In this guide
The future of banking contact centers: improving containment and self-service
The future of banking contact centers: improving containment and self-service
What happens when your customers are trapped in an endless loop of bad automation?
They hang up. They leave bad reviews. And worst of all? They take their business elsewhere.
Banks have poured millions into IVR systems, chatbots, and self-service tools. But if you’ve ever dialed a contact center, you know the truth: most of these systems don’t work the way customers need them to. A staggering 70% of callers bypass IVR menus and press ‘0’ (Clutch)—not because they want to, but because they have to.
The result? Higher costs, longer wait times, and support teams stretched thin dealing with avoidable issues like balance checks and basic transactions.
But here’s the real problem: the technology isn’t failing—your customer experience strategy is.
This guide will show you how to break the cycle. You’ll learn how to refine IVR prompts, optimize self-service, and create seamless omnichannel support that reduces operational costs without frustrating your customers. Let’s fix this—before they switch banks.
Why improving banking contact centers matters now
Digital banking has transformed customer interactions. With mobile apps, chatbots, and self-service tools handling most routine tasks, customers expect seamless digital experiences. In fact, 73% of adults in Australia, 68% in the UK, and 65% in the US (Forrester) want to complete any financial task via a mobile app. And with only 16% of banking interactions now happening in branches (Capgemini), digital and contact center support have never been more critical.
Yet, digital solutions don’t always deliver a smooth experience. Customers often struggle with unclear self-service options, ineffective IVR systems, and chatbots that can’t resolve their issues—leading to frustrating escalations. When they reach an agent, they expect fast, empathetic resolutions, not to repeat themselves or start over.
But many banking contact centers aren’t meeting these expectations. Disconnected channels, ineffective automation, and long wait times create friction, erode trust, and drive customers away—all while increasing operational costs.
To keep pace with rising expectations, banks need to rethink their contact centers as a competitive advantage—not just a cost center. When IVR systems and self-service tools work seamlessly, banks don’t just reduce costs—they increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. In fact, 67% of banking executives say that fast, effective support across channels is key to customer satisfaction (Capgemini).
By improving containment—not just to deflect calls, but to enhance the customer experience—banks can build trust, strengthen relationships, and turn their contact centers into a differentiator in the digital banking era.
The problem: What’s going wrong in banking contact centers?
High call volumes for routine issues
Despite investments in IVR systems, chatbots, and other self-service tools, many banking contact centers are still overwhelmed with calls for basic tasks. Customers should be able to retrieve account numbers, check balances, or review transactions without speaking to an agent—yet they continue to call for support.
This creates a bottleneck: highly trained (and expensive) agents handle calls that self-service tools should resolve, leading to frustrated customers and rising operational costs.
Customers aren’t getting what they need from self-service
While banks have expanded automation, many self-service options remain confusing, incomplete, or difficult to navigate. As a result:
- 70% of customers bypass IVR menus and press "0" to speak with a live agent (Clutch).
- Only 32% of customers globally are satisfied with their bank’s contact center experience, and only 24% report a satisfactory experience during recent interactions (Capgemini).
- 60% of customers surveyed rated their bank’s chatbot experience as ‘average’ (Capgemini).
When customers struggle to find answers through IVR, chatbots, or knowledge bases, they abandon self-service and escalate—increasing operational costs and adding pressure to human-assisted support.
Customer experience issues are hurting the bottom line
When self-service tools fail, customers face long wait times, frustrating IVR menus, and impersonal service. And poor experiences drive churn:
- 26% of customers likely to switch banks cite bad service as the reason (J.D. Power).
- 80% say they would switch if a competitor offered a better experience.
Customer churn isn’t just about losing accounts—it directly impacts revenue and profitability.
- Fewer deposits = weaker net interest margin (NIM): Losing customers means relying on higher-cost funding sources, which narrows margins and reduces profitability.
- Lost cross-sell opportunities: Churned customers don’t take out loans, open credit cards, or invest through the bank, leading to lower return on assets (ROA) and overall revenue.
- Higher acquisition costs: Acquiring a new customer costs significantly more than retaining an existing one, forcing banks to spend more on marketing just to maintain deposit levels.
But improving customer experience isn’t just about preventing losses—it’s a growth opportunity. A 1-point improvement in CX Index score can drive an additional $123 million in revenue for a large bank (Forrester). Banks that invest in better IVR, self-service, and omnichannel support don’t just reduce churn—they increase retention, drive engagement, and unlock new revenue streams.
Operational inefficiencies are driving up costs
A poorly optimized contact center isn’t just a customer experience issue—it’s a cost problem. Live support channels like phone, chat, and email cost $8.01 per contact, while self-service channels cost just $0.10 (Precisely). Every unnecessary call to a live agent raises operational costs, making self-service optimization critical for efficiency.
- Higher cost per contact: Relying on agents for simple issues drives up expenses.
- Longer handling times and more escalations: Poor IVR design and inefficient call routing lead to longer calls, more transfers, and lower First Contact Resolution (FCR).
- Unnecessary call volume: Many banks still handle routine inquiries that optimized self-service could resolve.
When contact centers aren’t optimized, costs rise, staffing demands increase, and agents spend time on avoidable issues—all while customers remain frustrated.
Why banks struggle to improve containment: Data alone isn’t enough
Banks have access to vast amounts of operational data—call logs, escalation trends, chatbot engagement metrics, and containment rates. But while these numbers can show what’s happening, they don’t explain why.
One of the biggest challenges? Siloed data across channels makes it difficult to see the full customer journey. Without a connected view of interactions across IVR, chatbots, and human support, banks can’t fully understand how different touchpoints impact containment—or why customers bypass self-service in the first place.
Despite tracking call volumes, agent response times, and automation usage, many banks still struggle with low self-service adoption and high agent dependency. Traditional data might show how often customers:
- Abandon IVR
- Switch from a chatbot to a live agent
- Escalate to phone support
But it doesn’t reveal why these actions occur—or where gaps exist in the support experience.
When customer service leaders rely solely on traditional data sources, they risk:
- Tracking interactions, but not intent. Measuring call volumes and transfers doesn’t explain whether customers escalate due to confusing IVR menus, ineffective chatbot responses, or unclear next steps.
- Making surface-level fixes. Adding more automation without understanding why customers struggle can lead to disjointed omnichannel experiences rather than meaningful improvements.
- Focusing on the wrong success metrics. Traditional KPIs like call duration don’t capture frustration, IVR clarity, or trust in self-service tools across different channels.
To truly improve containment, banks must move beyond operational data and uncover why customers struggle, where self-service breaks down, and how to create a support experience that works seamlessly across all channels.
How do you know if your contact center has a problem?
If your bank is experiencing any of the following, it’s time to take a closer look at your IVR and self-service strategy:
- High call volumes for routine issues. Customers should be able to check balances, transfer funds, or review fees through self-service—but instead, they escalate to live support.
- Low IVR containment rates. Customers are pressing "0" or requesting an agent instead of using IVR options.
- High abandonment rates. Long wait times, confusing chatbot flows, or ineffective automation lead customers to hang up or leave digital channels in frustration.
- Repeat callers for the same issue. Customers call multiple times because self-service options and IVR prompts fail to provide a resolution.
- Low CSAT or NPS. Negative feedback often signals unclear IVR menus, frustrating self-service experiences, or inconsistent support across channels.
- Underutilized digital tools. Customers prefer calling an agent instead of using chatbots, knowledge bases, or IVR, indicating gaps in usability and trust.
Recognizing these issues is the first step. But solving them requires more than just tracking data—the most successful customer service leaders understand what’s going wrong and what customers actually need.
Why customer insights are the missing piece
Understanding why customers abandon self-service or escalate to live support is critical to improving containment. Many bypass IVR and chatbots because they:
- Don’t trust the system to resolve their issue.
- Struggle to find the right option.
- Have had past negative experiences that discourage them from trying self-service again.
Traditional data—call logs, escalation trends, and chatbot engagement metrics—can highlight what’s happening, but they don’t explain why. Without this understanding, customer service leaders risk fixing symptoms rather than root causes.
For example, data might show that a high number of customers request an agent to update their mailing address. But why?
- Customer insights reveal the issue: Many customers first tried using the chatbot but didn’t recognize "Account Services" as the right option.
- Frustrated, they abandoned self-service and called support—only to face the same unclear option in the IVR menu.
- Without a clear match, they pressed "0" for an agent.
A simple fix—renaming the option to “Update Address” in both the chatbot and IVR menu—helped more customers self-serve successfully and reduced unnecessary escalations.
Improving self-service isn’t just about reducing friction—it’s about designing digital experiences that align with how customers naturally think and behave. IVR menus, AI chatbots, and automation work best when built around real-world customer expectations and workflows.
Now that we understand the value of customer insights, the next step is applying them—redesigning IVR prompts and optimizing omnichannel support to improve containment.
The solution: Improving IVR prompts and optimizing omnichannel support
Leading banks are improving self-service success by focusing on two key strategies: refining IVR prompts and optimizing omnichannel support. These organizations aren’t just making small adjustments—they’re using human feedback to redesign experiences that increase containment rates and reduce reliance on live agents.
Here’s how you can do the same:
Improving IVR prompts
To increase containment rates, banks must understand why customers opt out of self-service and redesign IVR prompts to be clearer and more effective. This results in refined call flows, improved messaging, and the ability to guide customers toward seamless self-service resolutions—reducing agent reliance and enhancing customer experience.
Step 1: Understand why callers bypass self-service
Before making any changes, banks must understand why customers press "0" for an agent instead of using self-service options. While many banks have call reason data, they often lack insight into the customer’s frustration points and decision-making process.
Start by analyzing call logs, escalation trends, and drop-off points to pinpoint where self-service is failing. Once you identify friction points, go deeper by gathering direct customer feedback through:
- Live interviews with recent callers: Speak directly with customers who bypassed self-service to understand their frustrations, expectations, and unmet needs.
- Self-guided IVR usability tests: Have participants walk through decision-making scenarios in the current IVR system to identify confusion points and menu navigation issues.
To capture the best insights, ask open-ended questions like:
- Tell me about your experience calling support.
- What were your frustrations?
- What would you expect instead?
By collecting human insights and digging into trends, teams can uncover gaps, friction, and real customer needs to determine the real reasons behind low containment rates.
How UserTesting helps
Understand customer needs
UserTesting makes it easy to gather feedback from real customers—whether they’re current or churned customers.
Choose the approach that fits your needs:
- Live Conversations: Speak with participants in real time, ask follow-up questions, and explore their experiences in depth.
- Self-guided tests: Participants complete tasks independently, offering honest, candid feedback as they reflect privately on their journey.
- Surveys: Capture broad sentiment and customer preferences quickly by gathering quantitative insights alongside qualitative feedback.
Not sure which method to use? Try a combination! Live Conversations give you rich, interactive discussions, self-guided tests provide independent, unfiltered feedback, and surveys help validate trends at scale. Need a quick start? Use one of UserTesting’s templates to structure your study and get insights fast.
Unlock insights faster with AI-powered analysis
Spend less time reviewing videos—let AI do the heavy lifting. UserTesting’s analysis tools, like AI Insight Summary, sentiment analysis, interactive path flow, and friction detection, help you quickly identify trends and key themes, so you can take action with confidence.
Get expert support when you need it
Optimizing IVR doesn’t have to be overwhelming. UserTesting’s Professional Services team partners with banks to:
- Develop customer personas
- Facilitate design sprints
- Benchmark IVR performance
- Refine IVR flows based on real customer feedback
Whether you need targeted support or a full-scale engagement, we offer flexible solutions to help you turn insights into action—fast.
Remote video URL
Step 2: Creating caller personas
Once banks gather insights from real customer interactions, they can develop caller personas that reflect the different types of customers using the IVR system. These personas help teams design IVR menus that align with real caller needs and expectations—leading to better self-service adoption and fewer unnecessary escalations.
Understanding who is calling and what they need allows banks to:
- Design IVR menus that reflect real customer needs: Instead of generic call flows, banks can tailor menu options based on how different customers navigate self-service..
- Improve containment rates: A well-structured IVR that accounts for different caller preferences will keep more customers in self-service and reduce agent escalations.
- Identify self-service pain points: Personas help teams pinpoint which customer segments struggle most with IVR usability and why they opt for a live agent.
- Prioritize improvements based on impact: Some customers may need more straightforward prompts, while others require more reassurance before trusting self-service.
Building goal-focused caller personas
With real customer insights, teams can create personas that highlight not just what callers need—but also their experiences, frustrations, and expectations.
To ensure personas reflect real customer behaviors, categorize callers based on:
- Call intent: What they’re trying to accomplish (e.g., balance inquiry, fraud concern, card activation).
- Frustration points: Why they press "0" for a live agent instead of staying in self-service.
- Technology comfort level: Whether they prefer self-service or human assistance.
- Emotional response: How they felt about the IVR system (e.g., frustrated, confused, satisfied).
Here are just a few examples of some possible caller personas:
- The quick task caller: Wants a fast, self-service option for simple tasks (e.g., checking balances and transferring funds). If they can’t complete the action in one or two steps, they escalate to an agent.
- The uncertain customer: Prefers guidance but might use self-service if the menu is clear and reassuring. They are often first-time users of digital banking or calling about a new process.
- The urgent caller: Calling about fraud, account lockouts, or payment issues and expects immediate assistance. Poor routing or long wait times lead to high frustration and churn risk.
- The repeater: Has called multiple times about the same issue, indicating that self-service isn’t resolving their concern properly.
Step 3. Build a shared understanding of your customers
Once you’ve built your personas, the next step is to bring their experiences to life so your team can act on them. Create short video clips or highlight reels of key moments to distill the most valuable insights—making them easier to share and use. This helps teams quickly focus on what matters most and drive meaningful improvements.
Customer feedback often reveals clear opportunities for innovation and offers practical guidance for refining processes or products. To ensure teams work collaboratively toward solutions, share your findings with relevant stakeholders—so everyone has a shared understanding of customer needs.
Host a video watch party to align teams
Bringing customer insights into team discussions fosters collaboration, empathy, and action. Consider hosting a video watch party where teams review personas and key insights together. Here’s how to make it effective:
- Select key moments: Choose clips that highlight customer challenges and pivotal insights.
- Invite cross-functional teams: Include stakeholders like product managers, designers, and marketers to bring diverse perspectives.
- Facilitate discussions: Pause to discuss recurring themes, unexpected insights, and potential improvements.
- Document and prioritize: Capture takeaways and define clear next steps.
By bringing the customer’s voice into the conversation, teams stay aligned, and solutions remain rooted in actual customer needs.
How UserTesting helps
Drive alignment through human insight
Turning feedback into actionable insights is easy with UserTesting. Quickly transcribe, clip, edit, tag, and share key moments from customer videos, allowing your team to focus on what matters most.
- Create short clips: Showcase impactful responses, highlight challenges, and surface new opportunities.
- Build highlight reels: Group related clips to illustrate recurring themes and critical findings—making it easy to share insights across your organization.
By making customer feedback visible and accessible, teams can align faster and make confident, customer-driven decisions.
Establish a shared understanding of your customers
UserTesting’s Insights Hub is your central resource for storing, discovering, and collaborating on customer insights—all in one place.
- Unify experience data: Keep research findings and user insights accessible across teams.
- Align strategies: Ensure product, marketing, and leadership teams have visibility into the latest customer learnings.
- Seamlessly integrate: Connect insights with external tools so teams can act on them within their existing workflows.
By centralizing customer insights, organizations can consistently deliver customer-centric solutions that drive real impact.
Step 4: Redesign IVR menu prompts with customer feedback
With insight from real people, begin brainstorming and sketching new IVR menu prompts to create a smoother, more intuitive experience that meets the needs of your caller personas. By refining prompt wording, restructuring menus, and testing different call flows, you can guide customers more effectively—reducing frustration and improving containment rates.
How to approach IVR redesign
- Start simple: Sketch or create low-fidelity prototypes of new menu prompts. These don’t need to be fully functional—focus on clear, concise language that guides callers efficiently.
- Gather early feedback: Test IVR concepts with real customers through interviews and usability tests. Observe how they interact with the prompts and identify areas of confusion.
- Test and refine: Use self-guided tests where customers can navigate the IVR and provide feedback on clarity, efficiency, and ease of use.
By incorporating actionable customer feedback throughout the process, teams can fine-tune menu options, reduce friction, and create an IVR system that truly works for everyone.
Key focus areas for IVR redesign
- Refining prompt wording: Ensure IVR instructions are clear, concise, and aligned with caller personas.
- Reordering menu options: Prioritize the most commonly used self-service tasks upfront.
- Testing alternative call flows: Explore new IVR paths that increase containment and improve customer satisfaction.
How UserTesting helps
Validate concepts quickly
With UserTesting’s Live Conversation, teams can test early IVR ideas before implementation. Share rough call flows, menu structures, or even describe different IVR scenarios, then observe participants' real-time reactions.
The best part? You don’t need a fully built IVR system to gather insights. By understanding how customers expect to navigate self-service, you can test different approaches, clarify confusion, and refine prompts before committing to development.
Refine IVR prompts with real-world feedback
Once IVR menus and call flows are further developed, UserTesting enables banks to test actual menu recordings for clarity and effectiveness.
- Play recorded prompts: Have participants navigate the experience as they would in a real call.
- Capture real feedback: Identify usability issues, unclear instructions, or friction points.
- Optimize for self-service success: Ensure prompts are intuitive, easy to follow, and guide customers to resolution without needing an agent.
Step 5: Find your winner with customer preference testing
Now that you’ve developed IVR menu designs and prompt variations, the next step is to test them with real people to determine which works best. Customer preference testing allows banks to compare multiple IVR flows, menu structures, or prompt wordings in a single session—ensuring the final design is intuitive, effective, and aligned with customer needs.
How to test IVR menu options
To refine IVR prompts, you’ll want to put two to three different options in front of customers and gather their feedback on which design is easiest to navigate, understand, and use. Here’s how you can do this:
- Create IVR recordings: Develop recorded versions of different IVR menu options, each with varying prompt wording, menu structures, or call flows.
- Present them to customers: Have participants listen to each version and go through the decision-making process as if they were on a real call.
- Gather feedback: Ask participants which IVR design was easiest to use and why they preferred one over the others.
- Identify common pain points: Listen for frustration signals, such as confusion about menu options, difficulty understanding instructions, or the need to repeat steps.
- Refine the best option: Based on customer insights, adjust wording, menu order, or call flow to enhance usability before launching the updated IVR system.
By testing before implementation, teams can ensure their IVR design is customer-friendly and reduces unnecessary agent transfers.
Easily identify customer-preferred designs
With UserTesting, this process becomes even more efficient. Instead of manually coordinating interviews and feedback sessions, you can quickly test IVR recordings with a broad audience and capture real customer reactions.
To gain deeper insights:
- Simulate a real call experience: Have participants listen to and interact with IVR recordings to assess usability.
- Capture real-time feedback: Ask participants why they preferred one prompt over another and identify confusion points.
This approach not only pinpoints which IVR prompts provide the best customer experience but also highlights opportunities to refine wording, menu structure, and call flow—ensuring that self-service is intuitive and reduces unnecessary agent transfers.
Step 6: Benchmark IVR performance and continuously improve
Benchmarking your IVR prompts and call flows allows you to assess how well they support self-service adoption and containment goals. Establishing clear benchmarks ensures that IVR improvements are customer-driven, effective, and aligned with business objectives.
Tracking key performance metrics allows teams to identify usability issues, improve call routing, and refine prompts to guide customers more effectively. Setting measurable goals also helps teams confidently move forward with new IVR designs—ensuring that changes lead to better containment rates and reduced agent transfers.
Key metrics to track
Usability metrics:
- Call containment rate: Percentage of callers who successfully complete their request using self-service without escalating to an agent.
- Menu navigation success: Percentage of users who reach the correct option on the first attempt.
- Error rate: Frequency of misrouted calls or customers selecting incorrect options.
- Time to resolution: How long it takes for customers to complete their request through IVR.
Customer satisfaction metrics:
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Measures immediate satisfaction with IVR interactions.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Gauges how likely customers are to recommend the IVR experience.
- Abandonment rate: Percentage of callers who hang up before completing their request.
Once these benchmarks are established, teams can test new IVR prompts and structures against these standards. This data-driven approach helps ensure IVR enhancements successfully guide customers through self-service while reducing frustration and unnecessary agent escalations.
By continuously measuring IVR performance, banks can streamline self-service, improve customer satisfaction, and free up agents for more complex inquiries—enhancing both efficiency and customer experience.
How UserTesting helps
Benchmark and improve your CX to stay ahead
UserTesting’s QXscore provides a powerful way to benchmark IVR usability and customer experience over time. By tracking key metrics across different IVR versions, banks can measure how updates impact:
- Containment rates
- Customer frustration levels
- Self-service adoption
Monitoring QXscore results helps teams identify areas where IVR prompts are effective and pinpoint where adjustments are needed. This ensures that improvements lead to clearer menu navigation, faster resolutions, and a better overall customer experience.
Get expert support when you need it
Optimizing IVR doesn’t have to be overwhelming. UserTesting’s Professional Services team partners with banks to:
- Develop customer personas
- Facilitate design sprints
- Benchmark IVR performance
- Refine IVR flows based on real customer feedback
Whether you need targeted support or a full-scale engagement, we offer flexible solutions to help you turn insights into action—fast.
Optimizing omnichannel support
Despite investments in self-service tools, many customers still struggle to resolve issues without human assistance. Poorly integrated support channels, inconsistent information, and frustrating handoffs lead to abandoned self-service experiences and increased agent escalations.
With insight from real people, teams can pinpoint where breakdowns occur, understand why self-service fails, and refine digital and human-assisted interactions. This structured approach helps ensure a seamless, efficient customer experience—no matter where their journey begins.
Step 1: Create a customer journey map to guide optimization
A common challenge in contact centers is siloed data, making it difficult to see the full customer journey across multiple support touchpoints. A customer journey map provides a visual overview of how customers move through different support channels—from first encountering an issue to final resolution.
For omnichannel support, this means mapping every key touchpoint, including:
- Search behavior: Looking for answers via Google, the website, or the knowledge base
- AI chat interactions: Engaging with a chatbot for automated assistance
- Live support transitions: Moving from self-service to live chat or a phone call
- Post-resolution updates: Receiving status updates via SMS, email, or the customer portal
Building an effective journey map
To ensure a useful and accurate journey map, teams should:
- Define the goal: What needs to improve? Higher containment, faster resolution, or fewer repeat contacts?
- Identify key touchpoints: List every interaction a customer has across digital and human-assisted channels.
- Understand customer needs: What are customers trying to accomplish at each stage? Where do they face friction?
- Validate with real data: Use analytics, customer experience feedback, and session recordings to confirm assumptions
A journey map isn’t just a diagram—it’s a strategic tool for improving omnichannel support. By visualizing the end-to-end experience, teams can spot where transitions fail, where information is inconsistent, and where frustration builds.
How UserTesting helps
Build accurate customer journey maps with human insight
UserTesting provides customer feedback, helping teams map the full customer journey across IVR, chatbots, and live support.
With firsthand customer insights, teams can:
- Validate key touchpoints to ensure the journey map reflects actual customer interactions—not just assumptions.
- Identify friction points where customers struggle or abandon self-service.
- Pinpoint opportunities to streamline transitions between digital and human-assisted channels.
Step 2: Identify friction across the full support journey
Many support journeys break down when customers encounter friction points that prevent them from resolving issues efficiently. These breakdowns often force customers to escalate to live support—increasing frustration and operational costs. Identifying these challenges is key to improving continuity and efficiency in omnichannel support.
Common friction points include
- Inconsistent information: AI chat, IVR, and knowledge base content provide conflicting or incomplete answers, leading to confusion.
- Repetitive processes: Customers must re-enter details when switching from self-service to a live agent.
- Unclear next steps: FAQs and support content fail to guide customers, leaving them unsure where to go next.
- Limited chatbot functionality: Bots struggle with complex inquiries, forcing customers to escalate to a live agent when they expected a resolution.
- Lack of feedback loops: No system in place to capture why self-service options fail, making it difficult to improve.
How to uncover these friction points
To accurately map where customers struggle, teams must back these pain points with real insights. Some of the most effective methods include:
- Analyzing behavioral data: Use session replays, drop-off rates, and failed searches to see where customers struggle.
- Examining customer interactions: Chat logs, call transcripts, and chatbot conversations often contain patterns of frustration.
- Testing self-service usability: Observing customers as they attempt to resolve real issues using FAQs, chatbots, and knowledge base content can reveal where guidance is unclear or expectations aren’t met, leading to escalations.
By identifying where customers struggle, each touchpoint can be refined to create a seamless and intuitive experience rather than a series of disconnected interactions. Mapping out these breakdowns makes it easier to prioritize improvements that reduce escalations and improve resolution rates across channels.
How UserTesting helps
Pinpoint CX gaps to improve the customer support journey
UserTesting enables banking teams to evaluate the effectiveness of digital self-service content with precision using QXscore.
This 100-point score blends behavioral and attitudinal data, measuring key factors such as:
- Usability: How easily customers navigate self-service options.
- Satisfaction: Whether the experience meets customer expectations.
- Trust: Confidence in the information provided.
- Net Promoter Score™ (NPS): How likely customers are to recommend the experience.
By aligning what customers do with how they feel, QXscore uncovers weak spots in FAQs, chatbots, mobile banking instructions, and knowledge base content—highlighting where customer expectations and actual experiences misalign.
Teams can prioritize and target specific improvements to create a more seamless, customer-focused experience.
Step 3: Discover why customers struggle
After identifying where customers experience friction in omnichannel support, the next step is understanding why these breakdowns happen. Customers often abandon self-service options—whether FAQs, chatbots, or mobile tools—because content is unclear, difficult to find, or doesn’t fully address their needs.
To refine self-service and reduce unnecessary escalations, teams need to gather feedback and observe how customers attempt to solve issues.
Ways to uncover why self-service fails
- Recording interactions: Capture participants’ screens, voices, and expressions to see the process through their eyes.
- Testing common scenarios: Have participants try to resolve common issues using knowledge bases, chatbots, or FAQ sections, identifying where they get stuck.
- Encouraging think-aloud feedback: Ask participants to verbalize their thoughts as they navigate self-service content, highlighting points of confusion or inefficiency.
- Identifying expectation gaps: Have customers describe how they thought the process would work, revealing missing content or self-service improvements.
By going beyond analytics and directly connecting with customers, teams can pinpoint weaknesses, refine content, and improve self-service options—reducing friction across the entire support journey.
How UserTesting helps
Capture a vivid, first-person understanding of any experience
Remote self-guided tests allow participants to complete tasks and answer questions on their own time while sharing their thoughts out loud. Their screens, voices, or faces are recorded, giving you detailed feedback about their experience.
With UserTesting, teams can test as many—or as few—participants as needed, ensuring insights reflect real customer behaviors.
To uncover why customers struggle:
- Focus tasks on specific actions: Have participants find fee explanations, dispute a charge, or reset a password to see where they run into issues.
- Ask targeted questions: Capture verbal feedback, written answers, or ranked responses to understand customer preferences.
- Combine usability tasks with attitudinal insights: Observe moments of hesitation, frustration, or confusion to pinpoint areas for improvement.
This approach not only identifies where customers struggle but also reveals why—providing actionable insights to enhance the experience.
Unlock insights faster
Spend less time reviewing videos and let AI surface key trends and themes using AI-powered analysis solutions, including:
- AI Insight Summary
- Automated transcripts
- Sentiment analysis
- Interactive path flow and intent paths
- Friction detection and keyword mapping
By quickly identifying patterns and problem areas, teams can focus on what matters most—improving the self-service experience.
Step 4: Test and refine experiences across channels
Now that you have a clearer picture of where customers struggle, the next step is designing solutions that improve the experience across channels. Simply optimizing individual self-service tools isn’t enough—testing how customers move between channels is critical to ensuring a smooth, frustration-free journey.
Early testing is key. Gathering customer feedback as solutions are developed helps refine concepts before they go live. Testing early prototypes or workflows allows for quick adjustments, preventing costly fixes later on.
Ways to test and refine omnichannel experiences
- Simulating real-world scenarios: Observe how customers navigate support by having them complete tasks across multiple touchpoints (e.g., searching a knowledge base, using AI chat, and escalating to a live agent).
- Evaluating handoffs: Assess whether transitions between self-service and human-assisted support feel seamless or create friction.
- Measuring consistency: Ensure that AI chat, IVR, and human agents provide aligned and accurate information.
For example, testing a common support scenario can reveal gaps in the customer journey and highlight opportunities for improvement.
Example: Checking a suspicious transaction
- Search for answers in the knowledge base
- Engage with AI chat for more details
- Escalate to a live chat or phone call
- Receive SMS or portal updates on case status
At each step, look for signs of friction—moments where customers struggle, repeat actions, or abandon the process. If any part of the experience is unclear or frustrating, it's an opportunity for refinement.
By testing solutions before full implementation, support teams can make improvements, ensuring that every channel works together to create a cohesive and effortless customer experience.
How UserTesting helps
Refining omnichannel experiences through real customer feedback
UserTesting enables teams to test support journeys across multiple channels—from the knowledge base to chatbots to live support. By capturing real customer interactions, teams can:
- Ensure customers find the right information quickly.
- Validate that self-service tools are easy to navigate and meet customer needs.
- Identify where friction occurs to reduce unnecessary escalations.
Testing early concepts or prototypes allows teams to refine and iterate solutions before launch—ensuring a seamless, optimized support experience.
Step 5: Benchmark and continuously improve
Creating a seamless omnichannel support experience requires ongoing measurement and refinement—a one-time fix won’t keep up with evolving customer needs or shifting expectations. Instead of focusing solely on traditional metrics like IVR containment, teams should track the full support journey to identify where self-service succeeds and where customers still need assistance.
By measuring both usability and customer satisfaction, teams gain a well-rounded view of how well self-service options meet customer needs.
Key metrics to track
Usability metrics: these metrics assess how effectively customers can navigate self-service tools and resolve issues without unnecessary escalations:
- Self-service resolution rate: Percentage of users who successfully find answers or complete tasks without escalating to an agent
- Search effectiveness: Percentage of users who find relevant articles or chatbot responses on the first attempt
- Error rate: Frequency of users selecting incorrect options or struggling to complete self-service tasks
- Abandonment rate: Tracks how often customers leave the self-service experience without resolving their issue
- Time to resolution: How quickly customers resolve issues across self-service tools
- Channel transition smoothness: How often customers can switch between self-service and human-assisted support without repeating information
Customer satisfaction metrics: These metrics measure how customers feel about their support experience and whether self-service meets their expectations:
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Measures immediate customer sentiment after a support interaction
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Gauges how likely customers are to recommend self-service tools
- Customer Effort Score (CES): Assesses how easy or difficult it was for customers to get the help they needed
Why continuous improvement matters
Once benchmarks are established, tracking trends over time helps identify where improvements are needed. Regular testing—through customer feedback, usability studies, and behavioral data—ensures updates lead to:
- Higher self-service engagement
- Smoother channel transitions
- Reduced escalations to live agents
A continuous improvement approach ensures self-service and omnichannel support evolve in line with customer expectations, reducing friction while improving efficiency and satisfaction.
How UserTesting helps
Benchmark and improve your CX to stay ahead
UserTesting enables teams to track key usability and satisfaction metrics through real customer feedback, helping identify where the support journey succeeds and where friction remains.
With tools like QXscore, teams can benchmark customer experience over time to ensure that updates improve navigation, reduce frustration, and enhance self-service adoption.
With ongoing benchmarking, banks can continuously refine self-service content, improve searchability, and enhance usability—ensuring that self-service evolves to meet customer expectations while reducing contact center strain.
Customer stories
Here are companies that dramatically improved self-service with customer insights.
How one of the 50 largest US retail banks reduced call center volume by 7% through self-service optimization
A leading US retail bank saw high call center volumes due to customers struggling to find autopay, a key self-service feature within the bill pay experience. Over three months, the bank’s digital experience team utilized UserTesting to uncover gaps in usability and customer expectations.
By redesigning the digital experience based on customer insights, they increased page visits by 14% and improved usability, leading to a 7% decrease in related call center inquiries, reducing operational costs, and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Tesco Bank improves self-service and increases customer satisfaction
Tesco Bank leveraged UserTesting to enhance its self-service capabilities by developing an online claims form for auto accidents. By testing the process with real users, Tesco Bank ensured that customers could easily submit claims, upload photos, and receive directions to a local repair shop via Google Maps.
This digital transformation improved efficiency, reduced customer frustration, and contributed to Tesco Bank achieving its highest Net Promoter Score (NPS) to date.
Watch below to hear how Tesco Bank improves efficiency with customer-centric experiences.
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