Customer Service Center Celebrates 10th Anniversary

The Customer Service Center at First Federal Savings Bank is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

The department was established with just four agents in the basement of the Bank's headquarters building in mid 2000. Today the team includes 14 skilled agents in a dedicated, state-of-the-art call center facility encompassing nearly 1,700 square feet on the headquarters campus.

According to Dorothy Meadors, manager of First Federal's customer center, the Center now averages over 100 calls per hour from First Federal customers throughout Central Kentucky and Southern Indiana. Center operators assist customers with everything from routine account inquiries and transactions through technical support for sophisticated online and mobile banking technologies.

One of the keys to the success of the Center, said Meadors, is its highly experienced agents: "We have a very high [agent] retention rate here-we have people who have been here for years, where most call centers have a lot of turnover."

Anne Moran, Chief Retail Officer for First Federal, agreed with Meadors on the importance of agent experience and pointed to the Bank's practice of promoting employees who demonstrate good customer service skills and product knowledge into the Center.

"We don't start employees out at the entry level in the call center and have them move out as soon as they can," said Moran. "It is an honor to be promoted into the Center."

But despite the sophistication of the facilities and agents, Meadors and Moran agree that perhaps the greatest strength of the Center is a primary philosophy of focusing on customers.

"We all try to exceed customer expectations," said Meadors. "We want to give world-class customer service to everyone who calls into the Center."

According to Moran, staffing the Center with live agents is a philosophy that is driven from the top of the Bank, from the Board of Directors and Executive Team on down.

"We are quite pleased to have live operators answer our phones so customers don't have to go through a menu of 'press 1 for this, press 2 for that.'" said Moran. "Our satisfied, loyal customers prove this method works."