Waterfield Technologies, a provider of customer service solutions, has partnered with Voxeo to address the unique customer care and communication challenges facing today's financial institutions. This partnership will revolutionize the way banks and credit unions interact with their customers in five major areas to improve customer retention, competitive positioning, and profitability.

"Focusing on customer loyalty and engagement has always been key to successful revenue growth for companies; however, the current economic pressures facing banks and credit unions across the country has amplified the importance of these initiatives," said Anne Bowman, chief customer officer at Voxeo, in a statement.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans' loyalty to their primary banks fell to 23 percent in November 2011 from 32 percent in September 2010. "Banking customers are more likely than ever to switch their primary bank, creating a huge need for the industry to hone communications efforts that lead to increased loyalty," Bowman said.

Together, Voxeo and Waterfield will deliver solutions that address the following key areas:

• Customer Experience Improvements. By leveraging the latest technologies and best practices, financial institutions can better balance the conflicting goals of improving customer loyalty while lowering costs. Waterfield and Voxeo enable personalized self-service capabilities that dynamically adapt to individual customer preferences. The solution also is multichannel ready for a unified customer experience across voice, text, chat, mobile Web, and native mobile platforms such as iOS and Android.
• Proactive Customer Care. Outbound efforts can provide payment reminders, notifications, and low-balance alerts to improve customer loyalty while reducing overall support costs. The solution easily integrates with common core banking platforms and uses existing business intelligence systems to enable personalized up-sell and cross-sell offers that drive revenue and increase customer lifetime value.
• Integrated Business Intelligence. The Voxeo and Waterfield solution offers built-in, actionable analytics and reports enabling customer-focused teams to pinpoint issues in real-time, better understand customer behaviors, and identify opportunities to enhance the overall service experience.
• Self-Service Administration. Voxeo and Waterfield offer a solution built on known Web standards.
• Simplified Security and Regulatory Compliance. Banks are facing increased regulatory pressure to protect the privacy of customer data. With a 100 percent standards-based, certified-compliant solution, and capabilities such as two-factor authentication and in-queue PIN validation, Voxeo and Waterfield ease the complexities of ensuring automated customer interactions are secure.

"Industry analysts acknowledge Voxeo as a leading provider of IVR and multichannel self-service. To that, Waterfield adds many years of financial services experience and pre-built interfaces to most of the common core platforms utilized throughout the industry," saidJohn Marino, president of Waterfield Technologies, in a statement. "The combined solution positions our customers to take advantage of the latest technologies to build stronger, more profitable relationships with their customers and better compete for new customers."

Denny Adams, director of channel sales at Voxeo, said, "Institutions that view their contact centers and services as a cost of doing business will struggle in a market where the source of differentiation has shifted to the customer experience. We're partnering with Waterfield to help financial institutions uncover opportunities to improve customer loyalty, drive more revenue and achieve bottom-line costs savings."