Merrill Lynch’s Financial Relationship Services (FRS) Call Center’s in Hopewell, NJ and Jacksonville, FL was recently re-certified for the forth year as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, in conjunction with Purdue University’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality. This certification is presented to an elite group of call centers that have clearly demonstrated key performance indicators that surpass rigorous standards of efficiency and operational effectiveness.
“The Merrill Lynch customer service call centers have recently been re-certified as Purdue University Centers of Excellence. Through proper planning and strong leadership, Merrill continues to offer world-class customer service by ensuring that inbound customer calls are handled quickly, accurately, and with a high degree of quality. By focusing on the people, the processes, and the technology of their call centers, Merrill has been able to once more achieve a highly efficient operation while also delivering the quality that their customers have come to expect”, said Dr. Anton of Purdue’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality. “This certification places Merrill’s performance in the top five percent of over 100,000 customer service call centers in the United States.”
Marc Scher, First Vice President of Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Services, added: “In order for Merrill Lynch to be an essential partner to our clients, we must strive to deliver an unparalleled level of service excellence in all customer interactions. Being our forth certification as a Center of Excellence by the Purdue Benchmark Portal, affirms our ongoing commitment to improvements, excellence and our overall belief that we operate as a service center that delivers both on our promise of value to our clients and shareholders. Our partnership with our internal partners at Merrill Lynch continues to allow our call center to exceed our goal of delighting the client, while being a fiscally efficient and effective organization. Congratulations to all of the members of the FRS on this outstanding accomplishment and for being essential partners to our clients.”
The re-certification was awarded to FRS in February of 2008 following a comprehensive benchmarking study. During this process, objective, quantitative data was audited and validated by the researchers.
Financial Relationship Service multi-site service operation handles over 6.3 million contacts annually for retail, small business account and supports a vast variety of calls. The re-certification as a Center of Excellence clearly demonstrates that by remaining committed to achieving service excellence in the most cost-efficient ways possible, the Financial Relationship Services’ call centers have reached an optimized balance between efficiency and effectiveness, while focusing on increasing customer loyalty.
BenchmarkPortal, Inc.
BenchmarkPortal is the source for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) best practices information for call centers. It is continually growing its database; already the world’s largest for call center metrics. In conjunction with the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University, BenchmarkPortal provides data to call center managers via a series of unique and actionable reports. With these reports managers can: a) compare their performance against an appropriate peer group of call centers; and b) make optimal, fact-based decisions regarding capital investment, personnel, procedures, etc. Through its reports, leading edge research and certification programs, it contributes to the continual improvement processes of individual customer call centers. BenchmarkPortal also manages the College of Call Center Excellence education program for call center professionals. For more information contact: sean@benchmarkportal.com; 720-222-0470; or www.benchmarkportal.com.
