Rate; extending our contacting capacity (delivering proactive outbound campaigns to inform about different topics); surprise our customers; running initiatives for customer activation and digitalization and an overall significant increase in customer satisfaction. One of the most efficient skills of this system is the customers\u2019 proactive assistance in activating the Mobile Banking app, respectively in detecting an unsuccessful attempt to activate the application, followed by a phone call from the Virtual Guide that guides the clients in successful activation.<\/p>\n 4. What are the plans of UniCredit on the Romanian market and what will be the focus for the coming years?<\/p>\n We believe that the banks which will be successful are the banks that will continue the digitalisation process both internally and in the relationship with the clients, and the banks which will be able to innovate constantly, thus contributing to a better experience for the clients, providing them with proximity and streamlining their activity at the same time.<\/p>\n As the main development direction, we will continue to bring innovative and useful features in Mobile Banking, continuously develop new skills for Robot Ioana and digitize all the processes in our branches. These are also our goals. We also remain true to our firm commitment to continue to be a reliable partner for our corporate and retail customers, to develop long-term relations and to support the real economy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Techsylvania is the place where business & tech meet to take it to another level. Our conference has been the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,42],"tags":[15,50,51,64],"class_list":["post-3242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-techsylvania","category-technology","tag-techsylvania","tag-unicredit-bank","tag-cluj-napoca","tag-innovation"],"yoast_head":"\n