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Heritage Trust FCU Improves Call Center Performance By 50%


 

Credit unions are unique in the financial world: Because the members are the owners, there are no shareholders to whom profits must be paid. Everything is returned to members in the form of better rates on loans and deposits and lower or no fees on products and services. Summerville, South Carolina-based Heritage Trust Federal Credit Union is intent on providing a place where members can find not only service offerings, but answers and solutions. To achieve that, HTFCU is committed to continually providing member service excellence across all of its business units — including its contact center.

Opportunity
With more than 70,000 members, call center agents handle close to 1,000 calls daily in the Heritage Trust Call Center located at the corporate office in Summerville. These inbound and outbound interactions include tasks such as opening new accounts, taking loan and second mortgage applications, purchasing certificates of deposits, setting up appointments for investment purposes, assisting in researching/resolving account problems, and issuing ATM and debit cards. To effectively meet its members’ service expectations, HTFCU decided to invest in a solution to monitor and record member interactions to ensure the highest levels of service were being delivered. And, as a financial institution, HTFCU needed to record 100 percent of its calls for compliance purposes. Prior to purchasing a customer interaction recording solution, the company’s recording method consisted of voice recorders on the telephone, which proved to be both inefficient and unreliable. It was clear that HTFCU needed to invest in call recording technology that was fully automated. Ease of use, reliability, and robust archival capabilities were all additional characteristics the company desired in the recording technology it would select. An additional requirement — to meet network infrastructure needs — stipulated the solution had to operate within its converged Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) environment.

Solution
To fulfill its customer interaction recording needs, HTFCU implemented ContactStore for IP, Witness Systems’ recording platform that allows for 100 percent customer interaction recording in an IP environment. HTFCU selected ContactStore for IP based on its high reliability and archival simplicity.

“In our selection process, we needed a compliance solution to meet our regulatory requirements first and foremost, but HTFCU also needed a fully reliable, scalable system that would work in tandem with our existing IP infrastructure. For these and other functionality capabilities, we invested in ContactStore for IP,” explains Ariel Smith, Network Services Manager at HTFCU.

ContactStore for IP handles HTFCU’s call volumes with great ease, recording 100 percent of the credit union’s member interactions. Further, the solution makes managing the captured interactions much easier. According to Smith, supervisors are able to work 30 percent more efficiently because the solution is so user-friendly.






ContactStore for IP also met HTFCU’s archival needs. Like most financial services companies, HTFCU needed to archive its calls for one year. The credit union needed fast access to these interactions through efficient archive and retrieval. ContactStore for IP automatically tags and categorizes calls, so when interactions are stored, they can be easy to retrieve — for instance, in the case of a dispute. Once a call is located, it can be played and restored back into the system within a matter of seconds.

Since implementing ContactStore for IP, the solution has helped HTFCU make great strides in its delivery of service. Its supervisors live-monitor calls on a daily basis to ensure the highest levels of service are delivered. Being able to listen to an interaction real-time provides the opportunity for HTFCU supervisors to offer immediate feedback on the best ways to handle members’ requests. Using the solution’s “Exec Record” function, supervisors can record and save the interaction from beginning to end, regardless of when the recording was initiated. Additionally, recorded interactions for each call center agent are reviewed and evaluated weekly, and performance scores are incorporated into quarterly and annual reviews.

“From a certain standpoint, a member calling for a particular service is the boss — we want to make sure his or her experience with our call center agents reflect the highest caliber of service,” comments Smith.

Using ContactStore for IP, call center agents are trained using ‘best practice’ interactions that were captured using the solution. This means HTFCU is able to deliver real-life scenarios to call center agents to enhance the training experience. Agents are then coached on the elements of a high quality contact.

“Since we started using ContactStore for IP, we’ve seen our call center agent performance scores increase by 50 percent,” says Smith. “By observing the qualities of high-value calls, our call center agents are able to experience and replicate how to most effectively answer questions and offer solutions, which, in turn, keeps our members happy.”





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