Merrill Lynch Call Centers in the top 10 percent of the 20,000 call centers studied throughout North America.BenchmarkPortal Recertifies Merrill Lynch's Financial Relationship Services ( FRS ) Call Centers in Hopewell, NJ and Jacksonville, FL as Centers of Excellence Merrill Lynch Call Centers awarded “ Call Center of Excellence” for fourth consecutive year! Santa Maria, CA, March 1, 2008 – Merrill Lynch's Financial Relationship Services ( FRS ) Call Centers in Hopewell, NJ and Jacksonville, FL were recently re-certified for the fourth year as Centers 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 Lynch 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 Lynch 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. Jon Anton of Purdue's Center for Customer-Driven Quality. “This certification places Merrill Lynch's performance in the top five percent of over 100,000 customer service call centers in the United States .” The Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality designates the “Center of Excellence” award to customer service call centers that rank in the top ten percent of the 20,000 call centers studied using a Balanced Scorecard that measures both efficiency and effectiveness. The database includes thousands of call centers in 24 industry segments sharing performance statistics, which are used by call center professionals worldwide to establish goals for best practice call center performance. Marc Scher, First Vice President, Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management 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. Our fourth certification as a Center of Excellence 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 Merrill Lynch FRS in February of 2008 following a comprehensive benchmarking study. During this process, objective, quantitative data was audited and validated by the researchers. Merrill Lynch's Financial Relationship Service multi-site service operation handles over 6.3 million contacts annually for retail and small business account clients 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 FRS call centers have reached an optimized balance between efficiency and effectiveness, while focusing on increasing customer loyalty.
About BenchmarkPortal
BenchmarkPortal is the custodian of the Purdue Research Foundation database of contact center performance metrics, the largest such database in the world. Data is collected in conjunction with the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University . In 2005, BenchmarkPortal received U.S. Patent #6,877,034 for its unique methodology of call center performance evaluation through metric gap analysis. They provide reports, products and services for contact centers in the areas of operational metrics, customer satisfaction measurement and agent satisfaction measurement. For further research information visit www.BenchmarkPortal.com
