The struggle to meet rising customer expectations
Customer expectations for financial services firms have never been higher. Whether submitting a mortgage application to a bank or contacting an insurer to file a claim, consumers demand seamless, hyper-personalized, and efficient service at every interaction. However, many financial services contact centers still rely on outdated models that struggle to meet these expectations. Long wait times, fragmented communication channels, and manual processes create frustrating experiences for both customers and agents.
The disconnect between what customers expect and what traditional contact centers deliver is becoming increasingly untenable. According to Capgemini’s World Retail Banking Report 2025, only 24% of customers are satisfied with their bank’s contact center interactions. Customers cite long wait times (61%), inconsistent communication across channels (65%), and gaps in real-time updates between digital and in-person interactions (63%) as major sources of frustration. These pain points are equally prevalent in the insurance sector, where policyholders frequently encounter delays when filing claims, updating policy details, or seeking assistance during critical life events.
Operationally, these challenges extend beyond customer experience. Many financial services firms continue to operate contact centers where over 80% of an agent’s workday is consumed by repetitive, manual tasks, leaving little room for value-driven customer engagements. For insurers, this often means agents spend excessive time manually verifying policyholder information, processing claims, or handling routine inquiries—tasks that could be streamlined through automation. Similarly, in banking, less than 10% of agent time is spent on revenue-generating activities such as up-selling and cross-selling, leading to missed opportunities for business growth.
The demand for change has never been more pressing. Financial institutions must move beyond incremental improvements and embrace AI and generative AI (GenAI)-powered contact centers that blend automation, real-time analytics, and live agent support. By integrating these capabilities, banks and insurers can significantly reduce operational costs, improve customer satisfaction, enhance compliance monitoring, and strengthen fraud detection efforts. Those that adopt AI and GenAI-based solutions will be well-positioned to turn their contact centers from cost-heavy service departments into strategic hubs of customer engagement, operational efficiency, and revenue generation.
By integrating advanced AI and GenAI technologies, banks and insurers can create smarter, more responsive, and cost-effective contact centers. From real-time insights that improve self-service interactions to automated workflows that streamline post-call processes, these tools are redefining efficiency and service quality.
Improving efficiency through real-time speech recognition
Efficiency is at the heart of a well-functioning contact center, yet traditional workflows burden agents with manual notetaking, post-call documentation, and slow information retrieval—all of which extend call durations and reduce productivity. AI-powered real-time speech recognition technology is improving agent workflows by providing instantaneous transcription, automated notetaking, and intelligent response suggestions, allowing agents to focus on engaging with customers rather than administrative tasks.
NVIDIA® Riva, a high-performance speech AI SDK, enables firms to create or fine-tune open-source Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) models to better comprehend sector, function, and firm nuances to generate highly accurate transcriptions at low cost. By leveraging NVIDIA® NIM™ and NIM™ Operator for scalability, financial institutions can seamlessly deploy instant transcription across large-scale contact centers without disrupting existing workflows.
Bolstering customer satisfaction through deep, real-time insights
Contact centers incorporating GenAI capabilities are revolutionizing self-service by delivering context-aware, human-like interactions that go past scripted responses. Unlike traditional solutions, contact centers powered by capable state-of-art large language models (LLMs), trained on enterprise data, can better understand customer intent, retain long-term context, and provide real-time, personalized support.
With AI21’s Jamba—a hybrid state-space and transformer LLM—GenAI can provide advanced sentiment analysis, low-latency response times (<500ms), and deep contextual understanding that adapts as the conversation evolves. The NVIDIA® NeMo™ framework can be used to customize Jamba, ensuring it accounts for sector, function, and firm-specific nuances. Here again, the NVIDIA® NIM™ and NIM™ Operators can help scale latency and throughput, optimizing the delivery of GenAI-driven insights.
GenAI-powered self-service also ensures seamless omnichannel experiences, enabling smooth transitions between chat, voice, and video interactions while maintaining context. By integrating intelligent automation and real-time insights, banks and insurers can provide faster, more relevant support—boosting efficiency while strengthening customer loyalty.
With real-time transcription and GenAI-driven insights, agents receive instant customer context and recommended responses, allowing them to resolve inquiries more efficiently. This technology also automates post-call work, generating summaries of key details and next steps—tasks that traditionally take several minutes per interaction. As a result, financial institutions can increase overall agent productivity by an average of 14% and by 34% for novice or lower-skilled workers, optimize call handling times, and empower agents to deliver faster, more personalized service.
Simplifying AI and GenAI adoption with a Contact Center-as-a-Service platform
A Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) platform streamlines the adoption of AI and GenAI capabilities by eliminating the need for complex infrastructure. With plug-and-play integration, firms can rapidly deploy AI-driven real-time speech recognition and GenAI-powered agent assistance without disrupting existing workflows.
Zuqo’s CCaaS platform can be used to accelerate deployment by orchestrating automation, live-agent interactions, and post-call workflows in a seamless environment. This allows firms to enhance customer engagement and agent productivity without the need for major technology overhauls.
With built-in scalability, Zuqo’s platform supports multi-region and multi-language operations, enabling financial institutions to expand without technological bottlenecks. Its API-driven architecture ensures effortless integration with existing CRM, compliance, and fraud monitoring systems, allowing AI-powered enhancements to fit naturally within current workflows.
Use case: Rapid fraud resolution in financial services
A customer calls their financial institution’s contact center after noticing an unauthorized charge on their credit card account. Instead of navigating frustrating hold times or being transferred multiple times, they are quickly connected to a live agent equipped with AI and GenAI-driven support tools.
As the customer explains the issue, real-time speech recognition transcribes the conversation, instantly analyzing intent and retrieving relevant account details. The GenAI-powered system assists the agent by surfacing next-best actions, allowing them to immediately credit the disputed amount while the fraud investigation takes place. With a single click, the agent efficiently cancels the compromised card and issues a new one, ensuring a swift resolution without requiring the customer to call back or complete additional steps.
Once the call ends, AI-driven quality assurance automatically reviews the interaction within 150 seconds, assessing over 60 compliance and service quality indicators to ensure a high standard of support.
The financial services industry is undergoing a profound shift, where traditional contact center models can no longer keep pace with rising customer expectations and increasing operational inefficiencies. AI and GenAI-powered solutions provide the opportunity to transform these challenges into competitive advantages, enabling banks and insurers to deliver faster, smarter, and more seamless customer experiences.
By integrating GenAI-driven self-service, real-time speech recognition, and automated workflows, financial institutions can enhance agent productivity, improve fraud resolution, and ensure regulatory compliance—while reducing costs. Contact Center-as-a-Service platforms make this transformation even more accessible, providing a scalable and easily integrated solution that eliminates the barriers to AI and GenAI adoption.
As the demand for efficiency, security, and personalized service continues to grow, financial institutions that embrace contact centers powered by AI and GenAI will position themselves as industry leaders. By modernizing their approach, banks and insurers can future-proof their organizations in an increasingly digital world.
