Despite an increase in the volume of calls due to our recent merger, MVCU’s Member Support department has been extremely successful in reducing the occurrences of abandoned calls each day. An abandoned call occurs when a member who is placed on hold gives up and ends the call before getting to speak with a representative. In July 2022, the team had an average of 47 abandoned calls per day. As of June 2023, Member Support’s average number of abandoned calls per day is down to just seven!
To make such a drastic improvement, Assistant Vice President of Member Support Zobeida Duarte and Member Support Manager Saimer Jimenez Morales took advantage of individual teammates’ strengths to strategically place them in positions where they would excel.
“We created teams within our team,” says Saimer. “We have teams that work specifically with Spanish-speaking members; we have people that work specifically in the message center, answering inquiries through online banking; and there’s our video chat banking team. Organizing like this can help us respond to members in a matter of hours when it used to take one full business day,” explains Zobeida.
In Member Support, each individual teammate has a dedicated role that has been given to them based on their strengths that Saimer and Zobeida have identified. According to Zobeida, this has helped the teammates thrive in their roles, which ultimately results in an improved member experience.
Member Support has also adapted to our members’ needs as technology has shifted the way that members prefer to bank. “Last year, we had about one teammate working on our online chat and video banking system,” Zobeida says. “Now we have three dedicated full-time teammates working in these channels.” This has resulted in reduced wait times for members utilizing these platforms to connect with an MVCU representative.
And the strategy doesn’t stop there. Three waiting cues have been created that members will enter based on their needs when they contact Member Support. These are the training cue, for easier transactions that new teammates can answer and use to hone their customer support skills; the Spanish cue, for teammates who can easily communicate with our Spanish-speaking members; and the standard cue for all other member inquiries. “All of this is really intentional,” says Zobeida. This way, member’s specific needs are organized so that they can be can easily identified and sent to the appropriate team member, reducing wait times, improving member communication and allowing for new teammates to master their call center skills.
Just a few months ago, Member Support experienced their first day with zero abandoned calls, and it was a “celebration” says Saimer. Though the team has experienced a number of zero-abandoned calls since then, the plan is to keep the teams prepared to adapt to future changes to continue this success. “We have to keep in mind that business needs change all the time,” Saimer explains. “As the organization grows, we have to keep finding ways to keep this going, even if that means changing strategies.”
MVCU’s award-winning company culture has had a strong impact on the Member Support team. Zobeida says that the success over the past year has proven to the team that strong work ethic, mutual respect and a willingness to be flexible contribute to the team’s overall success, and in turn the satisfaction of our members. “We have a motto: ‘If we work hard for our team, the team works hard for us.’ We all give 110%, and everyone on the team shares the same sentiment. It’s amazing,” says Zobeida.