How African Financial and Telecom Companies Can Adapt to Coronavirus Effects

In Africa, Financial and Telecommunications Industries use the agent channel to surpass the geographical and technological barriers of the traditional branch channel.

With these two channels blocked due to the pandemic, how can Financial and Telecom Companies continue to serve consumers?

Processes such as KYC registration (with fingerprint collection) or a service subscription confirmation by signature are currently dependent on the consumer’s physical presence.

Let’s start by listing the critical points for these companies.

1. Paper Forms and Face-to-Face Interactions

2. Customer Service and Assistance

3. Presential and Manual Processes

4. Fraud and Risk Measures

So how can these companies keep operating with all the constraints of Covid-19?

1. Digital Onboarding and Customer Requests

e-Forms and annexure proofs of information can be an alternative to paper forms. It is necessary to ensure new customer KYC registration and consent. Also, for existing customers, authentication controls are in place. These procedures are possible with the ID Extraction, background AML verifications and online liveness checks using biometric data – voice and face.

2. Online Customer Service Desk

Digital tools and features that simulates the experience of face-to-face interactions are very important. These functionalities are important to build trust and to clarify issues when selling complex products and services. Thus, a “digital desk” is the best way to solve these issues. The digital desk must use several resources as alternatives to the face-to-face interactions: Web and Mobile App, Chat, SMS, Audio Call and Video Call to ensure a consistent customer experience.

3. Business Process Automation

Digital alternatives require the transition from manual processes but should avoid mimic existing processes blockages and friction. Automated decisions steps with configured business rules allow speeding time to response with less errors. For that, it is necessary to have a smart content management system capable of orchestrating tasks and push human intervention only when necessary.

4. Secure Home-Office Tools

Despite the turbulent context, staff need to continue working at top performance. Only a redesign of the existing infrastructure makes it possible. Employees need to chat with customers and customers want their information to be secure. So, the tech infrastructure must guarantee a good customer relationship and that all sensible data is safe, retained and auditable. How? By implementing a digital platform that ensures the safe access of employees to relevant documents, anytime, anywhere, and that they are able to share those documents with customers whenever is necessary.

Next steps

Papersoft has developed a solution to answer these 4 major challenges. The solution is a digital platform that allows companies to digitally supply all the processes and needs of the physical channels: branches and agent networks.

Contact us if you’re looking for a solution like HiDesk: sales@papersoft-dms.com

Check the platform overview

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