A Credit Union in California was operating on an old Nortel PBX platform that also supported its various call center applications.
The Credit Union was not able to accurately measure customer service and agent productivity metrics as the reporting application was delivering confusing, incomplete and contradictory information. Agent productivity was diminished as separate agents had to be dedicated to answer e-mail requests, respond to web chats and respond to voice mails left by members who grew tired of long wait times in the queue. During peak calling times there was no ability to incorporate idle branch staff to assist with member service requests.
Communication Strategies conducted a review of all business functional requirements, meeting with representatives of key departments, resulting in a system design and a Request for Proposal. The system design included the following improvements:
- Ability to blend telephone calls, e-mails, web chats and call back requests into a blended Contact Center, with full monitoring and reporting capabilities across all media
- Record all member service calls with the ability to easily retrieve specific calls as required for coaching and training
- Ability to add branch staff to Contact Center quickly during peak calling times
- Incorporation of redundant appliances at a collocation facility, backing up all key telephony applications
- Ability to perform screen pop from back office database to agents along with call delivery, saving up to 20 seconds per call
Communication Strategies prepared a detailed review and evaluation of RFP responses including a 5 year TCO comparison and weighted scoring process comparing system architecture, functional applications and vendor support capabilities. Hands on presentations allowed the Credit Union team to compare solutions. Once the solution was selected Com-Strat provided key project oversight, which included weekly status meetings and the development and execution of a detailed test plan and system acceptance process. Six months later, the Credit Union has deployed the solution across all locations, and experienced significant reductions in member wait times and call abandonment.
Improved metrics allow the Credit Union to optimize agent staffing and handle more member service requests without increasing head count. In the future the Credit Union plans to roll out additional applications including speech analytics, which will target problem calls on a real time basis for on the spot attention
