How engagement can build trust in financial services

Public trust in the financial services industry is improving – just over half (51 percent) of 33,000 people surveyed in the Edelman Trust Barometer, a 2016 survey of trust and credibility, felt the industry can be trusted. That's eight points better than it was five years ago, but it's hardly a resounding endorsement. The financial services industry agrees there's more work to do.

To improve matters, Edelman has recommended the financial services industry undertakes some proactive engagement with its customers - one of the key ways it sees the industry starting to rebuild trust. "Listen to customer's needs and feedback. Treat employees well, place customers ahead of profits and communicate frequently and honestly on the state of the business," the firm recommends.

Technology can help empower that kind of engagement by removing some of the communications barriers that prevent employees of financial services firms from talking to their customers.

Technology that empowers

With the right cellular network provider, financial services firms can liberate employees from their desks, encourage a dialogue with customers - wherever they are in the world - and empower a mobile workforce to get out and meet customers, face-to-face. At the same time, they can maintain a reliable and cost-effective connection to the systems and resources they need to do their jobs.

Of course, the communications technology has to perform up to the job. Cell phones that employees are afraid to use internationally, due to their high roaming costs are no good. The same goes for financial data that cannot be e-mailed to, or downloaded by, a customer as a result of low bandwidth connections. And phones that cannot record key conversations and text messages, as regulators are demanding, will not suffice.

Positive connections

Truphone's technology provides a seamless channel between financial services employees and customers, with low-cost, local-like calls around the world, from one SIM card, on one tariff. Call quality and bandwidth management are monitored and optimized to give users the best connections, too. And some ingenious, patented recording technology makes it all compliant.

In other words, there is no more appropriate technology than Truphone's to help firms build better relationships with customers – and that has never been more critical for the much-maligned financial services sector.