INDUSTRY:  Financial Services
 

THE COMPANY:  One of the largest credit card issuers of VISA, MasterCard and JCB in the Philippines. It also issued its own line of credit cards in 1990.
 

PRINCIPAL ACTIVITIES:  Provides marketing distribution, technical collection, and selling assistance and processing services with the operation of credit card business. It is a licensee of MasterCard International Inc, JCB International Co Ltd and VISA International Service Association to issue credit cards which could be accepted by these cards' networks of affiliated banks and merchant establishments worldwide.

 
BUSINESS CHALLENGE:

With the needs of its customers as its top priority, the company was dedicated to improving and developing its product features and services while maintaining the highest level of service to its customers.

On account of the growing number of competitors in the industry, the company aimed to maintain its existing base as well as increase the number of their account holders. Consequently, the company needed support to provide quality customer service and a change in a more globally competitive service provider was decided.

SOLUTION:

In an age where information can be made available right in the palm of your hands, simply having customer information isn’t quite enough. Customers now consider everything that a company has to offer. Equally as important as the product’s quality is the company’s customer service. In its desire to provide the highest level of service to its clients, the bank chose ePLDT Ventus, as its trusted partner to execute the company’s promise to its account members.

Over the years, the bank has partnered with Ventus as it applied rigorous controls to its daily operations in order to determine, quantify, and measure business improvement processes. ePLDT Ventus solutions was able to significantly deliver as it achieved and exceeded the client’s goals in the following areas:

Alignment of Key Metrics to Business Goals

Metric: Quality Scores

The bank considered service quality for customer calls as being critical to growing and retaining its customer base.Striving to maximize each customer relationship, the company mandated a quality rating goal of 80%.

Metric: Average Handle Time

After awarding ePLDT Ventus several programs, the bank’s call volume increased significantly. In order to efficiently and effectively address the additional customer calls, the bank communicated an aggressive handle time goal in 2003 at 180 seconds. In 2005, the company reduced it to 200 seconds up to 240 seconds.

Metric: Contractor CSAT Survey

The bank placed a high level of responsibility on CSAT results. As a matter of fact, they have their own team doing the survey. The survey was conducted on a quarterly basis on randomly selected cardholders.

ePLDT Ventus developed and implemented strategies to significantly increase and sustain quality scores, average handle time and contractor CSAT survey scores. The ePLDT Ventus solution was designed as a seamless synergy of Ventus processes in recruitment, operation, training and quality.

Right People on the Right Program

A thorough and a more systematic skill profiling recruitment process was done to ensure client’s ideal requirements were met. Candidates were assessed based on their analytical, problem solving and customer service skills. As positions in the program were highly sensitive, professional background checks were conducted. ePLDT Ventus makes wise investments for positions that involve handling substantial and significant account holder’s information on their finances.

Coaching and Training

After a successful recruitment, Ventus made sure that extensive training on customer service and a deeper understanding of the client’s products and services were provided to the agents. Revalidas were given on product mastery at the end of the program specific training. An average of 85% was set by ePLDT Ventus as a passing mark to ensure that quality rating surpassed Client’s expectation and goals.

    Peer Coaching program was also implemented:

1. Peer coaches were identified and chosen by the Client based on their high customer satisfaction scores and low handle time.
2. Coaching was done both individually and in groups.
3. Objective was to increase numbers of agents hitting the desired goals.
   
   

Calibration Efforts 

A comprehensive calibration session was set internally and with the client. All agents were evaluated per week based on guidelines set by the client as programmed in the quality monitoring tool.  From that same pool, calls were then selected for calibration purposes to identify improvement opportunities.

Performance Driven Culture

Clear goals communicated to agents as well as incentives to drive better results for the client’s key matrices.

High performers recognized and rewarded. Performers also automatically considered as a peer coach, once consistency of performance is determined. With the goal of ensuring consistency and effectiveness, focus group sessions were conducted to compile and create a repository of best practices which in latter efforts were made available in the company’s intranet.          

Low performers also given incentives based on meeting baseline performance requirements.       

RESULT

ePLDT Ventus’ proven solutions delivered people and process results that helped the client achieve its business goals. These include exceeding the set metrics communicated by the client.