Proactive outreach, artificial intelligence, automation, predictive routing and calling are essential to connect with the most vulnerable small business customers.
COVID-19 is raging all over the world. The United States is one of the worst-hit countries. So far, it has more than 325,000 deaths (approximately 1% of the U.S. population) and confirmed more than 18 million COVID cases in the United States.
Many American hospitals’ intensive care units (ICU) are full, and many more are close to full.
Governors, mayors, and municipal leaders across the country are enforcing regional lockdowns and full-time orders that have devastating effects on small businesses (the lifeblood of the American economy).
In 2019, small businesses created 44% of U.S. economic activity. Overall, they created two-thirds of net new jobs and promoted U.S. innovation and competitiveness.
When small businesses are hurt, the entire economy is hurt.
Re-entry into the area and blockade may lead to mass layoffs and permanent closure.
However, just before Christmas, the U.S. Congress has reached an agreement on the bipartisan mutual aid bill, some people dare to call it a stimulus bill.
So far, what we know about the salary protection plan. The new $900 billion transactions include $284 billion in PPP, which was reopened after the first two payments: $367 billion in March 2020 and another 2,850 in April 2020.
Billion US dollars, totaling 652 billion US dollars.
Very similar to the first and second iterations of the plan, the third time will be in the form of interest-free loans to small companies, but in issues such as secondary applicants’ qualification loans and other expenses, it may
Significant changes will occur.
This is what we know so far.
Expansion of the scope of expenses: Starting from the first and second PPP (in March 2020 and April 2020), loan exemptions include more expenses.
New eligible expenditures may include operations, property damage costs, supplier costs and worker protection expenditures.
No new taxes: Interest-free loans cannot be taxed.
Easy to apply: Simplified loan application process, the cost does not exceed US$2 million.
Interest-free loans of less than US$150,000 require a one-page online or paper form with a certificate of borrower;
As mentioned earlier, a loan of US$150,000 to US$2 million may also simplify documentation requirements.
Distribution through financial centers: Banks, credit unions, and community lenders will receive applications, review, process, and distribute a new portion of the $267.5 billion PPP loan funds, and an additional 20 billion through the Small Business Administration (SBA)
The dollar’s economy hurts disaster loans).
These are grants to low-income community enterprises.
If you are unsuccessful, please apply again: more eligible companies can apply for PPP funds.
Even if you received a PPP loan last time, you can apply for a so-called PPP2 loan again.
Funds set aside for small businesses, independent contractors and self-employed individuals: As of February 15, 2020, $25 billion of the total appropriation is dedicated to businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
New non-profit organizations and lobbying entities that are now eligible: 501(c)(6) organizations that previously did not qualify for the first round can now borrow in the second round of PPP.
These organizations are the “spokespersons” of chambers of commerce, trade associations, real estate committees, professional associations, certain sports leagues, trade and business alliances.
When the first and second rounds of the “Payroll Protection Program” (PPP) were launched in the spring of 2020, the call volume was too high, the call processing volume was too high, and the waiting time for small business owners to contact the bank for a lifeline were all compromised.
Some applications that were supposed to be processed within a few hours took weeks, but the employees did not have any fault and waited for work, waiting for relief checks.
The third round of PPP is in a very auspicious period: bank employees are still working remotely, many branches remain closed, many payments were stopped a few months ago, people have new concerns about the virus mutation, and Christmas and New Year are coming.
, The new US presidential government is taking shape.
Therefore, many problems for small businesses still exist.
Banks and lenders will need to make their agents and customers as clear as possible and direct the PPP process.
How to improve the process
Proactive outreach, artificial intelligence, automation, predictive routing and calling are essential for outreaching with the most vulnerable customers while ensuring proper staffing levels.
Since many banks have closed branches, they use contact centers as customer experience centers.
They are permanent, dedicated remote teams to facilitate the acquisition and review process of PPP applications to ensure fair, fast and effective processing for their small business customers.
In addition, 82% of financial services and insurance companies consider their contact centers to be strategic assets and unique.
They regard the contact center as the hub of the customer experience, delivering a full range of presentations through the Internet, chatbots, applications, email, SMS and social channels to provide a cohesive and enjoyable experience.
For some banks and lenders, the contact center replaces the retail footprint left by branch closures.
Astercc is a market-leading secure customer banking solution designed to integrate every customer engagement across channels and business lines.
With Astercc’s cloud-native solutions, banks can quickly deploy integrated communications on a flexible and secure platform to provide a differentiated customer experience to build and maintain loyalty.
Speed: Design, implementation, and deployment only take days, not weeks.
Trust: more than 30 cybersecurity certifications, licenses and international data privacy compliance
Scale: Deployed in more than 1,800 enterprises in more than 75 countries/regions worldwide
Astercc can help financial institutions quickly establish a dedicated PPP contact center, manage emergency plans such as PPP in multiple iterations, or use the following advantages to integrate Astercc into your entire contact center platform:
Employee engagement management enables agents to provide excellent customer service at home
Predict dialing to reach three or four times the connection rate
Proactive notification to reduce the volume of incoming calls
The guide is an AI-based self-service knowledge base for agents and customers
The agent assists the supercharging agent through intelligent guidance
Live chat improves real-time customer engagement
Seamless management and configuration of call flow
Video conference integration
Omnichannel provides integrated communications across email, chat, messaging applications and social media remotely enabling your agents and customer relationship managers to work safely and reliably from any location on their mobile device, office, home or customer site.
Astercc can help reduce the average answering speed (ASA) of the agent, the average waiting time of the customer (AWT), improve the efficiency of the agent and increase the customer satisfaction (CSAT) score.
The impact of COVID-19 and the mortgage crisis and the subsequent Great Depression will be one of the greatest experiments of this generation.
Mobilizing bankers to manage these government-supported programs is an outstanding example of dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of bank employees working together to tackle incredible challenges.
Banks and lenders said that the first PPP was issued by the government on a weekend in March, and they had to start accepting applications within 72 hours without much warning, training or recourse.
In the first and second periods of purchasing power parity, banks and lenders must be self-reliant and do their best with specific circumstances in mind.
There are many mistakes, some are forgivable, some are not.
However, banks and lenders have had nearly eight months to lick wounds and are better prepared to serve customers.
To learn more about how Astercc helps banks streamline services and a vertical enterprise-level omni-channel contact center, learn more here.