Call Center Management Featured Article
State Bank of Pakistan Issues New Standards for Improving Banking Call Centers
Banks are often at the forefront of call center innovation. They generally have deep pockets, so technology upgrades and high-quality training are easier to afford. Their products are highly commoditized, making customer support critical: there is very little to differentiate one bank from another in terms of services, so it’s often customer support that pushes a customer to one bank or another. They often operate within the parameters of strict regulation and IT security mandates, which makes it impossible to cut corners.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) recently announced it plans to improve the standards for banking call centers by revising and consolidating regulatory instructions on call center management for the convenience of costumers and security of their data, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.
According to the new regulations, which will go into effect June 30, 2021, all banks and financial institutions will need to deploy toll-free numbers, reduce customer call wait times, improve the confidentiality of the customers’ data and make periodic reports on performance of call centers to a senior level management committee. This will also apply to banks that have outsourced their call center services.
“Banks that have outsourced their call centers will ensure compliance with the SBP’s existing instructions on outsourcing while the supervision function like quality assurance checks of call center should not be outsourced,” according to the APP article.
SBP directed the nation’s banks to ensure that customers aren’t being kept on hold for an unacceptable amount of time.
“Measures should be taken to reduce the call wait time as much as possible to avoid inconvenience to the customers”, it said, recommending that bank call centers develop key performance indicators (KPIs) for different types of calls. In particular, it has directed that the wait time for lost, stolen or blocked cards should not exceed one minute, recommending that call centers make help for these scenarios the first option on interactive voice response (IVR) menus.
Edited by Maurice Nagle