Close call: ensuring that your phones get answered: are your frontline people struggling to juggle incoming telephone calls with the needs of lobby customers? Consider the advantages of a call center ...

• Author: Floyd, John M.
• Position: Fundamentals

Is your bank one of the few that hasn't established a call center yet? Then you probably weren't aware that today only 11 percent of an average bank's customers ever walk into the lobby and less than 30 percent use the drive-up window.

Now that you know the facts, you might consider the benefits of a call center.

You surely realize that your personal bankers regularly have to choose between answering their phones and taking care of the customers standing in front of them. In addition, your loan officers too often let their phones ring when they're on a deadline. In either situation, the customer loses.

More banking customers today are choosing to do business online, by phone or through ATM machine. With a call center, your employees can serve customers in the best manner possible. By having your call center staff more highly trained in the questions that can be answered over the phone, your customers will no longer be passed from one banker to another to get a specific question answered.

Call centers also are cost-effective to operate. You'll need fewer people in the lobby to manage one-to-one issues with customers and fewer people in operations because you can consolidate all those calls and send them to one place. You'll be able to run with a leaner staff or, better yet, you'll be able to grow without adding staff.

What are the signs that your bank could benefit from a call center?

The volume of calls that are picked up in the lobby versus the number of walk-in customers. When your employees have to choose whether to help the person in the lobby or answer the phone, nobody wins. You're guaranteed to upset at least one of your customers and possibly lose that person's business if it happens repeatedly.

The workload in your back office. If the operational areas for loan administration can't handle the load, it's time in seriously consider a call center.

There are a number of reasons why some banks have not yet made the change to a call center structure. And the fear of change may be number one.

Current employees play an important role in your bank and its future. Their opinions matter, and some may resist the idea of a call center because they don't want to give up the face-to-face interaction with their favorite customers or feel as if they are passing their responsibilities on to someone else. Truth be told, the customers who are more inclined to bank by phone aren't walking into your bank's lobby to do business anyway.

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