“I believe that customer support can be the reason customers choose to open an account with your bank. Customer service shouldn’t just be about solving problems; it should be a stand-out feature. Now that we have changed the way we communicate, people choose us for our customer service as well as our products. Right now, we have customer satisfaction of 96 per cent with a response rate of 35 per cent. So, we’ve exceeded all benchmarks.”
Slava Skorbezh
Head of CX at Sense Bank
“Using Zendesk enables our agents to work anywhere in the world with a secure internet connection, so we can deliver customer service support 24/7 even in extreme circumstances. That’s been vital for us over the last few years.”
Slava Skorbezh
Head of CX at Sense Bank
Founded
1992
70
Number of agents
100000
Average monthly tickets
23%
Improvement in CSAT
35%
Response rate
technology-driven Ukrainian bank Sense Bank
Digital Banking Award for innovation in Central and Eastern Europe
Sense Bank is a technology-driven Ukrainian bank with a diverse range of products and services for businesses and individuals. In 2020, the bank launched a brand new Sense SuperApp following its digital transformation strategy, which was downloaded almost three million times in its first year. The app offers fully remote opening of an account through video chat or the Diia e-government service, digital cards in different currencies, budgeting and analytics tools, easy payments, stock trading service, built-in messenger and Zendesk based customer support chat available 24/7. And in 2022, UK magazine The Banker named Sense Bank as the winner of its Innovation in Digital Banking Award in the Central and Eastern Europe category.
Omnichannel support and the personal touch are essential for the bank’s customers who have relied heavily on digital services since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Empowering agents with the right tools to help customers has been key. “Omnichannel support is vital for us as 95 per cent of all our incoming requests come from messaging channels,” says Slava Skorbezh, Head of CX at Sense Bank.
How Sense Bank boosted customer satisfaction (CSAT) by 23 per cent in just ten months
Previously, the customer service team used a session-based customer service solution. Slava was already familiar with Zendesk through his work with another financial institution. After joining Sense Bank, one of his key goals was to migrate the bank's customer service operations from the legacy system to Zendesk.
<p“It took just three months to set up all the integrations. I joined Sense Bank in February 2020, and in June, we launched chat on our app and through our official website,” Slava says. “We also used Zendesk to launch a self-service customer help centre, which the bank had not been able to do previously.”Creating a help centre in Zendesk has enabled the bank to free up agents’ time so they can focus on more complex queries.
“Now we are using the help centre both on the website and in the mobile app, our agents have much more time to answer questions that need input from a real human being. They’re not so pressured and rushed; nobody is speaking in a frenzy!” Slava adds.
As the vast majority (95 per cent) of the bank’s incoming traffic is from messaging channels, having omnichannel support through Zendesk has been a game-changer. Sense Bank now uses Zendesk to deliver chat support across a variety of channels, including Apple Messages, Google Business Chat, Telegram, Viber, WhatsApp, Twitter, Twitter Direct Messages, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram.
Prior to using Zendesk, Sense Bank did not have easy access to metrics via its legacy system.
“The first time we were able to measure customer satisfaction, it was only 67 per cent. Working with Zendesk, it took just ten months for us to increase CSAT from 67 per cent to 90 per cent,” Slava explains.
Transforming the way agents communicate with customers
As well as introducing Zendesk, the customer support team also instigated a new approach to communication when he joined Sense Bank.
“My first focus was to completely change the way our agents communicate with our customers. We told our agents that we didn’t want them to talk to customers in a formal, scripted way,” Slava continues. “We want our agents to be natural and friendly. Now, agents can talk about any subject the customer wants to chat about, even movie recommendations or [Ukrainian President] Zelenskyy.”
Zendesk’s omnichannel integration supports the bank in its goal to meet people where they are and to communicate more naturally. Now the bank has integrated the platforms and social media channels its customers use, people can use their preferred channels to reach agents. And if a customer moves between channels, agents can view all their previous interactions in one place, so the conversation feels seamless and natural.
Sense Bank’s friendly style of communication suits the majority of its customers. Only around one per cent of customers prefer a more formal approach, and with Zendesk it’s easy for the bank to add a note on the customer’s profile, so agents can adjust their tone when needed.
How has the war in Ukraine impacted customer services?
As a leading Ukrainian bank, Sense Bank has responded to a huge range of challenges since Russia invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine. How was the customer service team impacted?
“In February 2022 at the beginning of the war, our support team was based in a small city close to the Russian border. The city was surrounded by Russian occupiers and we couldn't reach our agents or even communicate with them because there was no electricity. Our support chat went down for a few weeks,” Slava explains. “We were able to create a hub in western Ukraine and help our support agents relocate. So roughly two weeks after the war began, we were online again. Now, our agents work throughout Ukraine and across many countries in Europe and beyond.”
Providing access to information and reliable customer support is vital during a time of crisis. Using Zendesk has helped the bank move to a remote working model, so agents can provide customer service support as war continues in Ukraine.
Working together to provide great customer experience (CX)
Zendesk’s out-the-box software provides Sense Bank with the omnichannel features its customers love. There’s no need for the bank to have its own large team of developers, because Zendesk provides the functionality and features its agents need to deliver great CX.
“Every week we get new updates from Zendesk with new features. So, for us it’s better than having our own developer team. We don’t need to create features ourselves, because Zendesk provides the features we need. Thanks to many Zendesk APIs, we have an integration between Zendesk and our CRM, and we’ve been constantly improving it,” Slava explains.
Having a dedicated Zendesk account manager and success manager has enabled the bank to ask questions, add new features, and regularly share feedback with product managers directly.
“Once, during a conversation with a Zendesk C-level product manager, they added a feature on the roadmap in real time, because they appreciated the context in which this function was needed” Slava concludes. “We’re excited to continue conversations with our Zendesk success manager about our ideas and the features we want in the future.
