Fast-Track Dispute Resolution with ServiceNow and Visa

Managing card disputes in financial services is often complicated, time-consuming, and costly. Join ServiceNow and Visa product leaders to learn about ServiceNow® and Visa's solution for faster, cost-effective dispute resolution. Hear case studies on how ServiceNow Disputes Management, built with Visa, is helping banks automate decision making and streamline processes to help deliver frictionless cardholder service, reduce contact center volumes, enable seamless compliance, and


Transcription:

Vidya Balakrishnan (00:09):

Thank you everyone. My name's Vidya Balakrishnan and I lead our financial services product teams at ServiceNow. And I am also here joined by my partner in financial crime, Liz Chaffin, who leads our product teams over at Visa as well. So we have a few things that we're going to cover today. First and foremost, we're going to look at some market trends and what's really prompting us to get into this area of disputes. And then we are also then going to, I'm going to call up Liz, who's going to share what the Visa network is also seeing and some of the trends that they're experiencing and why we've collaborated together. And then we will have a little fireside chat. We'll include a very special guest from Fifth Third Bank, Janna, who's going to talk a little bit about why they've chosen to use our solution. And then we'll round things out with a really exciting demo where we'll show you a little bit about what the product is that we've developed together. And then of course, we can always continue the conversation. We have a demo pod next door that we'd encourage you all to come join us at.

(01:26):

Excuse me. So we love this quote here from last year from American Banker about how tech is really shaping a lot of the banking trends that you're seeing out there. It's really not the other way around. And the reason why we love this is because in our product organization, we're really focused and passionate about making sure that banks are truly the tip of the spear when it comes to digital transformation. And so we absolutely love this quote. What I'll say is right now we sit in a very unique position where we talk to a lot of banks and they share a lot about their frustrations and where they would like for us to innovate on our platform. And we always say that frustration is the mother of invention. And a few of those themes are around first and foremost customer experience. So we have any number of fintechs that are truly nipping at our heels, nipping at the bank's heels to make sure that they're innovating on customer experience.

(02:22):

So that includes user experiences, both mobile web, but it also includes experiences in things like case resolution. So those are the moments that truly matter for your customers. We're also seeing some external factors that are causing some frustration. So right now, over the last few years, we've seen disputes that have been on the rise over the last about 30% over the last few years. So that's really causing a lot of stress and strain on the systems. And then of course, compliance. So as we're thinking about, as the regulations are changing, policies are changing and really being able to manage the systems training processes all within the bank, that's also creating a lot of frustration. But of course, digital transformation really promises. It's kind of the promised land to really resolve some of these frustrations. We hear things like frictionless customer experiences, robust operational resilience, seamless compliance.

(03:23):

But the truth is what's happened is it's inside the bank. It can be somewhat of a hornet's nest of systems. So you'll have different organizations, departments within the bank will have their own point solution that really helps them do their one job really well. But on the other end, for the customer, they're seeing a disjointed set of applications. And so really making sure that we're looking at multiple systems, that proliferation is really wreaking havoc, is what we hear a lot fun fact, or maybe not so fun, maybe a true fact. We are hearing that there's, on average most banks have about a thousand or so applications that they're managing and running. Now, how does that show up for the bank? Well, for the bank, that tapestry of point solutions now means that you have to train hundreds of employees to not only use the system, but also means that you have to train IT staff to be able to update the systems.

(04:28):

And so it's a complex web to make sure that you're acting on behalf of the customer. And the cost to the bank is pretty high because you're fixing, in the case of let's say a dispute, you're fixing a leaky bucket as opposed to making sure that you're looking at customer acquisitions. So focusing on other things that are helping you grow. So it's really inhibiting growth to have all of these solutions in place. We have customers who are calling in, let's take a disputes as an example, customers who are calling in and they are trying to understand, Hey, I submitted my dispute a couple of days ago. What's going on? Come into the web portal. But of course, because there are so many systems, it's very difficult to show them status. So customers are frustrated. You have front office agents. So these are the call center agents who are finding call volumes growing because the customer's calling into the call center now.

(05:21):

And they are also, as I said, thousands of applications. They are also having to review and take a look at swivel chair over to multiple systems to be able to arrive at the right answer. And then finally, you have the middle and back office who are also struggling with their own systems and doing a lot of manual processing and a lot of manual work on behalf of that customer to resolve that situation. So at ServiceNow, we think that there's a better way. And so when you take an average dispute, for example, I mean, we are looking at how we can take that process from months and weeks and bring that down to just days and minutes and hopefully really thinking about what that looks like with Agtech and having a straight through process so that we can focus on the customer who's having a very personalized and convenient experience so that they are seeing a pizza tracker when they come to your portal. The call center agent isn't swivel sharing around multiple systems. They have access to the data at hand, all in one single pane of glass. And then finally, middle and back office are also using the same systems and the same data repository so that everyone is singing from the same sheet of music.

(06:41):

And of course at ServiceNow, we also, innovation is at the heart of everything that we do. So when we build AI into our platform, we now are able to use that AI throughout all of our workflows. So when we build things for banking, which my team is very much responsible for, we are able to ingest the power of the AI platform into our workflows. And you'll see just how that comes to life in our demo, where we'll show you a demo of what we've built for conversational ai. Okay, so our platform is really the workhorse of our CRM strategy. And when you think about, there's three elements of that, and that's first and foremost bringing out all of the data because these thousand points systems all have data residing in each of those systems. So the idea is to be able to make sure that we use our workflow data fabric capabilities to bring in the data as it's needed. We don't need to be the system of record. We consider ourselves a system of action, but bringing in the data that is needed at the time to take action. And then building on top of that is our workflow capabilities for CRM. So we have really taken a strong look at cases like treasury management, how do I add a service on customer onboarding? And in the case of disputes, we've gone very deep with Visa and we'll share a little bit more about that in soon. And then of course, injecting AI into the entire process.

(08:10):

So our secret sauce, we think that it's a combination of our award-winning workflows along with bringing in the data that's needed to take action, and then finally injecting those AI agents to really accelerate and have your front, middle, and back office employees more productive. But of course, don't take my word for it. We have several customers who have used our platform already. The likes of Bank of Montreal, for example, who have seen 200% year over year increases in automation from using their self-service capabilities or m and t Bank, who's also a flagship customer of ours who are processing millions of transactions on our platform on behalf of their customers as well. And so with that, I'm going to welcome Liz from Visa onto the stage to share a little bit more about what the Visa network is doing about disputes management.

Liz Chaffin (09:12):

Thanks, Vidya. Good afternoon everyone. I want to share a little glimpse into what the network is seeing and why a strong dispute management solution is important for all of our issuers. Am sure all of you know that digital commerce is seamless. Think about all of the devices that we have in our pockets, in our homes, in our cars, all of that plus many more enable consumers to seamlessly transact throughout the day. I know I personally love it used a lot, but it can be so seamless that it could be almost invisible to those consumers. So we are with this easy, seamless transaction creating confusion, and anywhere that we have confusion, we could be increasing disputes.

(10:12):

The shopping experience is also evolving. It's involving from, I know what I grew up with, us going to a brick and mortar, walking into a known location, walking out with physical goods to more and more of a situation of which just probably hop into most everyone in this room where you come home to, in my case, a stack of packages and some of them may not remember ordering. So again, that confusion, that uncertainty in this type of transacting creates more risk for an increase in disputes. Visa has been seeing dispute volumes increase. Vidya mentioned in 30%. So since 2019, we have seen an increase in dispute volume of 30%. I'd say good news, maybe not great news, but good news is is that the dispute rate to sales has stayed pretty steady during this period of time. But what would be great is if we could start to see a reduction in that rate. So as sales increase, we don't necessarily want to see disputes volumes increase. We would really love to improve that customer experience, those efficiencies by actually reducing that. And Visa is committed to continually looking at solutions, evolving solutions to help bring the best customer experience, as well as improve efficiencies for all of our insurers.

(11:55):

So for the first time, we have partnered in this space and with ServiceNow, we have helped to deliver a solution that issuers can use to manage dispute processing. I'm also very excited to announce that coming soon Visa will be using ServiceNow dispute management built with Visa solution to support one of our internal processes, which is dispute management services. Dispute management services is a value added service. It's an on behalf of service for issuers that want to outsource their dispute management. So we're going to be using the new ServiceNow platform internally at Visa to be able to manage that business. Very exciting to be able to bring these tools in and take advantage of all of the great function as well as AI that they've built into the platform. I'm going to now run through a video.

Video Presentation 1 (13:17):

Lewis and Clark, Orville and Wilbur meet Liz and Vidya.

Video Presentation Liz (13:22):

Hi,

Video Presentation Vidya (13:23):

hello.

Video Presentation 1 (13:23):

Now let's talk banking.

Vidya Balakrishnan (13:28):

The world is changing fast.

Liz Chaffin (13:30):

Right now in the payments industry.

Video Presentation Vidya (13:31):

Banks are really facing brand new challenges.

Video Presentation Liz (13:33):

You're buying things instantaneously, it's great, but that does lead to more unrecognized transactions, which does lead to more disputes. Over the last few years, we've seen disputes increase by 30%, and that's a hundred million transactions, which equates to billions of dollars in transaction value.

Video Presentation 1 (13:54):

That's billions with a B.

Video Presentation Vidya (13:56):

Yeah.

Video Presentation 1 (13:56):

So imagine you're the customer. What happens?

Video Presentation Vidya (13:58):

You're just going about your day and you get a text from your bank.

Video Presentation 1 (14:01):

Oh, then

Video Presentation Vidya (14:02):

You notice a charge that just seems wrong. So you send an email or you make a call, you register a dispute, and you wait while the bank investigates.

Video Presentation 1 (14:09):

So waiting emails, calls and more waiting.

Video Presentation Vidya (14:13):

It can happen. How long is this going to take? Weeks? Maybe once. And she can't use that card.

Video Presentation 1 (14:18):

Okay, now imagine you're the bank.

Video Presentation Liz (14:22):

Now you have a dispute from one of your customers.

Video Presentation Vidya (14:25):

And a complex manual operation is set in motion processing compliance, verifying merchants. It's time consuming and expensive, and customer loyalty can take a hit.

Video Presentation 1 (14:36):

Banks need help, but customers need help.

Video Presentation Liz (14:39):

Let's fix this.

Video Presentation Vidya (14:40):

Let's put AI to work for people.

Video Presentation 1 (14:42):

And to build the right solution, you need to build the right team. Visa and ServiceNow.

Video Presentation Liz (14:48):

We just got in a room and started to brainstorm on how we solve the problem for our customers together.

Video Presentation Vidya (14:55):

That's really where the magic happened.

Video Presentation 1 (14:57):

Imagine a game changer for disputes.

Video Presentation Vidya (15:00):

Visa brings to us a set of tool sets and data like we've never had before.

Video Presentation Liz (15:04):

In ServiceNow streamlines the process.

Video Presentation 1 (15:06):

With now assist powered by GenAI built right in.

Video Presentation Vidya (15:10):

And so now the bank is able to react quickly, self-service and deflection, reduce costs. And if needed, a relationship manager will step in equipped with a whole lot more information summarized by GenAI. So if the customer can take their resolution from weeks or months down to days or hours.

Video Presentation Liz (15:26):

And then life goes on,

Video Presentation 1 (15:28):

And they lived happily ever after.

Video Presentation Liz (15:31):

Visa, a trusted leader in digital payments,

Video Presentation Vidya (15:36):

And ServiceNow, the AI platform for business transformation.

Video Presentation Liz (15:38):

What are we going to fix next?

Liz Chaffin (15:47):

And now I'd like to invite up Janna Wagner, who's from Fifth Third. She's going to join Vidya and I for a fireside chat.

Vidya Balakrishnan (16:11):

Okay. Thank you for being here, Janna. So wanted to start a little bit by just maybe if you wouldn't mind starting off by telling us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Fifth Third Bank.

Janna Wagoner (16:27):

Of course. So I've been at Fifth Third for about 14 years, all of that in the technology side. I've done projects and implemented solutions and commercial payments, consumer enterprise. I now run our Financial Crimes disputes and risk organization. We lovingly call ourselves FDR, and I love that payments is realizing how we're part of that ecosystem. So it's super exciting with a lot of build and buy decisions. I've gotten to know a lot of partners and partner versus vendor is a key distinction that I want to make, and I'm really excited to be here. I see the partnership, not only you have, but I'm super excited to be part of the third leg of that stool here and partner with you guys.

Vidya Balakrishnan (17:12):

Amazing. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you were facing at Fifth Third Bank that really prompted you to look out there for solutions.

Janna Wagoner (17:21):

Yep. Well, I said it before they nailed the problem statement. Exactly. Those problems that were outlined in the video or what we're dealing with, not only volume of disputes, but I'll call it the variety of disputes. So the more that we offer money, movement, ability to our customers, the more options. Either bad guys have to exploit that or customers just have a continuous learning curve of how to move that money. If and when. Anytime money is moved and it wasn't expected, you can expect a phone call. Our agents then have to know how to handle anything from a debit card dispute to a credit card dispute, Zelle a few years ago. How do you start to handle that? And so there's a lot of training involved systems that don't scale that. And so we are actually living in a two system world now. So we have debit and ACH and one credit card, Zelle and another, our agents have to know where to go. The customer, they don't care ACH wire, right? They just said, my money's not there, and they call in. And so we're really looking for a partner and technology that allows us to scale and not have to throw people at the problem every time, but one, understand our problem and continuously learn that problem and solve it with us.

Vidya Balakrishnan (18:35):

Great. Thanks, Janna. What would you say stood out most to you about the joint solution that we built alongside Visa?

Janna Wagoner (18:44):

Yeah, sure. So our current solution is just kind of a bespoke solution specific for disputes. And the experience that we've had with just even looking at the market was one that it was a little bit too niche. And so back to the being able to go across the actual back office of operations is really good. Think about employee experience, employee journey. If you start your career in the call center and then you switch to disputes right now, you have to learn an entirely different system. You don't get that 360 view. So when we started looking at ServiceNow, a couple of things stood out. One in their demo immediately about 80% of the problem was solved in just watching. So the commodity of just how the process works, we didn't have to give requirements to a vendor. It was already there. So that really allowed us now to focus on the customer experience.

(19:34):

What should this look like? How can we train? And we weren't worrying about you need an intake questionnaire, they got it solved. So that was awesome. And then the ongoing relationship with Visa really takes the guesswork of the network out of it. So today I need to talk to the network and understand what roles are changing. We obviously always know a regulatory, so Reg E, Reg Z, and then I have to give those two requirements to my vendors. And then I'm feeling that what if I dropped the ball? What if I didn't interpret the reg or the network compliance correctly? And then it's on us. And so this is so nice that it's pushed to us at least two times annually. We can pick and choose what to take, but the safety of knowing that these two have talked or right, the two companies have talked really again, takes the burden off and allows us to really focus on the customer.

Liz Chaffin (20:25):

Great. If we look ahead 12 to 24 months, what are some of the expected outcomes that Fifth Third think still see because of the ServiceNow dispute management platform with Visa that will have meaningful impact on your business?

Janna Wagoner (20:40):

So back to the two systems, about 80% of our total dispute volume is actually from debit. So in the next 12 months, we will move all of our debit disputes to ServiceNow, which will just be a huge lift in employee and customer experience just because of simply the volume that we deal with. It'll then allow us to start and learn and have the connection with not only our debit, but move credit card. We'll already have the network established, and so we'll end up being one single platform for all dispute in money movement types. I think throughout that journey then we're going to start to really take advantage of the AI that comes along with this. There's a lot of features that we can choose to turn on, so it's nice that we can then talk internally about the risk appetite we're willing to take, but really looking forward to one day, hopefully having a lot more straightforward intake, not always having to call in, which is what you have to do today. Who has time to call between eight to five, aren't we here? Aren't we working? And so really taking advantage of the AI that lays on top of that foundation.

Liz Chaffin (21:45):

So build upon that ai. AI is a very buzzworthy topic, especially in banking. How is Fifth Third thinking about AI innovation and were there key features you started to touch on some of them that we're a differentiator for Fifth Third?

Janna Wagoner (22:04):

Yeah, so one, our company, I'm really impressed with our CIO and even our CEO's vision on AI. They're really giving a lot of thought to it. And so it's super exciting to have it built into some of these. We've been focusing a lot on operational efficiency, especially as, again, back to that risk appetite of, there's still a little bit of nervousness of decision making for the customer. So we're doing a lot of adoption operationally to see how that can help specifically in this. So case notes today, an agent will go ahead and open up a dispute, take down what the customer is telling them happened, and then maybe a couple of days later, a new agent picks up the phone and it's the same customer wanting to just know the status. What this system allows now is AI actually gives you kind of a case summary.

(22:53):

And so it doesn't matter if you were Jenny agent on day one and had all the context, including customer sentiment and everything else, you really can allow anybody to pick up the phone and be really comfortable in what they're telling the customer. So I think that's a game changer. The other piece on that is I think most banks know there's always quality assurance and QC that happens. And so today we're listening to calls physically, and we're also having to go and saying, would we have made the same decision? This case summary will really allow us to even streamline the way we qa, qc, and the bodies. We need to do that by just allowing to see that summary. So those are some exciting things off the bat.

Vidya Balakrishnan (23:33):

Love it. Thanks Janna. So this was fantastic. Just any closing remarks or final thoughts?

Janna Wagoner (23:41):

Yeah, I mean, in closing, if you are a bank, just even thinking about this or you can resonate with me, so owning the dispute technology or fraud technology in my case and working with your operational partners, I think you feel this. I would say please come and talk to us next door about why we pivoted. Like I said, the partnership here is what's really incredible. You're already seeing it between two great companies. I've felt it since the day that we started partnering with ServiceNow on how they truly care about the same problem you're trying to solve. And I think that's really what I'm excited about is kind of being in that same boat. I mean, with payments changing as much as they are, I don't think anybody in this room can say that they're an expert. And so knowing that you're all in that same boat together is really super exciting.

Vidya Balakrishnan (24:26):

That's great. Fabulous. Thank you.

Janna Wagoner (24:29):

Thank you.

Vidya Balakrishnan (24:32):

My question, I think we can take them.

Audience Member 1 (24:34):

Are you taking questions?

Vidya Balakrishnan (24:35):

We can.

Janna Wagoner (24:35):

I think so.

Liz Chaffin (24:36):

I think we have time. We have time.

Audience Member 2 (24:38):

We got a great panel. Thank you so much for the insights, Liz and Nvidia, you talked about a 30% increase in disputes over the last several years. Is there any idea, any insight? You talked about a 30% increase in disputes. Is there any insights that you can share with us as to the worst offenders, what SIC codes, what MIDs are coming up at the top? Janna, you're looking at an MID report every day. If 80% of your disputes are coming from debit, is there any alignment with this increase in disputes With the increase in social commerce, which is growing at 40% a year, and you have TikTok shop turning on a hundred thousand new shoppers, influencers, creators completely vetted with ai. Nobody's calling 'em up and making sure that they're real. In fact, when you mystery shop TikTok shop, you'll find there's two ways to enroll. As a merchant. You can be a business which you have to go through the same business vetting if they were being a merchant acquired, but they encourage the creator influencer for the first time to simply do it as an individual. And so we're wondering if there's any insights around that, given the consumer payment preference for these younger first time SMBs to use, debit to pay and to accept. What insights can you share with us about the increase?

Liz Chaffin (26:11):

Yeah, I can start if you guys want to jump in after. So what I'll say is one, what we've seen is a dispute increase in volume. And as I mentioned, it's actually been pretty steady from a dispute to sales. So what we've seen is an absolute increase in sales, especially related to digital commerce. So if hit on a point, yes, we could certainly attribute some of that dispute growth to that changing commerce, right? Absolutely. Because that's where the sales growth has been. The largest volume of disputes is fraud. It's in the 70%. There is also an emerging trend of what we would call first party misuse or friendly fraud. So that's where the consumer has actually participated in the transaction. Great example of that is in digital commerce. I'm probably going to use a really bad example. I don't really use that type of commerce, so I can't even think of a game that you can use.

(27:15):

I don't use the games, but think of the gaming, the child rocking up the bill, the parent's like, oh gosh, I didn't do this. I don't want to pay for that, so I'm going to dispute it. We have seen an increase in that area. I think those are areas that we as a network are keenly focused on what we can do to help reduce that and help the merchants and make sure that there's proper education of consumers and put in protections as we learn in these emerging trends come about. How can we make it a more balanced playing field for everyone?

Audience Member 2 (27:52):

Jenna, any insights you can share from your MID on a generic basis? Yes. IC or category? And do you see pays playing a role here and given that JP Morgan just blocked Zelle transactions and the single greatest payment type on TikTok is PayPal and PayPal, right?

Janna Wagoner (28:09):

I don't know if I see the actual MID. What I do see is just an overall lack of education. And us as banks are really talking about how do we educate our customers. One scam is so big. I mean, the amount of text messages. Anybody get a text message and you're like, oh, my package from UPS, which can actually be true because of the stack of boxes. And so you click on it and it is just baked. And so it's really about being a smart consumer teaching not only your children, but that's a new skill you're going to have to teach kids that we didn't have to teach before because we had cash. And so I think it's the education that we can collectively do and the lack of education that we can really increase, because I don't think you're going to be able to always want to offer payment types and ways to move that money. But being safe about it and not falling into trap or knowing when something's a little bit too good to be true is really where I think we can partner really out of our control as the bank. But we can back to community. I know I was talking earlier in the keynote community colleague and what did he say earlier? I forget. We have the same kind of mantra of caring about that. It's us really educating that I think is going to be key versus actually trying to physically stop something.

Audience Member 2 (29:25):

Are you using the ServiceNow platform for Zelle transactions too?

Janna Wagoner (29:29):

At this point? We are not, but it is on the roadmap, yeah.

Vidya Balakrishnan (29:36):

Yeah, okay. I think we are out of time. However, yeah, the next slide, apologies. Next one. So encourage you all to visit us on the, we're happy to answer more questions out on the demo floor and share with you a demo over there as well. And then next slide. And then we have had some research. You're going to hear a whole lot more about it tomorrow at our innovation lunch, but we do have some research. You're welcome to scan the QR code and download that research as well for digital banking is our digital banking report. Thank you.