When a large financial services institution’s Credit Card Services Division was having trouble meeting its Balance Transfer goals and convincing customers to join its Rewards Enrollment program, Knowlagent provided a solution the company could bet the bank on…Knowlagent’s guaranteed JumpStart* call center sales pilot program.
Customer Overview
The credit card services industry in general was beginning to feel the pressure of fewer balance transfers as interest rates were steadily rising. Similarly, balance transfer offers to consumers became less compelling since zero percent interest was no longer an option. Potentially, this could be a revenue stream that was drying up for this bank. While providing outstanding customer care continues to be important to this financial services customer, the company’s number one objective was to meet their credit card services revenue goal.
At the same time the company was facing this external challenge, it was also experiencing an internal challenge with shifting the mindset of its customer service representatives to consistently up-sell and cross-sell across its product lines. A key issue in having their agents become more sales focused was how to make this happen without impacting service levels.
Key Initiative
This banking customer teamed with Knowlagent to create a call center sales training pilot program that put an emphasis on call center sales, while maintaining the highest level of customer service performance.
The focus of the pilot program was centered on two credit card services, Balance Transfers and Rewards Enrollment.
As part of Knowlagent’s JumpStart Sales call center sales program, Knowlagent guaranteed the customer seven percent improvement for Balance Transfers and five percent improvement for Rewards Enrollment.
Knowlagent Solution
The 60 day pilot program measured sales performance of both Balance Transfers and Rewards Enrollment between a “Treatment Group” and a “Control Group”. The Knowlagent solution included a total of 24 Learning Breaks, designed in 15 minute increments and delivered during down times to their desktops three times per week. For the first time, agents were able to receive individualized content on a regular basis and track their own progress.
Impact
Only six weeks into the pilot period, both Treatment groups had surpassed their initial goals:
- The Balance Transfers team performed 12 percent better than the Control Group.
- The Rewards Enrollment team performed more than 30 percent better than the Control Group.
In addition to increased sales for both products, the customer saw widespread user adoption.
- CSRs utilizing the Knowlagent solution were able to take six additional training hours every month, without negatively impacting service level metrics set by the customer.
- The Treatment Group has completed 95 percent of the course assignments offered. In the Control Group, every CSR has completed at least 80 percent of the courses offered.
- In addition, they’ve experienced a huge percentage increase in self-development training time (74 percent) versus scheduled training time (24), indicating that CSRs are accepting the technology and are using it on their own to improve.
- This successful pilot test paved the way for a full rollout of Knowlagent’s performance solution, and improved sales and performance among the customer service representatives for this customer.
* JumpStart Sales is a proven, repeatable program that accelerates and sustains product and service sales in the call center without disrupting current service levels and other operational metrics. The foundation of this program is Knowlagent’s technology solution, which provides the only complete roadmap for successfully and rapidly driving sales through the service channel with a combination of tools and proven processes that create measurable revenue results in less than 60 days.
Key Facts
Objective: Improve the company’s Balance Transfer and Rewards Enrollment sales while maintaining current service levels
Solution: Knowlagent implemented a 60-day pilot program focused on delivering customized content directly to the agents’ desktop during call volume downtimes.
Results: Knowlagent achieved 13% uplift for Balance Transfers and more than a 30% improvement for Rewards Enrollment.
Ongoing Benefits:
- CSRs using the r7 solution were able to take six additional training hours every month without negatively impacting service metrics.
- 95% of assignments in the Treatment Group were completed.
- 100% of the Treatment Group completed 80% of the courses.
- CSR adoption was high as users in the Treatment Group logged more hours of training than was even assigned to the Control Group.
