Commerce Bancorp Inc. of Cherry Hill, N.J., is updating its call centers to keep track of how customers navigate its interactive voice response system.
Alexander J. Krantz, a senior vice president at Commerce Bank, said the first phase of the project uses software that tracks and analyzes the options people select and when they ask for help from an operator.
"We see people opting out of the IVR at certain points," he said. That knowledge enables Commerce to perform "a little bit of housecleaning" to make the voice system more user-friendly and reduce the need to speak to a service representative.
The software is from ClickFox Inc. of Atlanta. Commerce has been using it for about three months.
The second phase of the project will be connecting that software with a Kirchman call-center system the bank is installing. The vendor is Metavante Corp.
The Kirchman project has been in development for more than 18 months. Forty customer-service representatives are testing the system now, and more than 600 will be using it by mid-November, Mr. Frantz said.
Commerce plans to integrate the automated tracking system with the call-center system early next year. Doing so will enable call-center staff to see which options the customer had selected before seeking their help.
"We get a screen-pop showing us some of the navigation the customer has done … in the interest of providing them a better experience without having to repeat a lot of information," Mr. Frantz said.
Commerce also plans to integrate the ClickFox software into its Web site, and perhaps its automated teller machines, next year. Mr. Krantz said the software will help its bankers understand "the choices that customers make and why they make them."
"We want to know all the doors that a customer comes in through," he said.
