Power Apps For Banking

Microsoft frequently release brand new AI-infused capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. We recently took the opportunity to focus on automation and process improvement within the Banking and Insurance industries with Power Apps.

In The ROI of CX Transformation, Forrester’s CX Index shows that in the Banking industry there is a correlation between improving customer experience and increasing all three types of loyalty; retention (keeping more customers), enrichment (cross-sell and upsell) and advocacy (word of mouth).

The Power Platform’s new low-code, no-code toolkit is opening citizen development and empowering business users – often the people closest to a problem or process – to seek solutions and improvements in real-time. What does this mean for improved Customer Experience? Well, it removes the need to engage in costly and lengthy development processes and means the power to improve and deliver customer delight lies in the hands of your authorised business users, not only external and internal development teams.

Power Apps within the Power Platform is a tool that opens the capability to deliver incredible experiences within the Financial Services sector. Demonstrated in a recent Power Platform for insurance claims scenario, creating customer-facing portals that automate next step actions, integrated with and connected to the valuable data that sits within disparate teams and systems in your business, provides robust processes that give customers confidence and increase satisfaction scores.

One of the key tools within the Power Platform is Power Apps. Power Apps for Banking scenarios allows users to build high productivity custom-apps same day, connecting to existing data and systems. This allows users to created specific processes that solve business needs. Teams across the business – from analysts to developers – work more efficiently together and solve problems with intuitive visual tools that do not need code, on any device.

The four key components of Power Apps

Canvas apps are tailored apps that allow you to optimise different tasks and roles. Begin with the user experience to create a bespoke interface with the power of a blank canvas and connect it to up to 200 data sources. Users can build canvas apps for web, mobile and tablet applications, making use of a wide range of controls like camera and location services.
Model-driven apps are more sophisticated than Canvas apps. Begin with your data model and build upwards from core business data and processes in the Common Data Service to model forms, views, charts, Power BI dashboards and other components. Model-driven apps generate great user interface (UI) that is responsive across all devices.
Portals are low-code externally-facing web landing pages that allows users outside your business – for example customers, partners and third-party agents –to sign in with a wide variety of identities, create and view data in the Common Data Service, or even browse content anonymously.
Common Data Service (CDS) is the data platform that comes with Power Apps and allows you to store and model business data. Dynamics 365 applications are built on the CDS, meaning if you’re already using Dynamics, your data is Power Platform ready.

The value of the in-branch banking experience in a digital world

The value of resolving a customer query in-branch is immeasurable for gaining trust and loyalty. In a global survey into the value of bank branches in a digital world, Deloitte found that despite branch density declining, the branch experience influences customer satisfaction more than online or mobile channels. This impact on satisfaction levels was true across all product ranges and uniform across generations, from boomers to millennials.

Power Apps for Banking: Transforming the in-branch banking experience

Bank branches can utilise digital tools, like Power Apps, to meet and resolve customer needs in real time. Moving away from paper based or basic legacy system appointment systems, users can build custom-apps which greeters can use in-branch when talking to customers. Because this app is connected to the Dynamics 365 Dataverse, staff can identify the best person to resolve the query, estimate waiting time and fulfil the customer needs during the visit.

The in-branch Power Apps scenario

A customer enters the branch, and a greeter meets them with a Power Apps tablet application connected to the Dataverse, using Dynamics 365 contact entities for storing information about queued customers and system users to search employee shift patterns.
Branch greeter enters data and searches the Power App for the customer account and can see which customer service agents are on duty today, who is best placed to resolve the query and even look up who is on lunch and when they are due back at their desk.
Using these data sources, the app can predict how long the customer would need to wait to see an agent, as well as project a per-person forecast about when each waiting customer will be attended to.
Power App Canvas apps can be set up to manage queue and customer service agent availability data to match customers with the correct agent. The greeter is served with wait time forecasting for new customers who arrive in-branch.
If the customer cannot be attended to immediately, the greeter is able to set up a text notification, powered by Power Automate, sending a message to the customer when the agent becomes available, holding the appointment for the customer too.
Additionally, the greeter can check waiting times and availability in other nearby stores if the customer would like this option.
The greeter can then enter the data on the customer query and send it to the customer service agent, meaning the customer doesn’t need to explain their issue twice and the customer service agent has some preparation time before face-to-face meeting with the customer.
The agent can also review previous interactions and transactions on the account or search knowledge articles or playbooks on resolutions to similar queries.
Data and insights can be shared to regularly updating reports on average waiting times per customer and customer service agent. Heat maps and trigger points can be set up to alert when extra staff are required or need to be redeployed from other areas of the business.
As an extension to Dynamics 365, data risk, compliance and security processes like GDPR are already covered within the solution.
Lastly, customer feedback can be gathered by the greeter and fed back into the system via the app.

Incremental and the Financial Services Industry

If you would like to find out more about how Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform can support your Financial Services organisation through its next phase of digital transformation please get in touch with our team of specialists today.