The Challenge

Created in April 2005 by the merger of two of Ontario’s leading credit unions, Meridian Credit Union is the largest in Ontario, the third largest in Canada and a significant competitor in Ontario’s financial services industry.

Together with the expected challenges of merging two cultures and continuing to meet the expectations of a combined membership of more than 180,000, Meridian also needed to move its call centre operations from St. Catharines, Ontario, to its new head office in Toronto. Initially, that appeared to mean choosing between taking the current call centre infrastructure to the new address or purchasing completely new equipment.

“Member service continues to be absolutely critical as we reinvent neighbourhood banking,” says Bob Hague, Meridian’s Chief Member Services Officer. “We’re owned by our members and while our legacy equipment and software were adequate for our operators, they simply didn’t represent the step forward we had to deliver to our members.” However, purchasing new equipment would have required a considerable capital investment, so Meridian’s IT department began looking for a third option.

Working with TELUS, Meridian quickly decided on TELUS CallCentreAnywhere™. According to Steve Gesner, Meridian’s Chief Information Officer, “It hit the sweet spot, allowing us to met our timelines and move to newer technology, all at a lower price point.”

The Solution

TELUS CallCentreAnywhere is Canada’s first fully hosted and managed multi-channel call centre solution. For Meridian, that meant having access to the latest call centre features and functionality, without any capital expenditure.

A hosted solution provided obvious advantages from the start. “We have a very capable technical staff,” says Gesner. “But they were all heads down getting the technical bits and bytes together for our merger. TELUS CallCentreAnywhere allowed us to focus our resources on those details, while still getting the best in call centre operations. It also gave us that elusive alignment between IT and business. It made sense from a technical perspective and very quickly made a lot of sense from a business perspective too.”

Meridian currently uses 25 TELUS CallCentreAnywhere seats, with the option to scale up at any time. Each agent only needs a phone and a computer to access the system, which resides at a highly secure TELUS Internet Data Centre. TELUS maintains, manages and monitors the system around the clock to provide guaranteed availability and a built-in disaster recovery plan. If in an emergency situation the employees can’t access Meridian’s head office, the call centre staff can log on and continue working from an alternative location.

Integrated customer relationship management (CRM) and computer telephony integration (CTI) features identify members when they call in, allowing agents to provide highly personalized service. The system also tracks each call, noting whether it was purely functional and transactional, or a complaint. Complaints are followed through to their resolution and management receives comprehensive reports detailing the number of calls, the time they came in, their nature and how long it took for issues to be resolved. “It allows us to understand our members’ concerns, know where they have outstanding issues and continually improve the member experience,” says Hague.

All in all, the partnership with TELUS has delivered considerable benefits to Meridian. “Operating a call centre is not a core practice for us,” says Hague. “This arrangement gives us access to current TELUS thinking and best practices, as well as the individuals at TELUS who have the call centre expertise we need.”