National City Call Centers in Columbus, Kalamazoo and Franklin Ranked Among Top Call Centers
CLEVELAND - JUNE 1, 2005 - National City Corporation (NYSE:NCC) announced that its Direct Banking unit, with telephone banking call centers in Columbus, Ohio; Kalamazoo, Michigan and Franklin, Pennsylvania has been named a "Certified Center of Excellence." The certification is based on best practice measurements drawn from the world's largest database of call center performance information. The database is owned by the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University, and managed by BenchmarkPortal.
BenchmarkPortal is the source for best practices information about call centers. BenchmarkPortal collects data from more than 20,000 call centers worldwide and selects those in the top 10 percent to be classified as "Centers of Excellence." National City Direct Banking shares the "Certified Center of Excellence" designation with acclaimed national institutions such as Microsoft, Dell, New York Life, eBay, IBM and the University of Michigan. Kerin Dorris, executive vice president and direct banking manager for National City explained, "This certification is a result of the commitment to world class service from our call center employees. We are totally dedicated to our role as a one-stop resource for National City customers and our National City family takes great pride in the continued excellence of our call center teams." Dorris continued, "Our call centers handle more than 75 million calls annually and the designation as a 'Center of Excellence' is a point of pride for each employee in Columbus, Kalamazoo and Franklin. Our employees care about doing what is right for our customers and they care about our community, investing numerous hours in local voluntary and leadership roles.
At National City, our people are our greatest resource and we believe that we have the best workforce in the financial services industry - bar none!" Dr. Jon Anton, director of research, Center for Customer-Driven Quality, pointed out, "Becoming a certified Center of Excellence is the result of a lot of hard work on the part of the agents, supervisors, and managers at National City. Anyone can just handle customer calls, but at National City the team focuses on being both effective and efficient in the calls that they handle. This is what makes for a really great Center, a balance between quality and quantity."
About BenchmarkPortal
BenchmarkPortal is the custodian of the Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality database of contact center metrics, the largest in the world. It provides reports, products and services for contact centers in the areas of operational metrics, customer satisfaction measurement and agent satisfaction measurement. In early 2005, BenchmarkPortal, Inc. received U.S. Patent #6,877,034 for its unique methodology of call center performance evaluation through metric gap analysis. BenchmarkPortal's Web site can be found at: www.BenchmarkPortal.com.. For additional information contact: Susan Hampton BenchmarkPortal, Inc. (805) 614-0123 ext. 36 SusanHampton@BenchmarkPortal.com
About National City
National City Corporation (NYSE: NCC), headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, is one of the nation's largest financial holding companies. The company operates through an extensive banking network primarily in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania, and also serves customers in selected markets nationally. Its core businesses include commercial and retail banking, mortgage financing and servicing, consumer finance and asset management. For more information about National City, visit the company's Web site at www.NationalCity.com. For additional information contact: William Eiler 412-644-8073 William.Eiler@NationalCity.com
