LAS VEGAS — An around-the-clock, full-service call center has markedly increased sales and membership while cutting expenses at two credit unions.
Loan application volume has increased by nearly one-third, and contact volume has increased by more than one-third, since Community One FCU here started outsourcing calls, emails and automated lending to Digital Dialogue's Total Member Care (TMC), said Denise Mora, VP-sales and service at the $160-million CU.
"These are distinct increases," said Mora. "And the vast majority of the increases is due to Total Member Care."
At Comstar FCU in Clarksburg, Md., the cost of each contact has been reduced by nearly 80% since the CU partnered with TMC one year ago, said Sally Fink, VP, member services at the $191-million CU. Each call or email costs under $5 with TMC, down from $22 per contact when it ran its own call center, she said.
Fink also credits TMC with helping to increase the number of services per member by 0.7. "That equates to maintaining our income during a very difficult year."
The spike in loan app volume at Community One can be attributed to new capabilities, including instant decisioning and approving and enrolling non-members, Mora said.
The fact that the CU is getting more calls and emails means that members are now finding it convenient to get in touch with Community One, she continued. With the "always-open" service provided by TMC since November, members can contact the CU at their leisure. In contrast, the CU used to run its own contact center during standard hours.
Typically, 20% to 30% of calls to CUs go unanswered because they are placed outside of regular business hours, said Peter Schmitt, president of Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Digital Dialogue. "The contact center is usually the largest unit at a credit union in terms of transactions, but the contact center doesn't always have the resources that other units do."
"We have a lot of members who work all night," Mora said. "Now, if someone wants to get a loan decision at 3 a.m., they can. And we're getting a lot of new memberships through TMC." Mora was not able to provide metrics demonstrating the number of memberships resulting from TMC.
Total Member Care offers a 24/7 bilingual call center; lending and account opening solutions; transaction processing; business continuity; and mobile banking, according to Digital Dialogue.
Call abandon rates at Comstar are at 3%, down from 15%, said Fink.
Comstar has learned a lot from TMC, continued Fink. "Reports give me the control to see what's going on with our membership and how we can improve." For example, members used to constantly call to get branch locations, according to TMC reports. Consequently, Comstar moved the "Locations" page on its website to make it easier to find-resulting in 400 fewer locations calls per month.
And the CU uses TMC to help keep members up-to-date during business interruptions, Fink said. In January, systems were down for nearly three days, but TMC used continually updated call scripts to keep members informed.
Both CUs spend at least an hour every day revising and adding call scripts based on previous interactions with members — Comstar currently has 450 scripts, said Fink. The time spent on scripting seems to pay off in more consistent interactions with members, she said.
"When I had nine people running my in-house call center, chances were they were giving out eight different answers to the same question," Fink said. "Now I know that when people are told about a loan or certificate special, they are getting the same information from a script."
