CHICAGO — Concerned about its ability to answer questions from 17,000 new members headed its way through a purchase and assumption of another CU, Alliant Credit Union turned to an online, product cross-reference tool that gave its staff all the information and confidence they needed to keep service levels high.
"We knew the P&A was going to bring a lot of calls," said Rosanne Hoogenboom, VP-human resources and administration, about the 2008 P&A with the Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiperm FCU, which had been operating under NCUA conservatorship. "The question was how would we manage those well?"
Kaiperm products were significantly different from Alliant's more streamlined offerings. The job at hand, Hoogenboom said, was to give its call center team of 35 the ability to match up what Kaiperm members had before the P&A with what they now had at Alliant. The CU turned to its employee intranet, COMPASS, and created an online tool that did just that.
"We already had our product information within our products and services module of COMPASS, so we just put Kaiperm's on it and mapped them to our existing products," Hoogenboom explained. "We made it very easy to use, and most information is just a click or two away."
The goal was to create a "one-stop shop, and we found out quickly that's what we had," Hoogenboom said. The first week the 250,000-member Alliant brought on Kaiperm members, staff received 70% more calls than during an average week. "We were able to handle all those calls," Hoogenboom pointed out. "The first day we took well over 4,000 calls and we normally take less than 2,500."
Not only was it an effective information resource, the tool also gave employees confidence to handle the inquiries. "That was key. We are very much a remote credit union," said Hoogenboom, noting the CU serves members nationwide. "We don't have a lot of face-to-face with members."
One way the $6.6-billion Alliant made sure the call center team was confident in the cross-reference tool was to carefully demonstrate it to them and let employees use it a few weeks before Kaiperm members came over. "After they saw the tool they told us, 'Bring on the calls.'"
In addition to staff handling all the extra calls well, what let Hoogenboom know that the cross-reference tool works were the lack of complaints from new members and the positive comments from her team about the support tool.
Before the P&A, Alliant had launched a new intranet and purchased the framework to build it from Passageways in Lafayette, Ind. The ability to create the cross-reference tool came from buying an additional software module to expand the intranet. Hoogenboom said the credit union did not track the cost to create the product-support section.
While the cross-reference tool was effective from the beginning, Hoogenboom said the credit union is improving it through employee input. "They tell us ways in which the tool can help them do their job better and we make the changes."
Best Practices CUJ 2009
CU: Alliant CU
Best Practice: Absorbing Merged CU
Vendor: Internal
