Best Practices for Financial Call Centers

[Rebelee]

I work for a financial service company that is in the process of taking our outsourced call center and moving it in-house. Basically, we will be building our call center from scratch, and I am looking for best practices for financial call centers (mutual fund). Could you reccomend some sources I could use to find best practices?

[ccenterpro]

Rebelee,

It's good to see that your firm believes in the value of customer service enough to make an investment to bring it in house. I went through a similar experience at a technology company and can say that while it is a challenge to justify and recover the costs of doing so, that the rewards are many and the customer experience can be awesome.

To get best practices in the Financial call center world, I suggest three sources: Dr. Jon Anton's http://www.benchmarkportal.com, Incoming Calls Management Institute (http://www.incoming.com), or Call Center Industry Advisory Council (www.ciac-cert.org). All of these will require a financial investment of some size. Additionally, Omega Performance Consulting offers superb financial call center sales and service management and coaching programs that are customized to the customer's needs. I have used them four times at four centers with outstanding results. You can find them at http://www.omega-performance.com, or contact Carol Franklin at Omega at cfranklin@omega-performance.com, and mention that I referred you.

Lastly, you could hire me to work for your company. I specialize in exactly what you are doing. (OK, shameless plug, but I gotta try!).

Good luck at this exciting time in your professional life!