CRM - November 2007 - (Page 44)

contents and weight of each order—and even each item in the order—from the recorded information, enabling staffers to report with confidence whether a missing item was indeed shipped or not. “We had a customer with a $100,000 order call to say that product valued at $15,000 was missing from one of our shipments,” Manuel recalls. “Through the WMS, I was able to track the product and identify the cartons in which they were shipped, as well as when they were shipped. The customer did some further research on their end and found the ‘missing’ product had been misplaced in their own warehouse. Without the ability to prove the products had shipped, we would have processed a $15,000 credit to our customer—a costly error.” Primos’ shipping department is now more streamlined, more competent, and more productive.“Last year we increased our sales volume by $5 million, and, thanks to the efficiency of the WMS, we only had to add one person to the warehouse staff,” Manuel says. He adds that advance ship notice (ASN) preparation time dropped from one hour to seven minutes. “The person who handles the ASNs actually came in to my office to thank me for making her job easier.” Now Primos can immediately respond to inquiries with very specific answers, leading to improved satisfaction. A new warehouse expansion plan will add RFID to the warehouse automation setup. In all, the Exact solutions have changed the way Primos does business, unquestionably for the better. “There is no going back,” Manuel says.“The rare times that we have technical problems and our shipping stations are down, I would rather have our guys sitting around doing nothing than risk the mistakes that we would encounter in trying to pack and ship using our old methods.” —Marshall Lager By implementing Exact Warehouse Management System, Primos Hunting Calls: kept staffing nearly flat despite a $5 million sales volume increase; reduced ASN preparation time from one hour to seven minutes; saved at least $15,000 in chargebacks; and virtually eliminated shipping errors. Moving in on Mortgage Delinquencies The mortgage division of a financial-services firm credits proactive communications with lowering its delinquency rate ere’s a stat that’ll unnerve most financial services executives: The rate of U.S. mortgages in default rose to 2.87 percent in the first quarter of this year, exceeding even the worst levels after the 2001 recession, according to data compiled by Equifax and analyzed by Moody’s Economy.com. But BOK Mortgage—a division of Tulsa, Okla.–based BOK Financial, an $18 billion regional financial services firm—is a bright spot in the gloom: Automating much of BOK’s communications processes around early-stage delinquencies has led to a double-digit percentage drop in the firm’s mortgage-delinquency rate. Toward the end of each calendar month, BOK Mortgage used to rely on an autodialer to place outbound calls to potential 30-day contacts—customers failing to make their monthly payments within the first few weeks of the month. Once the autodialer made a connection, the call was transferred to the next available loan counselor. “It was timeconsuming for the loan counselor because they were basically tied to the autodialer for the last two weeks of the month,” says Kenda Ewing, vice president of default at BOK Mortgage. A banking manager in BOK’s retailbanking division told Ewing that the unit was using overdraft-notification functionality from Seattle-based Varolii, an on-demand communications provider. BOK Mortgage, however, decided to tap Varolii’s early-stage collections application, going live in January 2007 to reach delinquent customers before late fees spiraled out of control. BOK Mortgage now uses the Varolii application from around the 17th day of each month through the end of the month to contact customers who have not made that month’s payment. After receiving a Varolii-powered automated message, customers can connect into BOK Mortgage’s system to make a payment by phone, or pledge to pay by the H month’s end (which takes them out of the collection-call lineup so that they are not pinged again that month). “BOK and other financial institutions have observed anecdotally that many customers prefer to be contacted by an appropriately designed automated calling program, as it removes the human element from a stressful situation,” says Dan Zasloff, senior market manager of financial services at Varolii. If the call takes place during business hours, customers have the option of speaking directly with a loan counselor. Customers returning calls outside of business hours cannot speak with live counselors, but can still make a payment or a promise to pay. “They’re not tied to our customer service hours,” Ewing says. If the Varolii application connects to an answering machine, however, it leaves an 800 number and a PIN number that helps with verification when the customer returns the call. Since the deployment, BOK has realized a 325 percent increase in customer interaction rates. Even more impressive, its mortgage-delinquency rate has decreased by 12 percent. The division can interact with early-stage default customers before they become dangerously delinquent, and spend more time with customers whose accounts have already trickled into the later phases of default. “It frees up the loan counselors so that the last two weeks of the month they’re able to contact other mortgagors that are more delinquent, [customers who] might need our assistance in getting their loans current,” Ewing says. —Coreen Bailor Since deploying Varolii’s early-stage collections functionality, BOK Mortgage has: seen its mortgage-delinquency rate plummet by 12 percent; experienced a 325 percent increase in customer interaction rates; and freed up its loan counselors’ time, enabling them to help customers in later stages of delinquency. 44 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | NOVEMBER 2007 www.destinationCRM.com http://Economy.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - November 2007

CRM - November 2007 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity Have You Caught It? The Mother of Enterprise Information Market Focus: Technology: The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing Q&A: Gianforte Talks CRM Required Reading Predicting Profitability Checking the Pulse of the Contact Center Cast a Narrow Net Modern Times, Modern Methods Primos Hunting Calls Snares Efficiency Nailing It Down Moving in on Mortgage Delinquencies RDS Delivery Delivers on Service Secret of My Success Re:Tooling The Tipping Point Pint of View

CRM - November 2007

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