The rapid promotion of new products in banks results in many customers chasing better deals, either with their existing bank or with other providers – resulting in growing numbers of account closure requests each day. With service level agreements to maintain, automating the account closure process is a simple way to ensure that customer service standards are achieved.

Account closure has long been a manual, time-consuming process that ties up valuable resource within a bank's contact centre. It is one business area that is often pushed down a long list of priorities, leaving customers waiting for returned monies and unsatisfied with their customer service experience. The Blue Prism solution automates and rapidly accelerates this routine chore of closing customer accounts, managing each case with a consistency and higher degree of accuracy than a manual system would allow.

One major high street bank has already benefited from this Blue Prism solution. Following a short, seven-week project, the new automated process was up and running and the contact centre staff previously undertaking this process were re-assigned to revenue generating roles. The bank also achieved a significant improvement in service response times – from delays of many weeks to same day service, cost savings equivalent to four full-time staff and a project payback in less than seven months.

Alastair Bathgate, Blue Prism Managing Director, commented: "Retail Banks are leading the charge in improving customer service processes. We are pleased to announce the launch of our latest process automation solution that provides the engine to deliver these service improvements in the often neglected area of account closures."