Delivering excellent customer care is something in which South Carolina Bank and Trust (SCBT) prides itself. The $2.4 billion community-based bank, with 45 financial centers in 16 counties, provides its customers with a full range of retail and commercial banking services, mortgage lending services, trust and investment services, and consumer finance loans. But it hasn’t lost its smalltown hospitality, taking a hands-on approach to dealing with its customers and greeting callers with a real person rather than a machine. In its branches, employees are empowered to make the best decisions right on the spot for quick customer resolution from loans to deposit services.
That customer-centric philosophy – epitomized by its motto “How Can We Make Your Day?” – has helped SCBT to win over new customers and expand their relationship with existing ones. The mission for South Carolina Bank and Trust is to become South Carolina’s premiere community bank with a focus on customers and the communities served. With the bank’s continued success and growth, there is growing pressure on its busy contact center. SCBT’s customer care representatives (CCRs) are all cross-trained and working in the same queue, handling all of the bank’s incoming calls from its tens of thousands of customers over a wide of range of inquiries, from everyday account questions, Online Banking, Online BillPay, eStatements, Phone Banking, to all other customer contacts, no matter how unusual.
As a result, the bank fought a persistent battle to ensure that the right number of CCRs was available to handle customer inquiries at all times. While SCBT found that its service levels were comparable to many other call centers, it pushed itself to do even better, given its focus on delivering fast, friendly, and accurate service – a philosophy that the bank has held since opening its doors in 1934.
Other customer-service challenges include having limited visibility into its contact center performance, making it difficult to know if and when CCRs should be scheduled for training classes. This resulted in some representatives not having as many skills as desired to ensure total customer service. In addition, some agents felt frustrated because they could not expand their areas of expertise.
Since 2000, the bank had contemplated deploying a workforce optimization (WFO) solution, but its existing PBX switch could not support such capabilities, despite GMT’s best efforts to integrate with that legacy technology. SCBT was left with the unenviable option of hiring more representatives (it was thinking of adding three more, at the cost of about $100,000 per year, including benefits, recruiting, training, etc.) or continuing along with its current service. Yet, even if it added more employees, it would not have been clear what impact that change would have on call volume and customer service.
In 2006, SCBT decided to invest in new technologies to increase efficiency, including a new voice-over-IP (VoIP) switch, which opened the door for a WFO solution since the new PBX switch could support the type of integration not allowed by the legacy switch. GMT’s Planet – a highlyacclaimed workforce management system that helps companies to enhance customer service and increase sales revenue while controlling payroll expenses – was selected after an extensive evaluation of available WFO solutions.
“I have been working in call centers for 18 years and know that a contact center needs three critical things: a good routing switch, deep reporting capabilities, and knowing what to do with that data,” said Debby Pendleton-Smith, vice president and contact center director at SCBT. “Cisco’s IPCC Express switch took care of the first part, and GMT handled the rest. It was a perfect fit, so much so that we still refer to the integration as a ‘marriage’ between two powerful technology partners.”
Support after the sale was a prime concern to SCBT. Her interactions with GMT sales and support personnel during and after the sales cycle have been very positive: “There had been cases where other vendors’ support teams all but vanished once a product was purchased. GMT has been with me every step of the way. They really impressed us over the other major vendors we considered.”
Another plus was that GMT Planet’s user interface was easy to navigate and provided SCBT with keen insights into what was happening in its contact center. With one click, the manager received a snapshot of the contact center’s effectiveness – breaking performance down into 15 minute intervals and outlining how many calls came in, how many were abandoned, ASA, and what staff was available to handle the calls. Once the contact center director has this information, changes can be made on the fly to maximize employee efficiency. If the contact center had a significant change, such as an unexpected absence or a sudden influx of calls, the director can see its potential impact on customer care quality and swap schedules to make sure there are adequate personnel to handle the contact volume.
The GMT solution led to a number of significant improvements at SCBT. The bank’s agent occupancy rate improved from about 80% to now 99.5%, meaning that agents are busy handling customer calls. SCBT’s average speed to answer (ASA) dropped from 45 seconds to 10 seconds, and the number of abandoned calls dropped from 18 percent to less than six percent. These improvements occurred without a staff increase and even with a 25% rise in call volume from 1,600 per day to an average of 2,000 each day.
That progress was noticed and appreciated by customers, and therefore bank managers and executives were happy too. Now, requests for new items, such as staff bonuses or salary increases, have become much more credible – boosting employee satisfaction which, in turn, completes the cycle by driving customer satisfaction. Customer care representatives are now able to develop professionally in training classes that can be scheduled months in advance. Their workday is also less stressful: because GMT’s Planet is so efficient at scheduling workflow in a dynamic environment, agents now have twice the number of breaks than previously, and they could enjoy a normal lunch at a normal hour without worry about being called back to their desk early because of understaffing.
SCBT has found the GMT system so effective in getting the most from its resources and in elevating customer service that the bank has licensed and is implementing GMT Planet to help staff its retail bank branches. Now, SCBT will be able to measure teller activities across branches and reallocating resources as needed for better in-person customer service.
With the help of GMT Planet, this community bank can continue to deliver that personal touch that customers love. Pendleton-Smith added, “GMT truly lives up to its promise of delivering solutions that are accurate, easy, affordable, and everywhere – helping us beyond just the contact center.”
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