Elevations Credit Union reaches new heights in productivity and staffing efficiency with GMT Planet. | GMT

GMT Boosts Productivity, Shrinks Staffing Costs for Elevations Credit Union

GMT Planet drastically boosts service levels while associated productivity gains enable 15% savings in staffing costs

September 2, 2008 -- Norcross, GA

GMT Corp., a global industry leader in enterprise workforce management and performance optimization solutions, today announced significant deployment results from Elevations Credit Union, a member-owned, not-for-profit banking retailer with close to $800M in assets under management. With GMT Planet™ workforce and performance management solution, the Colorado-based credit union was able to dramatically improved their contact center service levels while reducing their agent workforce by approximately 15%.

The credit union, serving approximately 76,000 business and individual members, deployed GMT Planet to forecast and optimize scheduling and staffing needs for telephone, e-mail, remote delivery, and loan and member service representatives. Before GMT, Elevations’ contact center—which received about 266,000 calls in 2007—answered less than 80% of all calls in fewer than 30 seconds.  After deploying GMT’s award-winning flagship product, the credit union increased their averaged service level to almost 85% of all calls answered within 20 seconds or less. With a pre-implementation goal of having agents on the phones helping members at least 75% of their scheduled work time, Elevations quickly exceeded that benchmark, operating at 90% productivity within six months. The drastic boost in productivity has enabled the credit union to streamline operations by operating with 15% fewer FTEs.  

“We’ve seen a cascading range of benefits from GMT Planet in that our leap operational efficiency has translated into not only higher service levels and reduced labor costs, but also increased member loyalty and bandwidth for lenders to answer loan calls,” said Les Boothby, contact center and remote delivery manager for Elevations Credit Union. “Since our GMT deployment, I’ve fielded a number of questions from other credit unions considering investing in workforce management technology. I tell them that GMT is the way to go, offering exceptional value—GMT Planet is easy to use, affordable, and the overall quality and capabilities are phenomenal.” 

According to Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Saddletree Research, less than 20% of all credit union and bank branches use workforce optimization (WFO) technology.

Regarded as the industry’s most accurate, easy-to-use and affordable workforce management solution, GMT Planet enables companies to perform at their highest levels possible by empowering them to accurately project call center workforce requirements, schedule the right agents at the right time, and deliver quality customer service to customers swiftly and accurately. With observed forecasting accuracy rates of up to 99%, it offers unparalleled precision in forecasting & scheduling and is unique in addressing all the needs of the enterprise, from contact centers to branch offices to back office operations.  Furthermore, GMT is able to enjoy a client retention rate in excess of 97% over the last five years owing to its award-winning SureServices client lifecycle methodology.
 
“There’s a common misconception that there is fixed, inverse relationship between service levels and staffing costs,” commented GMT chief executive officer Simon Angove.  “Our deployment with Elevations Credit Union is a good example illustrating the power of GMT Planet to truly deliver the best of both worlds. By accurately forecasting to precisely match supply and demand, GMT breaks this trade-off by enabling contact centers to make the very most of their limited time and resources to impact their most important metrics.”

To read more about Elevations Credit Union's use of GMT Planet, download this article from the Credit Union Journal (pdf).