Phone Calls and Mad Scientists.................

Most of you probably know that your Credit Union has grown substantially over the years. In fact, in 1992, the Credit Union had assets of $16 million; in the next month, we will likely reach $115 million.

Thankfully, the number of phone calls we receive each day has not grown that much. This is due to the substantial number of members who use Internet Teller (on-line banking) and Access (telephone banking). For those of you using these services, thank you very much – you really are doing your Credit Union a big favor. For those of you not familiar these products, please ask about them the next time you stop in or call. They are easy to use and allow you access to all kinds of account information at all times.

While our phone volume has not grown at the same pace as the Credit Union, it can be a challenge at times to provide excellent service over the phone. Member calls tend to come in bunches and these bunches can occur at any time. Adding to this challenge is that the purpose of member calls vary widely (40-45% are balance inquiries or transfers) and need to be responded to by different staff members depending on the situation.

This leads us to the tricky part. We’ve long prided ourselves on providing exceptional service to our members - for phone calls, this means having staff members answer the calls quickly whenever possible and having them direct you to the appropriate staff member if they cannot help you.

This method is not working well enough anymore. We are frequently scrambling to get all the phones answered during peak periods; even when we cover all the incoming calls, the person a member may need to speak to is likely unavailable because they had to grab one of the ringing lines. An example is a loan officer who can’t take a loan question because they are answering an account balance question on the other line.

So, we are going to experiment with a new system in our Silver Bay office in hopes of finding a better solution. We are going to try this new idea for about a month, review the results and go from there. The new idea does have automation which I know many people don’t care for. I promise it won’t be a system where you listen to a million options, select one and then get a million more. This will be simple: you will select one of 5 choices and go straight to the appropriate staff member, that’s it. It will help us handle the calls, but more importantly, it will allow you to go directly to the staff person you need to speak to (and there is less chance they are answering the other line). I can guarantee you that you will get to where you need to be faster than our current method.

I think this new system will be an improvement - different, yes but better. Please give it a fair shot and let us know how you feel. We are going to keep track of member opinions, review the results, make necessary changes or go to a different idea if need be. No matter what, we will make sure it works for you.

Mark