New Call Center Features Build Member Connections

Credit Union Magazine
July 1, 2005

The following four technologies are helping credit union call centers build meaningful member connections, according to Apropos T echnology Inc., a company based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.

Auto Callback

This technology allows members to hang up and keep their spot in the service queue instead of remaining on hold. The credit union calls members automatically when their names reach the front of the queue. This improves the credit union’s service, saves money on toll-free calls, and impresses members.

Web Chat

As members fill out credit union forms online for loan applications and so forth, there’s a high abandon rate when members get confused. With instant web chat, the member interfaces with a credit union agent via the Apropos system. This results in a higher rate of form completion, which means more business and revenue. This gives credit unions an advantage in the competitive online banking arena and helps them avoid losing members to big commercial banks.

Automatic Queue Prioritization

This allows credit unions to identify “high value” members. Calls from such members automatically are bumped to the front of the phone queue so they’re answered immediately.

Queue

This helps credit unions align multiple contact channels—fax, e-mail, phone calls, web chat—into one queue for the credit union agent to see. Most credit unions haven’t anticipated the way multiple communication channels have proliferated, and this technology combines channels into a common system that can be managed.

Atlantic Credit Union Keys on Priority Callers

Many credit unions find it difficult to provide high-touch member service in an increasingly high-tech world, where members are sophisticated and tech-savvy. Without the ability to drive credit union “brand recognition” through superior member services, credit unions risk losing both new and current members to other financial services providers.

Atlantic Credit Union in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, has more than 33,000 members and nearly $300 million in assets. Atlantic knows all about high-touch service in a high-tech world and, more important, how to provide it.

"Our systems are a big contributor to our customer relationship management-based culture,” says David Reis, the credit union’s vice president of information technology. “We recognized that providing just a simple call center wasn’t going to meet the needs of our members,” who are increasingly comfortable with e-mail and Internet interactions. Any call center Atlantic selected would have to embrace these emerging technologies.

Despite members’ widespread use of technology, phone calls continue to receive Atlantic’s highest priority. Using a powerful new prioritization engine, the credit union instantly links its higher priority, “high touch” members to its most skilled contact center representatives. This prevents long wait times and reduces the number of abandoned calls. Atlantic does this by identifying and prioritizing members according to their participation in the credit union.

Atlantic members enter their six-digit account number using an interactive voice response (IVR) system. That triggers the prioritization engine to query the open database connectivity-compliant core system database to determine the caller’s identity and level of financial participation with the credit union. Members demonstrating the highest participation levels receive the highest placement in the priority call queues, and such calls are handled by Atlantic’s most skilled and experienced phone representatives. Real-time caller prioritization also ensures that no member waits beyond service level limits. The contact center’s wait times averaged 25 seconds in 2004, a 20% improvement from 2003.

Perhaps more important, the system enables fewer phone representatives to handle sharply higher call volumes.

It also has reduced abandoned call rates more than 50% since 2002, when the credit union took 8,500 calls each month with an abandoned call average of 689 per month. During 2004, Atlantic took an average of 11,000 calls per month and abandoned call averages fell to 333 per month.

Atlantic’s new call center system delivers to representatives a single desktop visual queue noting the name of each member waiting on hold. It also can deliver a pop-up window noting the member’s transaction history. The queuing system integrates voice, voice mail, e-mail, and fax interactions, with voice receiving highest priority. The credit union expects to offer we- interaction capabilities in 2005.

This story originally appeared in Credit Union Magazine at www.creditunionmagazine.com and is reprinted with permission.