Call Center Certification

BenchmarkPortal Inc. and The Center for Customer-Driven Quality have recently recertified Church Mutual Insurance Co.’s National Customer Service Center as a Center of Excellence.

As one of only two businesses in Wisconsin to achieve recertification from BenchmarkPortal (News - Alert), the Merrill-based Church Mutual Insurance underwent scrutiny and examination from BenchmarkPortal researchers. BenchmarkPortal’s standards include call centers meeting objective, and quantitative criteria, as well as passing audits.

Church Mutual President and CEO Mike Ravn stated, “The (national call center) is an essential component of our value proposition. It is the front line of service to our customers and represents our company well.”

Employing 85 people, the call center became fully staffed in October 2007 and supports more than 90,000 of the company’s customers in 44 states. The call center handles more than 530,000 calls a year, and is highly successful with a rate of problem resolution on the first call of 99 percent. The industry average is 84.6 percent.

Church Mutual insures more than 100,000 religious organizations in the U.S. Assistant Vice President of Sales Craig Wessman stated that the company’s call answer time is one small part of what the company is all about. "It really reflects an attitude and philosophy to meet the needs of our customer," he said. The average time it takes Church Mutual operators to answer a call is 12 seconds.

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.

Edited by Juliana Kenny