We need to "Talk": an inbound call center at a New Zealand bank has been cited for having the world's best customer service.

• Author: Brown, Edward G.
• Position: Call Centers - Company overview

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The secret?

The emphasis is on "great conversations' and not on sales quotas.

Bank call centers have a mixed history. Unlike their counterparts in telecommunications or credit cards. where call centers emerged as a primary interface with customers, bank call centers were largely established as "disintermediators." They were a way to get routine service interactions out of the branches and save the branches for presumably more high-value interactions.

As a result, many bank call centers acquired a second-class reputation. It may even be exacerbated today now that some banks see the call center as a crutch for customers who are reluctant or unable to bank online.

Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) was typical in that respect just a few short years ago. It was a good operation, but handicapped in ordinary ways, according to Susan Basile. now managing director of direct sales and service for the bank. With $50 billion (Australian dollars) in assets. BNZ is comparable in size to Mellon or First Horizon in the United States., serving more than 1 million customers with about 6,000 New Zealand employees.

Basile explained the situation when she joined the bank:

* Management's expectations were low when it came to the call center's impact on the customer experience: Just keep costs down, try to solve customers' problems quickly, and don't make things worse.

Basile recalls, "It was apparent we were performing to expectations; but expectations were not high enough, and that was reflected throughout the operation."

* A sometimes awkward relationship with the retail line of business prevailed. For a while, retail curtailed proactive call center outreach to new customers without prior approval from the branch where the customer relationship was owned. "If customers want to use the IVR (interactive voice response), they will tell us, and we will tell you."

* The call center often had little or no notice of new marketing campaigns, leaving agents unprepared for customer calls, resulting in unsatisfactory interactions and fulfilling already low expectations. "That was hard on our customer service results," Basile says, "and it was hard on morale."

* Call center technology changes were chancy, with decisions usually made by the information technology (IT) department based on then costs, not on broader benefits. IT was adept at estimating their own cost to make a change, but less skilled at estimating the cost for hundreds of agents to continue coping with, say, inconvenient screens or scattered information.

And the call centers' customer service numbers were far from stellar. Low expectations had been reinforced by hiring practices and shift changes that underemphasized service and led to high turnover and all the negative impact that entails. Basile recalls, "Agents didn't have regular hours or their own workspaces. Our centers were not attractive places to work. Turnover was high which meant we were not 'growing our own tomatoes'--creating...