Key takeaways

• Financial contact centers are shifting from transactional help desks to omnichannel, relationship-led journey orchestrators
• Cloud-based Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platforms with deep integration and AI are essential to scale, personalize and secure customer interactions
• Strong security must feel unobtrusive, using biometrics, analytics and smart integration to reduce friction
• Hyper-personalization should track life events and financial wellbeing, measured through NPS, fraud reduction and resolution times
• Talent, culture and incentives must evolve so advisors are rewarded for empathy, expertise and long-term relationship value

The new face of the financial contact center

In financial services, the contact center is no longer just a place customers call when something goes wrong. As banking becomes more digital, this frontline is becoming the orchestrator of journeys that span mobile apps, branches and assisted channels, and a key driver of customer trust and lifetime value.

Simon Beavis, Sales Director for Microsoft CCaaS across APAC and Japan at HCLTech, is working with banks and financial institutions across the region to redesign this new landscape. He argues that future-ready contact centers must be cloud-based, deeply integrated, AI-enabled and culture-led, with trust and resilience designed in from day one.

From transactional desks to journey orchestrators

Financial institutions are under pressure from both ends of the market. Incumbent banks operate at enormous scale with millions of customers, while FinTech's and non-bank lenders face hyper-growth and rapidly changing customer expectations. Legacy contact centers were “very limited in terms of scalability,” explains Beavis, and unable to integrate deeply with core systems.

By contrast, “migrating your solution to a cloud-based solution like Microsoft CCaaS gives you that agility” to scale up and down while integrating with systems of record such as core banking and CRM. That integration is what unlocks the move from handling isolated calls to managing customer journeys over time.

For Beavis, the future-ready financial contact center is organized around life events; not just tickets or channels. When a bank can capture rich interaction data, apply advanced analytics and “infuse AI,” it can identify key life moments: “as we progress through university and then we want to buy our first house…upgrade our house after we get married and have children.”

The goal is simple but powerful: treat customers based on the knowledge you have of their life journey, not just the last call they made. Done well, this turns the contact center into a relationship hub where the “lifetime value is significant” and every interaction strengthens loyalty.

Frictionless security: Earning trust without slowing customers down

In financial services, trust is non-negotiable, yet customers have little patience for clunky security flows. “Trust is only established if the measure that’s been taken is unobtrusive and so the interaction is a smooth one,” notes Beavis. Traditional security protocols have often been the opposite: “very intrusive, asking a lot of questions, asking the customer to repeat themselves or sometimes state information that you’d expect them to already have.”

Modern CCaaS platforms allow banks to authenticate customers more intelligently and in their channel of choice. With digital-first contact centers, “you can talk to the bank in plain language, whatever language you use, and the bank will be able to automatically understand what it is you want.” At the same time, voice biometrics can “verify the person that is speaking,” adding a powerful layer of security without extra friction.

Sometimes, deeper verification is needed to counter any increased sophistication around AI produced Deepfake voice prints. That’s where open, cloud-native integration matters. Banks may need to “integrate back to another system…sometimes it’s just the CRM system…sometimes there’s a core banking system as well.” Microsoft CCaaS, fully integrated with the Microsoft CRM platform and other systems, enables this kind of real-time data check without breaking the conversation.

Beavis also highlights the role of real-time behavioural monitoring. With Microsoft CCaaS and HCLTech “we actually monitor on a real-time basis and detect any anomalies in people’s conversations, to give another layer of security to a financial organization.” Success here will show up in fewer fraud incidents, smoother interactions and higher customer trust, without making the customer feel they’ve jumped through extra hoops.

Hyper-personalization that improves financial wellbeing

Hyper-personalization in finance can easily drift into product-pushing if it isn’t grounded in customer need. Beavis emphasizes starting with “advanced analytics to be able to understand the life events,” because when banks understand what truly matters to customers, “we can really make sure that the journey they’re having with us…is really hitting the right mark at the right times.”

This is where HCLTech and Microsoft CCaaS’ position within the broader Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM platform becomes crucial. “We have all of that data, so we’re able to harness that with our AI platform to then make the right offer at the right time, at the right life event of the customer.”

The benefits are both experiential and measurable. By personalizing support and offers around life events and wellbeing, institutions can:

• Reduce fraud incidents through better understanding of typical customer behaviour
• Achieve faster resolution times on their questions
• Improve Net Promoter Score, because “this will always happen if we are treating the customer in the manner they want to be treated”

Ultimately, Beavis sees personalization, security and satisfaction as mutually reinforcing. Strong security and intelligent personalization “will improve the Net Promoter Score...because we’re providing a great journey experience for our customers.”

Personalization in a heavily regulated world

Financial services is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world. That reality shapes how far and how fast institutions can move on personalization, AI and journey redesign. Beavis points to recent rules in Australia as a representative example, where regulations such as CPS 230 and CPS 234 place strict requirements on resilience, cybersecurity and risk management.

“What it means is that systems must be resilient. Systems must be up all the time because a customer must be able to interact with their financial services organization,” says Beavis. That requires more than technology upgrades. It demands “the right guardrails in place…the right compliance…the right cyber security and information security.”

For contact centers, this translates into stringent expectations for the partners operating the platform. Providers must be able to demonstrate certifications like ISO 27001, adhere to frameworks, such as CPS 234, and support “a whole risk mitigation strategy…overarching across the whole contact center.”

Beavis’ view is clear: successful transformation in this space depends on choosing “the right partner working with you, not just to implement a new CCaaS solution, but also manage that platform” in a way that is demonstrably compliant, resilient and secure. Only then can banks unlock the full value of personalization and AI at scale.

Talent, culture and incentives in the AI-enabled contact center

Technology alone won’t create a better customer journey; people and culture make the difference. “Fundamentally, the most important thing is you need to shift from transactional tasks and move more to the experience that you’re having with the customer,” says Beavis.

The business case is timeless. “It costs ten times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer.” When advisors focus on relationship value rather than just handle time, the lifetime value of each customer rises significantly.

In an AI-rich environment, this means redefining what human advisors do. High-volume, simple requests will increasingly be “managed by AI,” while “the more meaningful and complex transactions” are handled by people. As a result, the emphasis must move to:

• Empathy: Employees need to understand more about their customer, as this goes a long way to building long-term relationships
• Expertise and knowledge: Advisors need “deep subject matter expertise” to handle complex financial interactions. When customers trust the person they’re talking to, because they’ve got deep knowledge, relationships deepen
• Outcome-focused coaching and incentives: HCLTech works with clients to “tailor training solutions to continuously develop advisors and ongoing coaching,” shifting the focus beyond core metrics like speed. When dealing with larger, more complex issues, it’s more important to have a happy customer with a resolution at the end of the call, rather than a fast resolution

A future-ready contact center, then, is one where advisors are rewarded for empathy, expertise and long-term relationship outcomes; not just how quickly they get off the phone.

AI, agentic automation and the next wave of financial contact centers

Looking ahead, Beavis sees AI and automation as the defining forces in financial contact centers. “AI, Generative AI and automation are going to be absolutely prevalent across the entire industry,” he says, pointing to major projects already underway with large retail banks migrating from legacy platforms to Microsoft CCaaS. One bank has even nicknamed its new platform “the anti-telephony system,” reflecting its ambition to digitize nearly all customer interactions.

A key part of this future is “Agentic AI bots that are swarming together to create an outcome for a customer,” automating as much routine work as possible so human agents can focus on complex, relationship-led conversations.

HCLTech is building “a whole framework of governance, orchestration and bot development” with the guardrails, compliance and risk mitigation protocols that regulators and boards expect.

As regulations continue to evolve and customer expectations rise, the institutions that will win are those that combine:

• Cloud-native, integrated CCaaS platforms
• Unobtrusive but robust security and fraud controls
• Life-event-driven personalization anchored in financial wellbeing
• A compliance-first operating model
• A culture that values empathy, expertise and long-term relationships

For financial services organizations, the contact center is no longer just a cost center. Instead, it is becoming the intelligently automated, human-led engine of trust and growth.

FAQs

1. What is a “future-ready” financial contact center?
A future-ready financial contact center is a cloud-based, omnichannel hub that connects app, branch and assisted channels. It uses integrated data, analytics and AI to personalize journeys around life events while maintaining strong, unobtrusive security and regulatory compliance. Human advisors focus on complex, high-value interactions and long-term relationships.

2. How does AI improve security without adding friction?
AI enables continuous, unobtrusive authentication using techniques like voice biometrics and behavioral analytics. Combined with integration to CRM and core banking, it allows real-time verification and anomaly detection in the background. Customers get faster, smoother experiences while fraud risk is reduced and security standards remain robust.

3. How can banks measure the impact of hyper-personalization?
 Impact can be tracked through changes in Net Promoter Score, first-contact resolution rates, average handling time for complex queries and fraud incident rates. Over time, institutions can also measure increased product adoption linked to life events and higher customer lifetime value from improved retention and deeper relationships.

4. What role do human advisors play in an AI-enabled contact center?
As AI handles more high volume, routine interactions, human advisors increasingly focus on complex, emotionally sensitive or high-value conversations. Their role emphasizes empathy, deep product and regulatory knowledge and problem-solving. Coaching and incentives should reward long-term relationship outcomes, not just speed or volume metrics.

5. How should financial institutions choose a CCaaS and transformation partner?
Look for a cloud-native platform like Microsoft CCaaS that integrates deeply with CRM and core banking systems, supports advanced analytics and AI and offers strong security and compliance credentials. Equally important is a partner such as HCLTech that can operate the platform, manage regulatory obligations and support cultural and skills transformation.