Midwest Bank is a locally owned, community bank in West Central Illinois. Founded in 1870, Midwest Bank claims strong, historic family ties to the agricultural community and currently operates eight banking and seven insurance locations in a six-county area. The bank’s business was built around servicing customer relationships, and it takes pride in delivering services with courtesy, professionalism, and integrity.
Defining the Issue
As Midwest Bank grows and moves into larger market areas in Western Illinois, its focus is on providing excellent customer support. And, because Midwest Bank is located near several colleges, it prioritizes services that appeal to a younger demographic. The bank was fortunate that when the pandemic began and closed all branches, it could rely on a suite of remote offerings that kept operations going. However, with the pandemic also changing how customers interacted with their branch, Midwest Bank determined that having only one operator to answer calls was an inefficient, outdated process.
Between call volume spikes and employee illness during Covid-19, the bank needed a more modern, reliable approach to address customer issues. Additionally, the bank wanted a customer service product that would appeal to younger customers, primarily Millennials and Gen Z consumers.
“Looking at different websites, you see that they offer a chat function and that it has become the norm. Chat functionality had actually been on our roadmap for quite a while,” said Jackie Flater, VP of Electronic Banking and Card Services for Midwest Bank.
Fulfilling a Roadmap Need
Midwest Bank had been pursuing innovative customer support solutions like chat functionality, knowing it would add value and be attractive to the bank’s customer base. When Flater discovered that Apiture was introducing a new digital customer support solution powered by Glia, she was immediately interested. With features like chat, video, and co-browsing as alternative ways to interact with customers, she knew that the tool would not only be a valuable offering for customers, it would also offset some of the call volume issues at the bank.
“Our hope was to drive our customers to engage in the service, ultimately resulting in a reduction of incoming phone calls, emails, and customer visits to the branches for customer service issues,” Flater said.
Implementing a Solution
Midwest Bank discovered Apiture was planning a new UI launch, and the bank wanted to proactively incorporate the new support platform before Apiture’s launch to prepare for a possible spike in customer call volume. Apiture and Glia acted quickly, and from kickoff to launch, completed the implementation in 16 days. Flater credited the smooth process to project management teams from both Apiture and Glia. The project plan kept all parties on task for a timely delivery, allowing Midwest Bank to train staff and launch in record time.
Positive Results
Midwest Bank has received positive feedback from its customers about the new digital customer support experience. In fact, since implementing the tool, customer satisfaction scores have improved to a rating of 4.61 out of 5.
Once the tool was in place, Midwest Bank’s support team was excited about its new ability to support customers at their point of need in a convenient channel and engage proactively with customers instead of always being reactive. Flater said the product delivered on its promise, reducing call volume and promoting positive support engagement with customers. She attributes much of the solution’s success to the robust features available in the tool.
“Apiture’s solution is like a chat function on steroids,” she said. “Having the chat, video, and co-browsing options gave us the ability to identify and engage with our customers.”
“The ability for us to give on-the-spot customer service is a great tool,” she continued, “as is the ability to allow the customer to drive engagement. Whether customers only want to chat or engage with a representative through co-browsing, giving them the option to choose the level of customer support is beneficial.”
Learn more about Apiture’s digital customer support solution.