They contact people whose tax-exempt savings accounts have reached maturity and discuss reinvesting the funds in various Halifax products. Reps also call people who carry a high balance in their checking accounts and recommend more lucrative investments in Halifax products, of course. Halifax executives are a little incredulous about the strategy s success, Riley says. I think people still don t realize the full potential of outbound calling. The setup of the call center also allows the bank to be more flexible.
Many call centers divide up phone representatives according to product lines.
So one group of service reps would handle calls on Visa accounts, another would handle checking acc ount inquiries, etc. Each rep who logs on the system enters his or her four top areas of product knowledge, and calls are routed to the most knowledgeable rep available. In other words, time to market is reduced substantially. If they want to add a product line, they re ab out a week away. The other benefit of multiskilling is that it opens the door for an incentive program to get reps to learn more about the products they are servicing.