Success Stories
CASE STUDY: Alliance & Leicester card activation
Bank trusts CPP to protect its customers
Outsourcing its card-activation calls to CPP has introduced long-term benefits for Alliance & Leicester and its current-account customers.
CPP's specialist contact centre agents provide a comprehensive real-time debit-card activation scheme that goes way beyond a simple call-receiving service. When customers call in to confirm receipt of their new or re-issued cards, CPP agents take the opportunity to offer the company's valuable Card Protection and Identity Protection products. Both policies are extremely relevant to customers who have just received a new or replacement card, particularly if their previous card had been stolen or lost. The products offered give customers a chance to protect all the cards in their household, as well as their own identities.
The scheme offers multiple benefits to Alliance & Leicester. Crucially, it plays an important role in combating card fraud. It also enables the bank to offer its customers two of the most competitive and pioneering protection policies on the market. By outsourcing this function to CPP, the bank can reallocate its own resources to concentrate on its core business. The scheme brings in a constant stream of commission revenue, as well as long-term annuity incomes when customers renew their policies. What's more, the commission incomes earned from policy sales help to offset the cost of issuing cards to customers.
Alliance & Leicester recognises that for many customers, this call is their first telephone contact with the bank, so it's essential that they experience the very best in customer service. CPP offers the high standard of customer contact required, and works closely with the bank to forecast call volumes to ensure that service levels are maintained.
Catherine Hill, Senior Marketing Manager for Credit and Debit Cards at Alliance & Leicester, says: "By liaising with us on a daily basis, CPP is able to plan and manage capacity in its contact centre to ensure that calls are always answered promptly. This has a knock-on effect on the success of the cross-selling activity. Customers are receptive to sales messages as calls are answered promptly and customers are not kept waiting unduly in a queue. Good customer service not only strengthens our bonds with customers, it also helps to boost revenues from policy sales."
Over the three years that this service has been in operation, CPP and the bank have forged a very close working partnership. Marketing, operations and technical teams meet each month to review service levels and sales performance, and forecast call volumes.
Specialist software has been tailored to enable CPP to provide the real-time activation service required by the bank.
Andy Bayes, Head of Current Accounts and Credit Cards at Alliance & Leicester, says: "Our customers get the reassurance and security that the activation process safeguards their cards against fraud and, as an added benefit, we achieve a sustainable income stream. The CPP card-activation programme has been a real success. It helps to boost customer loyalty by offering products that fit closely with our strategy and ethos."
"We have built up a very effective partnership with CPP, whose customer-service values fit closely with our own. To develop the scheme in future, we will be working with CPP to make sure that the products offered remain competitive and relevant to our customers. By constantly innovating in this way, we will ensure that the scheme continues to provide a winning solution for both the bank and our customers."
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