Five ways credit unions benefit from scale and efficiency of CUSO call center
As credit unions offer more services that must be supported by their front-line teams, the business of supporting members across a diverse range of financial products becomes increasingly complex. And while the availability and usage of self-serve channels is rising, members will always have a need to speak to a knowledgeable resource in a call center.
But building and running a member services call center demands excellence in multiple disciplines including technology, recruiting, hiring, and workforce forecasting and managing. Much has already been written about the value of scale as a cost-saver when it comes to call center necessities, such as facilities, talent, security, technology and training. However, there are also other “hidden” elements that contribute to the overall cost and efficiency of a call center resource.
Consider the case of a call center that helps members resolve questions and issues related to their credit union debit, credit, bill pay, digital wallet, and online and mobile banking solutions. Here are five call center service areas that each involve expenses and fees that may go overlooked or understated when credit unions seek to build and maintain their own call center capability.
- Home Banking and Non-Standard Applications. Home banking and other non-standard applications typically involve extra expense because member calls frequently must be routed to a team of specially trained agents who then use systems that require a flat monthly fee, which can vary based on the system and its required level of support. As part of enterprise risk management, systems not developed in-house should undergo a security and technical risk review, which means the credit union must administer or contract for auditing and compliance services.
On the telephony side, Dialed Number Identification Service might be needed so that incoming calls can be routed to the agents who are trained on the home banking platform.
Home banking system conversions also require several teams of people, including an implementation manager, script writers, and, for some projects, trainers. Extra agents may be required to manage the call volume on the actual conversion date.
- Core System Conversions. Core conversions and shared branching-to-direct conversions require extensive testing and scripts may need to be updated. These activities will add an additional layer of effort and expense.
- Premium Scripting. Credit unions may have many hundreds of scripts, some of which are rarely used. There is the added expense of a system to create and maintain those scripts. Further, a large number of scripts increases the risk of errors by making it difficult for agents to find the correct ones; it also takes longer to locate them, which increases call length and can lead to excessive wait times for members.
- Quality Monitoring. Call quality monitoring, which should be a standard best practice to validate proper service execution, staff performance and ensure member satisfaction, comes with an additional price of QA experts and tools.
- While credit unions can rather easily administer training on their own standard systems and procedures, training on third-party systems may add another layer to the overall cost of supporting a call center.
Depending on where call center service ranks in a credit union’s menu of core competencies, it may well be far more efficient to leverage the scale and depth of a credit union service organization’s call center that can spread its costs across its entire base of credit union owners.
