ABBANK enhances employee and customer experience with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on social and economic activities in Vietnam,” begins Trần Việt Thắng, CIO of ABBANK. “Throughout the pandemic, finance and banking organizations such as ours needed to ensure business continuity. Contactless communication and work from home became a priority.”
At the start of the pandemic, ABBANK needed to implement social distancing measures at its branches and enable remote work for its employees. However, it faced a number of technological challenges. ”We needed a cost-effective system that we could deploy quickly,” shares Mr. Thắng. The bank also needed to ensure data security for remote communication and adhere to Vietnamese banking safety regulations covering public cloud solutions.
After consulting with technology partner CMC Technology & Solution, ABBANK had a way forward. “We knew that Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 Customer Service were the tools we needed for rapid, effective digital transformation. Our shift from the on-premises solution went smoothly without any disruptions to users’ daily work.”
Streamlining daily operations
ABBANK staff were soon tapping into a new array of daily collaboration and workflow tools that enhanced productivity and communication. “With Microsoft 365, our employees could email and chat, use Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as share data in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Stream. Plus, they could access data anywhere, anytime, without needing to install any applications on their devices,” Mr. Thắng shares. “Collaboration is now smooth and seamless. We also don’t need to worry about document versioning or send documents via email to every individual.”
Microsoft Teams has also proven to be a key tool for ABBANK. Not only has the tool provided an effective interactive channel for communication between customers and staff, but it has enhanced internal teamwork, made meetings more efficient, improved productivity, and helped create a more caring and effective work environment overall. Mr. Thắng explains, “Thanks to Microsoft Teams, our interactive channels with clients have improved dramatically. In the past 90 days, we have sent 10 million chat messages and had 7,000 online meetings.”
Thanks to Microsoft Teams, our interactive channels with clients have improved dramatically. In the past 90 days, we have sent 10 million chat messages and had 7,000 online meetings.
Trần Việt Thắng, Chief Information Officer
ABBANK
A safer way to work
For the financial services leader, ensuring that sensitive customer data is safeguarded against threats has been an equally important priority.
Using Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), ABBANK now defends itself against phishing emails in real-time and leverages zero-day threat prevention to ensure users’ data are protected from malware infection. “The security solution actively discovers and prevents attacks or hacking activities that might take place through SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive. It also prevents users from accessing infected files. It’s a comprehensive solution that enables us to work on a public cloud securely,” shares Mr. Thắng.
Offering quality customer service
As a customer-centric organization, ABBANK also prioritized enhancing its clients’ experience. For this, it looked to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
“At present, we use three main communication channels: voice calls, emails, and chat. We needed to account for all client data across all these channels to ensure that a customer would never have any request ignored,” says Mr. Thắng.
With Dynamics 365 Customer Service, ABBANK improved its case management with detailed information of every client interaction on all channels. Mr. Thắng highlights, “With easy access to call histories, emails, and appointments, we can manage customer information in a single central system while providing more efficient service. We can also connect different support cases of a customer to obtain deeper insights into the problem. In some situations, we break down a larger case into smaller, connected cases and deal with the various issues that need to be solved separately.”
The solution also provides reports that allow ABBANK to gain a deeper understanding of its customer experience. “We are now more aware of the quality of services and products we provide. Using that information, we can make intelligent strategic decisions or necessary changes on the business side,” says Mr. Thắng.
Meaningful cost savings
As a result of the shift, the Vietnamese banking leader is now saving time and money on overall system maintenance compared to its prior on-premises setup. “Thanks to the Microsoft cloud, our IT department just needs to establish the relevant policies and maintain ongoing operations. It’s a streamlined approach that’s helped us save significantly on human resources and hardware expenses, as well as manage our operational costs more flexibly. Plus, all our operational activities are comprehensively documented. They can be conveniently accessed or audited later on,” Mr. Thắng highlights.
Looking ahead, ABBANK plans to expand its communication channel for customers by incorporating video calls. It will also leverage Dynamics 365 Sales for upselling and streamline its daily processes with automation. Yet the strides already made by ABBANK across employee empowerment and improving the overall customer experience remain true sources of pride.
“A year after deploying Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, we’ve managed to truly adapt to the digital transformation trend taking place all over the world,” Mr. Thắng sums up. “We have not only improved customer experience but also digitized our operations. The result has optimized our operational costs and created an effective, remote collaboration environment for more than 4,000 staff all over the country.”
