Customers in the banking sector are getting confused with the actual costs of transactions. While bank staff is usually aware of the tariffs and cost structures, they are not aware of other fees such as external transfers. This leads many customers to consider banking with another institute which has more transparency in cost structures.
Due to lockdowns, the lack of availability of physical infrastructural resources, such as physical branches or call center operating equipment, will hinder the quality of customer service and may increase the retrieval time of certain information massively.
As the physical branches might not be available due to lockdowns, there will be a huge increase in the dependency on call centers, which may not be prepared to handle the increase in the volume of received calls and requests. Additionally, if there is an actual physical location of the call center, it might be contaminated and forced into closure.
Maintaining the Service Level Agreements- SLAs (with Customers) and Operational Level Agreements – OLAs (internally) might become difficult, especially when there will be measures and limitations on the number of employees available to handle the tasks, and the number of customers allowed to be served at the same time.
Banks are faced with increased operational risk when using external service providers. Even digitally, service providers may not be able to serve the banks as usual, either due to contamination which will disrupt their business or the increase in demand on their resources from their other agreements.
As a result of international lockdowns and governmental measures, the procurement expenses increased and the procurement processes might be difficult to follow. This will put an extra pressure on the Banks’ operational costs and expenses.