Executive summary

National Australia Bank (NAB) is one of Australia’s largest financial service institutions, with 32,000 colleagues serving nine million customers at more than 900 locations. NAB is investing in improving its simple and digital experience for customers and colleagues. NAB had already partnered with Khoros to interact with customers on Facebook Messenger and Twitter. But when the first COVID-19 lockdowns began in March 2020, call numbers spiked. NAB received a year’s worth of phone calls in just one week. Picking up the phone was an inefficient way for customers to get answers to simple questions. NAB knew it needed to accelerate its digital support offerings, and looked into third-party messaging options. More than 25,000 people click to call NAB from Google My Business each month, and many more go to nab.com.au and use directions to navigate to its branches. NAB wanted to give those customers the option to message them from a channel they were already using, so it chose to onboard Google’s Business Messages for Khoros Care.

NAB’s implementation of Google’s Business Messages was straightforward: Khoros handled the technical work and added the platform alongside NAB’s existing third-party messaging channels. That way, after launch, NAB bankers were able to respond seamlessly to customers from the Khoros platform. NAB was already active on social media channels and other third-party messaging apps. So, it already had the necessary governance in place, including details about what kinds of queries could be answered in which channels, what bankers should do when they field certain types of questions, and helpful FAQs for troubleshooting. NAB runs its support channels 24/7, and decided to roll out Business Messages over a six-week period to ensure a smooth transition for bankers.

NAB found that it was not only able to manage incoming volume from Business Messages, but could actually manage up to three times as many messages than in traditional channels.

Google made it simple to connect with customers who were already actively looking for them. Now NAB is positioned to easily adapt future Google updates and onboard future Google products to help their customers find answers to their questions more quickly.

Results

NAB experienced a reduction in click-to-call volume and an increase in messaging after onboarding Google’s Business Messages for Khoros Care. NAB has had more than 10,000 conversations in the few months post launch, resolving 80% of queries in-channel. They also discovered that Business Messages is approximately three times more efficient than their traditional channels like phone.