On February 4, the Customer Support Center invited 497 internal customers to rate their satisfaction with the level of service they received from the CSC. Of those 497 internal customers, 382 responded — an impressive 77 percent response rate. The survey asked a series of questions related to our SOAR service standards (see below) and an overall satisfactory rating.

In response to the SOAR questions, respondents could select a response of “always,” “usually,” “seldom,” or “never” based on their service experiences with the CSC from the past two months. Each area within the CSC was rated separately, but what I am providing here are the roll-up results for the entire department. Those service standards and results included:

The respondents’ overall satisfactory rating was 98 percent: 70 percent were very satisfied, 28 percent were satisfied, and 2 percent were neutral.

In addition to asking internal customers to rate the SOAR service standards, the survey asked for responses to two more items for each area within CSC: (1) Please let us know if there is anything we can do to better meet your needs, and (2) Is there any particular person you would like to recognize? We received 112 free-form responses to the first question and 261 free-form responses to the second question.

A high percentage of feedback from the first question was related to the challenges we faced from the busy December and January events, which included the Target breach and annual tax escrow disbursements. In addition to continuing to staff every call center seat during these types of events, we are looking for ways to help keep internal customer queues separate from external customer call queues. Beginning March 1, we will be turning on the call center phones at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday mornings to assist branches and department folks who are already helping our customers. We are also looking to pursue additional features in call center software that will benefit both our internal and external customers. More to come on that as we find a solution that meets our needs. Lastly, we will perform refresher training in areas where we heard it would be beneficial.

As for the second question, the 261+ recognition comments we received are fantastic and meaningful. Almost every single person in the CSC department was mentioned at least once. We strive to ensure we are meeting the needs of all of our customers, so these comments are greatly appreciated.

To those of you who completed the survey and shared your feedback and comments: Thank you. We believe in our employment brand of “Together, Achieving More” and are committed to carrying out the best practices to realize great results for all of our customers.