When Your Bank Is Just a Voice: Call-Center Banking Is a Hotbed of Technology Development
1996; American Bankers Association; Volume: 88; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0194-5947
Autores Tópico(s)ICT Impact and Policies
ResumoCall-center banking is a hotbed of technology development Your voice is full of money, a talent agent tells reporter Tally Atwater (Michelle Pfeiffer) in the movie Up Close and Personal. He might say the same thing to a bank telephone representative if he knew how much banks were spending on their call centers these days. According to the Tower Group, Wellesley, Mass., U.S. commercial banks will invest $366 million a year over the next three years to build and improve call centers--$823 million by the year 2000. Recently, PNC spent $25 million to upgrade its 500-person call center, Wachovia spent $30 million to upgrade branch and call center desktops, and Charles Schwab & Co. converted thousands of call center and branch workstations from dumb terminals to Microsoft Windows NT, to give just a few examples. Telephone banking is the top priority at 84% of banks, according to a 1995 survey by PSI, Tampa, Fla. More than 90% of large banks and 72% of mid-size banks have at least one dedicated centralized telephone service center, according to Mentis Corp., Salisbury, Md. Community banks are starting to form call centers. New call center spending is going into voice response systems (45%), automatic call distribution systems (25%), and computer telephony integration (CTI) systems (17%), according to Mentis. Low-cost channel Why all the attention for the lowly, cyberbackward phone? For one thing, in the quest for high-tech, high-touch, and low-cost alternative delivery the phone shines. According to ABA's 1995 Retail Banking Survey, at banks over $1 billion in assets, a retail inquiry costs $2.93 at a branch, $1.82 at a manned call center, and 24 cents when handled solely by a voice response unit (VRU). At Huntington Bancshares, the difference is more dramatic--a VRU call is about 30 cents, a call center call is $2, and depending on how long it takes, a branch transaction costs $25 to $40. At smaller banks the costs are all lower, but similarly phone transactions cost much less than teller transactions. It's an obvious point, but most bank customers have telephones (versus, say, personal computers, Internet devices, or screen phones) and are getting more and more used to shopping, paying bills, filing taxes, and banking by phone. Phone transactions grew more than any other retail bank channel in 1995--39% compared with branch-transaction growth of 6% and ATM transaction growth of 32%, according to PSI. Last year, telephone banking accounted for 15% of all retail banking transactions, up from 12% in 1994. Corporations made 44% of their banking transactions by phone in 1994, according to the Tower Group. By the year 2000, however, Tower predicts corporations will make 57% of their transactions by computer and only 22% by phone. Not necessarily profitable Like ATMs, phones are used for mostly routine stuff. Last year, 87% of phone banking transactions were people checking their account balances, finding out if checks had cleared, and transferring funds between accounts, according to PSI. And just as there are ATM junkies who go to a machine once or even three times a day for $10 or $20 fixes, there are people who call their bank several times a day to check their account balance or to see if a check has cleared. Some banks, such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, ana Huntington have begun charging customers for calling too often. Bess Heiberger, vice-president of Huntington Direct and head of telephone banking, says the bank's 25 cent fee for usage beyond ten transactions a month is only for 10% who were calling every day and multiple times a day. There are a number of customers who abuse all channels, says John Pataky, director of telebanking services at Barnett Banks, which does not charge for excess phone transactions. We're watching that carefully to make sure that it's not to the unreasonable point. We don't want to impose radical fee structures that are going to drive people back into banking offices, where we cut off our nose to spite our face. …
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