Some industries particularly feel the impact of not giving their customers instant answers to their questions. Financial institutions have learnt that providing quick home loan pre-approval gives them the advantage over their competitors that take days to process an application. Universities have told me that the speed with which they process student applications directly impacts intake, as students can be inclined to accept the first university to offer them a place.
We also know that many decisions involve some aspect of discretion. There are times where a human decision maker needs to be involved to look at the individual case at hand.
So can self-service Intelligent Advisor interviews still be used in these cases?
Absolutely.
In many of these cases there are clear indicators that a decision needs to be made one way or the other. I call these the black and white decisions. Under no circumstances is a street party at 4am going to be approved, so use Intelligent Advisor to tell the applicant straight-up as part of the application process. Don’t keep them waiting and don’t waste an agent’s time looking at this. If you have an existing bank customer with good income and credit rating, go ahead and give them pre-approval on their loan and then follow-up with a detailed application if needed.
The key to creating Intelligent Advisor interviews in these cases is to identify where the gray area lies.
The Employee or Contractor Intelligent Advisor interview provides a worked example of this. In this case, a large tax agency wanted to give guidance on whether a person should be a contractor or employee but there were also clear indicators that were simply not negotiable. For example, if the person is an apprentice, trainee, company director, labourer or trades assistant they must be considered an employee.
By modelling the logic at either end of this scale they are able to provide quick answers, which still acknowledging that there is a gray area in the middle. This interview provides indicative advice within the boundaries, but it would be equally valid for these discretionary cases to be logged and sent to an agent for review.
You can also provide your agents with assistance making this discretionary decision. But that’s the topic of another post.
Title photo credit: Frida Bredesen via Unsplash