"Hello!" "This is your call center. I'm evolving into a more dynamic channel for banks to interact with their customers." If your call center could ring you up, that is probably what it would say.

• Author: Sablosky, Tanja Lian
• Position: Call Centers

Technology is enhancing the capability of the traditional call center. It is also making it more affordable, even for community banks.

In the past a call center was an expensive luxury employing hundreds of agents. Only big banks could afford one.

Today, changing technology has made the call center more affordable. Even community banks have small centers, some employing as few as four or five agents.

A call center is no longer merely an expense. Today's center is integrated with the bank's customer relationship management program and is expected to generate profit. In recent years, the center has:

* Increased the amount of information available to the agent to enable customer problems to be resolved more quickly.

* Improved the quality of customer service--through such tactics as using technology to service routine transactions, thus freeing up the agent's time to assist high-value customers.

With the advent of privacy-driven "do not call" laws, a typical center today de-emphasizes cold calls and, instead, focuses on each inbound call as an opportunity to either cross-sell or up-sell an existing customer.

ABA Bank Marketing magazine talked with a sample of vendors and asked them to describe how call centers are evolving and what these changes mean for bank marketing.

Making corporate knowledge available

Call centers and customer relationship management programs are starting to overlap, according to Igal Hauer, president of Help Desk Technology" Corp., which has its United States office in Crestview, Fla. To enhance customer service, banks today are creating a library of "corporate knowledge" for the call center. All agents can access this library. That way, there will be a consistent front presented to the customers and a readily available set of answers for the agents. A library of knowledge also decreases the need to put customers on hold while a more expert responder is located.

Hauer says that banks are becoming more sensitive to the importance of having a good call center. "If you don't do it right, you can lose money and damage your customer relationships."

For banks just starting a call center, Hauer recommends first establishing what the center's service objectives are and ensuring they are in line with the business objectives. "I am a big believer in quantification; everyone must buy into the business and performance targets for the call center to be a success--even your vendors and suppliers." As part of your assessment, establish objectives for call handling and resolution times. Focus on increasing first-call resolutions, and decreasing the need for passing the customer along to a second or third agent for resolution. For the future, Hauer believes both "process handling" and "information transfer" will become more automated. These improvements will allow agents to handle more complex questions and become "universal agents" capable of fielding all incoming calls.

Quick answers is key

One trend is toward providing the agents with more support and customer service options...