The combination of consumers waiting on hold for a customer service rep, redialing when they get the wrong department, sifting through an endless series of IVR options and then hanging up in frustration can be a toxic mix when it comes to customer retention.
Some banks, such as Provident Bank, are combining the latest in call routing engines with data mining capabilities culled from CRM systems to dramatically reduce call duration while working to make sure the time customers do spend on the phone is fruitful. The New Jersey-based bank, which would not make an executive available for an interview, recently deployed hosted call center services that aim to get consumers to their proper location within the bank-and to do that as quickly as possible by quickly getting an array of customer data to the reps' desktop.
"The agents can do more, the customer can get higher satisfaction, and we've found that our agents do not have to add staff even if they're growing because they're able to squeeze out more efficiency if the call center is a better-tuned machine," says Bruce Dresser, chief strategy and marketing officer for Echopass, which provides call center technology for Provident and other financial and non-financial clients.
Dresser says that by using his firm's system, Provident is able to answer 80 percent of calls inside of 20 seconds, with inbound call duration cut by about 40 percent. The bank, which handles about 350,000 calls per month, was also able to scrap a planned hire of 10 extra call center reps because the tech deployment allows more calls to be handled in less time.
Echopass' call center platform, EchoSystem, integrates Genesis call routing technology with CRM technology. That allows the bank to quickly move callers to the right department, such as mortgages, cards, auto loans, general customer service, Spanish-speaking reps, etc.
And when the customers get to the right place, a complete picture of that consumer's financial relationship and transaction history are at the bank representative's disposal for a quick and detailed session. "The customer data is there when they call in. If they are dealing with IVR, the customer's information is going to get to the live agent's desktop when the customer gets to that agent," Dresser says. The system also attempts to reduce expenses by lowering the infrastructure necessary for deployment. "We manage the whole infrastructure. The agent just needs a PC and an IP phone," Dresser says.
Provident's approach to call center improvement-marrying call time reduction with new routing technology-mirrors the efforts of a number of other financial institutions that find themselves with the same challenge of keeping customers from hanging up and spreading bad word of mouth because of a bad IVR experience.
Christine Pratt, research director for consumer banking and credit at Financial Insights, says that since quality service is a pillar of customer retention, the push is to understand who the customer is before a call even takes place. "It's a differentiating service to speed the answering of call and directing the calls as they come in."
Don Edman, vp in charge of operations for Fiserv Lending Solutions-which is an outsourcer of contact center services for large financial institutions-says it's important to provide consistently positive experiences for consumers because word of bad experiences travels fast. "One bad experience will be shared with others, and you don't want to lose people because of that," Edman says.
Fiserv's unit incorporates segmenting, with the goal of getting the consumer to the agent best suited to handle a specific call. He also says it's helpful to make the "hold" time less painful by determining the expected hold time for a call, then adding about 10 seconds when announcing it to the customer who's on hold. "We do that so we always exceed your expectations," he says. "The other thing we do is we make an announcement saying you can press 'zero' or 'one' to go to voicemail, or you can opt out and send us an e-mail. That helps the customers feel like they're still in control."
Edman says workforce management is also an important part of the equation. By determining peak days and times, staffing can be adjusted accordingly. "We're constantly analyzing volume to adjust the schedules of our workers, so we have the right amount of people at the right time. We also have the ability to route calls to home agents, who get the spill over volumes at their home centers over their VoIP."
Jerry Silva, research director for TowerGroup, says it's important to remember the profiling part of the equation, the idea of getting the customer to the right person, since trimming call and wait time isn't the ultimate goal. "IP is lowering communication costs, so it doesn't make sense to focus just on time," Silva says.
