The research found that more than half of all email enquiries could be addressed using artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP). Instead of multiple reroutes for customers from emails to digital channels to physical branches, Nationwide could save a lot of working hours and increase customer satisfaction at the same time. Analysts from SAS researched every email enquiry deducing the root cause of such queries and calculating email efforts that it took to resolve the issue. The sentimental analysis also indicated that the customer’s mood worsens when their enquiries take longer to be processed and involve many email interactions.

“Using SAS text analytics, we established several concrete ways to make our services better. For example, many members contact us for proof of the travel insurance gained with the FlexPlus current account. The documents are available on our website-if we make them easier to find, more people will access them on a self-serve basis.” said Graeme Reed, senior manager, analytics, Nationwide.

Together SAS and Nationwide have categorised that over half of the email interactions could have been avoided altogether and almost 26 percent of enquiries concerning transactions could be distributed to an online digital process. Digging deep into the secure email redressal processes, 10 percent of members faced difficulties in resolving their transactions the first time in another channel. Nationwide will use these vital inputs to introduce website changes and various other procedural changes in the future.

SAS analytics has conducted thorough research of problems of today and the future. They also found that customers often demand a paper statement instead of the current online statement that lacks sufficient personal information to function as a proof of address for account holders. Many such everyday enquiries will be addressed shortly by Nationwide. SAS analytics have produced a bundle of commonalities and customer behaviour patterns, relating these with root causes Nationwide is preparing to eliminate maximum issues with smart tweaks to existing processes. Just like by tweaking the current online statement, customers will be able to use it as proof of address. There are also expressed customer difficulties with online transactions which will be addressed soon.