Finance Industry White Paper Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions Compaq s best-of-breed partners, pretested components, and skilled implementation teams ensure successful call centers
3 Introduction 4 The importance of call centers in the financial services industry 4 Greater customer satisfaction 4 Reduced costs 4 Increased revenues 5 Key call center components 5 Agent/contact management 6 Channel information management 6 Computer telephony integration 7 Interactive voice response 7 Internet link 8 Why Compaq? 8 Skilled implementation teams 8 World-class performance and reliability 9 Best-of-breed solution partners 9 Proven credibility
Call centers have become the pivot points for a newly emerging service-oriented, retail delivery strategy for the financial services industry. Call centers offer financial institutions the optimal way to provide customer service, to interact with customers, and to deliver products effectively and efficiently. As we approach the year 2000, call center use will continue to grow dramatically as customers come to expect more and better services and as institutions come to rely on call centers to reduce costs, increase revenues, and provide greater customer satisfaction. Implementing a successful call center is a complex and challenging task involving the integration of many hardware and software technologies. By offering robust, competitive call center solutions based on world-class hardware, partnerships with best-of-breed solution providers, and the experience of highly skilled implementation teams, Compaq can help financial institutions meet the business needs of the new millennium. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 3
The importance of call centers in the financial services industry The total call center market around the world is in a major expansion mode, with annual growth rates of 30 percent in the United States, and 35 percent in Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions. Call centers are key to the success of today s financial institutions. According to Mentis Corporation, 60 percent of institutions with deposits of at least US$500 million are making call centers their strategic point of channel integration. As new technology and new business models are developed, call centers are providing new, increasingly integrated services and are becoming more focused on effective selling and customer relationship management. Ultimately, the centralization of information access will allow agents to provide support from any location to any customer, at any time, and through any remote channel including telephone, automated teller machine (ATM), personal computer, or the Internet. A well-designed call center offers many significant benefits to financial institutions, including the following: Greater customer satisfaction Reduced costs Increased revenues Greater customer satisfaction Call centers form a key link between an organization and its customers. A good call center is easy to use, readily available through the telephone or a modem connection, and maintains the personal contact needed for good customer relations. Customers receive the service or information they need quickly and conveniently, with a minimum of delay or rerouting. Reduced costs An effective call center empowers agents to handle calls more efficiently, reducing personnel costs. Easy questions can be automated using interactive voice response (IVR) or Internet technology, freeing human resources for sales opportunities and more complex service issues. Increased revenues Sales can be increased by maximizing each customer contact and by generating new opportunities by marketing to segments of one. A segment of one is an individual customer that visits a branch or contacts the financial institution through the call center or other electronic delivery channel. This personalized point of contact presents the perfect opportunity for the financial institution to service the customer while offering information about new products and services that are appropriate for the customer s needs, enabling the financial institution to take advantage of the customer contact to gain wallet share. A call center can overcome both time differences and physical barriers that may limit customer access to the financial institution. Around-the-clock access using both telephony and Web technologies are often the most cost-effective ways to service customers and to enter or test new markets. When faced with competitive pressures, adding a call center to enhance customer contact and service is a good way to retain customers valued by the organization, while shedding clients that would be better served at another organization. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 4
Key call center components Technology spending in call centers is estimated by Brean Murray Research to be approximately US$3 billion per year for the U.S. market alone. Compaq provides a total call center solution that integrates five key components: Agent/contact management Channel information management Computer telephony integration Interactive voice response Internet link These components consist of bestof-breed software products that are deployed on Compaq s world-class enterprise servers and workstations. Agent/contact management In a call center, agents or service representatives work through the telephone and, increasingly, the Internet. They receive inbound calls from customers to answer questions, provide advice, and respond to other requests for service, and they make outbound calls to support customers or to seek new or additional business. They may be located worldwide and may speak different languages. Managing agents and their workflow is critical to the success of the call center. Compaq has assembled a powerful suite of products, partners, and services to build a complete call center solution tailored to your exact requirements. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 5
Compaq s agent/contact management component integrates customer service and sales activities, such as Service request management Contact management Team activities Customer surveys Sales opportunities and account management The agent/contact management products are customizable to meet the look, feel, and workflow requirements of diverse organizations. They are ideally suited for global enterprises by providing multiplecurrency and multiple-language support, and are scalable to support large and expanding organizations. Channel information management Most financial institutions have a collection of independent back-office legacy systems and databases on which they run various business operations, such as checking accounts, savings accounts, loans, and credit card accounts. For a call center to be effective, agents must have access to the information in all of these systems. The channel information management component of a call center performs this role by integrating the back-office systems to provide a consolidated customer view. Through its partnerships with software vendors, Compaq provides a complete set of powerful, easy-to-use modules for the following activities: Viewing up-to-the-minute, real-time customer information, including account transactions and balances; family, demographic, and employment data; credit and profitability evaluations; and cross-selling opportunities Automating sales functions, such as customer planning, sales analyses, and diary management Performing marketing activities, including market segmentation, product planning, and sales campaigns Setting up security measures to restrict access to authorized users Computer telephony integration All call centers use a network carrier to provide the physical telephone service and a private branch exchange or queue system to route calls in and out of the call center. The queue system often uses computer telephony integration (CTI) technology. CTI is a layer that enables call identification, such as automatic number identification (ANI) or calling line identification (CLI). CTI technology extracts the caller s phone number and sends the phone number to a computer for identification. The computer searches its database for caller-specific data and sends instructions back to the queue on how to handle the call. The queue routes the call along with caller-specific information to an agent. Eighty-five percent of call center managers anticipate that by the end of 1998 their institutions will offer PCbased banking; 75 percent will offer Internet-based banking. Mentis Corporation Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 6
Compaq call center solutions unify and integrate multiple and diverse devices, applications, and media, including Telephony systems public and private network switches, automatic call distribution (ACD) devices, and IVR systems Corporate systems Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Microsoft SQL Server databases Multiple sites both formal and informal call centers, including agents working remotely Call center applications enterprise or call center specific programs Diverse media voice, data, e-mail, Internet, video, and fax Interactive voice response In addition to the carrier, switching and queue systems, and CTI layer, good inbound call centers will use an IVR system. IVR systems recognize telephone touch-tone input or interpret prestaged spoken commands to gather additional information about the call and provide predetermined answers. Increasingly, IVR systems are becoming the standard used by call centers because operating costs are lower than those of a staffed call center. In addition, the caller may be offered access to a live agent via the IVR system. Compaq s IVR solutions provide a broad range of interactive information services, including call directing, voice messaging, outbound dialing, speech recognition and voice verification, text-to-speech conversions, script generation, fax processing, and voice-activated dialing. Through its partners, Compaq offers an open application that enables the creation and deployment of self-service financial applications across the enterprise. Internet link Forward-looking institutions will take advantage of the explosive growth of the Internet to provide a powerful new link to customers. Inbound and outbound functions of the call center can now be interfaced to Web servers, browsers, and the Internet. Web-based contact with customers provides a financial institution with an extremely low-cost, low-maintenance, cross-platform interface to customers. The learning curve for agents and customers is minimal, and the opportunities for customer self-service and cross selling of products to segments of one are numerous. Customers can access the institution 24 hours a day from any place in the world and receive personalized face-to-face contact with a bank representative using today s video conferencing capabilities. The itp NetACD solution from Compaq adds telecommunications functionality with voice, video, and data over the Internet. By clicking a button on the company s home page, the customer activates a plug-in, which pops up a window. Through that window, the customer can be connected directly with an agent in the company s call center. The customer and the agent can talk to and see each other and can exchange information. An optional video streamer is available that allows the customer to view video clips. The customer does not need special equipment to access this functionality. Most PCs running Windows 95 can access the itp NetACD Plugin component. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 7
Why Compaq? Compaq s mission is to be the leader in the financial services market segment by delivering high-value expertise, solutions, products, and services leveraging Compaq fundamentals to enable our customers success. Although many of the components of call center technology are readily available from a variety of vendors, the successful implementation of a call center requires proven methods, world-class application software, and an experienced and highly skilled professional services organization. Skilled implementation teams Compaq s wide range of professional services are available to help you implement the call center dictated by your needs. These services span the full life cycle of implementation and support services, including workflow analysis, network design, legacy system migration, custom application development, integration of off-the-shelf software, training, ongoing maintenance, and future enhancements. The Compaq Services organization has an unmatched set of technical and project management skills and is a leader in NonStop Kernel, OpenVMS, UNIX, and Windows NT operating system implementations. With more certified systems integrators than any other vendor, we can help you customize and integrate the offerings of our partners and our own products into a seamless set of tools for your call center. Because of our experience in the financial services industry and call center environments, the Compaq Services organization can help reduce your implementation costs, eliminate the risk of an ineffective implementation, and improve your time to market. World-class performance and reliability Financial organizations worldwide depend on NonStop Himalaya, AlphaServer, and ProLiant enterprise servers from Compaq to provide 24-hour-a-day, 7-daya-week (24 x 7) availability to business-critical resources. More than 700 of the world s leading banks use Compaq servers, including the top 25 banks in the United States. Every year Compaq solutions support 80 percent of all ATM transactions, 66 percent of all credit card transactions, 75 percent of the electronic funds transfer (EFT) networks, and 95 percent of all equities transactions, handling more than 60 percent of the world s money (US$1.7 trillion). Compaq s own internal call center was named Best Call Center of 1997 by Call Center Magazine (January 1998). Superior customer service, awesome technologies, and the ability to anticipate change were cited. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 8
These impressive statistics confirm Compaq s reputation as a global leader in performance and reliability. Building on these strengths, Compaq call center solutions provide High-availability, high-reliability, and high-performance servers to guarantee data integrity and service during periods of peak load Scalability of system architecture to meet the needs of future growth and services evolving from the Internet Open access to a variety of computing platforms, networks, and applications to protect your investment in technology State-of-the-art software to ensure your competitive position Best-of-breed solution partners Compaq combines the best computing platforms with software from its award-winning partners to create superior call center solutions. Compaq s partners bring the right mix of financial services expertise and application software to enable you to provide allencompassing and intelligent customer care. The software provided by partners links voice response systems, telephony equipment, and the Internet with local and remote databases, data warehouses, backoffice systems, and channel information management systems. The integration and scope of support provided by these products empowers your call center agents to establish a personal relationship with your customers. Call center agents can now retrieve customer profiles and product information, act as consultants to cross sell additional services, track callbacks, submit orders, and resolve problems faster and more efficiently than ever before. Proven credibility The credibility of Compaq s call center solutions is borne out by awards they have received. The Compaq customer service call center was named Best Call Center of 1997 by Call Center Magazine (January 1998) in the category of high-tech product support (hardware). The magazine cited superior customer service, awesome technologies, and the ability to anticipate change as the distinguishing characteristics. Faced with increased competition, Compaq sought ways to maintain its reputation for customer service without increasing costs or reducing profits. Compaq s innovative technology integrated AlphaServer systems, Siebel Systems contact management software, and Clarify help desk software to make each call center agent more productive without loss of customer satisfaction. The Houston call center was networked with call centers in Atlanta, Ireland, Singapore, and Japan to provide disaster recovery and around-the-clock backup. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 9
Compaq s call center technology is also showcased at General Revenue Corporation, a nationwide collection firm located in Cincinnati, Ohio. General Revenue Corporation was recognized by Call Center Magazine (January 1997) with a Best Call Center of 1996 award in the category of collections. The General Revenue Corporation call center employs 150 agents that handle nearly 20,000 inbound calls and that make more than 50,000 outbound calls each month. The call center integrated the company s legacy collection management system with NonStop Himalaya servers and InterVoice s IVR systems, enabling agents to service inbound calls more efficiently while increasing outbound calling capacity. General Revenue Corporation recently increased its system capacity to accommodate the call center s growing business. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 10
Benefits to financial institutions Reduced risk of failed implementations Compaq call center solutions offer the following benefits to help financial institutions compete in today s challenging business environment: Reduced operating costs Compaq solutions use only the best, most proven third-party software. Well-trained and highly skilled implementation teams have vast experience with financial services institutions. Automated, self-service banking reduces person- All call center components have been nel costs and enables fewer and smaller branch pretested, ensuring seamless integration offices. and reliable operation. Internet commerce lowers the cost-per-sale by reducing unnecessary human intervention. An integrated channel information interface reduces development and maintenance time, leading to reduced programming costs. Potential to bring in new revenues Compaq call centers make it easy for customers to interface with the financial institution. Improved efficiency of customer contact and in-depth customer knowledge provides Faster time to market for new services and products opportunities for cross selling. Consolidated customer profiles allow institutions New programs and services can be added with minimal programmer intervention, improving time to market. The ability to track customer data through customer relationships and integrated channel information allows telemarketing and telesales campaigns to be customized for target customers and customer segments that are the most receptive. to identify their most profitable customers. Call Center Solutions for Financial Institutions 11
For more information Access the Tandem website at http://www.tandem.com. Send Internet e-mail messages to info@tandem.com. For sales offices worldwide, access Compaq s website at http://www.compaq.com. Compaq and the names of Compaq products referenced herein are either trademarks and/or service marks or registered trademarks and/or service marks of Compaq Computer Corporation. Himalaya, itp, NetACD, and NonStop are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tandem Computers Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. SQL Server is a registered trademark of Sybase, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the U.S. and other countries. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Technical specifications and availability are subject to change without notice. 1998 Tandem Computers Incorporated. All rights reserved. October 1998 98-0585 5K ARBN 002 588 347 Order number 110074