The Direction of the SmartApps Suite

SmartApps continues to provide new capabilities to increase the overall member experience a credit union provides while empowering agents with the tools to streamline the engagement. SmartApps is a full-feature app suite with multiple applications that work together with your core to expand and improve on the behaviors and actions your credit union currently executes. For more information about the apps in the SmartApps suite, check out our first post in this series "What is Smart Apps for Credit Unions."

The member experience is at the center of a credit union's mission and values. Members come first, and the SmartApps suite helps ensure that this philosophy is demonstrated at every touchpoint. Through SmartApps credit unions can go beyond the initial expectation and demonstrate that they genuinely want members to feel valued.

With this in mind, Avtex is constantly looking for ways to be innovative with the SmartApps suite to better serve our credit union customers. This means that the SmartApps suite is constantly evolving into a better platform that suits the needs of changing credit union member expectations.

Evolving Member Expectations

In an experience economy, members' expectations continue to expand, making it more challenging to keep up. The SmartApps suite provides real-time integrations directly into core processors that help improve the experiences a credit union is providing.

But as member expectations expand, the capabilities of SmartApps need to as well. This means new integrations into the various apps in the full suite and more creative ways to leverage those apps. Looking ahead at the future of SmartApps, these expectations and needs are always being taken into consideration.

For example, we are actively exploring the ability to leverage member history to continually send a member to the agent they last worked with. This allows members to build stronger relationships with agents. This also prevents members from having to continually repeat information in an effort to address evolving member expectations.

Expanding Authentication Options

We know that there is a growing hunger for multiple authentication options. Members want these options to be easy to use and to absorb some of the time consumed by previous methods. Two-factor authentication is currently a process that a majority of members use regularly.

We’ve learned over time that there is space to consider the way a member navigates the authentication process and expand the ways they can authenticate. SmartApps such as SmartTeller, SmartScreenPop, and SmartTrack can work together to provide a non-repetitive, time-sensitive, and efficient process for a member. These apps improve a member's experience by passing along the information required for each agent they speak with.

At Avtex we’ve also started looking into other authentication options such as biometric authentication which can help produce frictionless experience. This will allow credit unions who have business goals related to member authentication and fraud prevention, to engage with a harder to beat process that positively alters the member experience.

Routing Members Intelligently

Members have been developing an expectation for intelligent routing that predicts their needs for their current situation. They want to receive the proper messaging for their financial case and be sent to the right department on the first call. When a member calls in there is an expectation that they will be sent to the right department quickly.

At Avtex we want to ensure that our credit union customers can produce one call solutions without much difficulty. This means that options that will intelligently route members based on the information in their member files is a much-needed area to expand on. This information can then be leveraged to provide the best experience for a member as they are working with their credit union.

SmartInfo is a current app in the SmartApps suite that already engages with the idea of intelligent routing. SmartInfo allows credit unions to authenticate a member while playing real-time account transactions as they wait in the queue. If SmartInfo discovers that a member’s account is delinquent or past due it will reroute them to the collections queue. Shifting towards this line of thought eliminates agent-member back and forth more quickly, allowing for a frictionless experience.

The Impact of Expectations on Experience

The development of SmartApps takes into consideration the way credit unions are serving their members. Taking this information into consideration has a significant impact on the direction of the SmartApps suite as it works to provide credit unions more options when building their customer journey.

The ability to intelligently and strategically utilize stored data to supply a member with an experience that goes past expectations will allow credit unions to:

• Provide members with on-hold messages related to transactions that may interest them such as car loan information or direct deposit dates
• Give members a one-call solution by allowing them to authenticate fewer times because that information is pre-generation onto the agents desktop
• Send members to the right department when they appear in the call queue if they are in bad standing or if they are a member that only holds specific assets with your credit union