NCO Deploys CRM Application for Major Client

HORSHAM, Pa. — NCO Customer Management, a division of NCO Group, Inc. (NCO), a global provider of business process outsourcing services, announced the availability of a customer relationship management (CRM) platform for its clients.

NCO developed this application for a major retailer who partnered with NCO Customer Management to support their new e-commerce initiative. NCO’s industry-leading IT team worked closely with this client to identify their technical needs. Since this was the company’s first foray into e-commerce, they needed a partner who could develop a CRM platform that was customizable and flexible enough to grow as their e-commerce channel matured. They wanted to harness customer demographic data in a way that turned information into business intelligence that could improve the customer experience. They also wanted to launch their e-commerce strategy in time for the holidays, so they had an aggressive implementation plan.

Once NCO clearly established the client’s technical requirements, their IT team built a customized solution in less than 60 days and successfully imported more than 20 million customer records into it. The platform, based on a best-in-class CRM package, supports multiple communication channels, including telephone, e-mail, chat, and Web interaction.

"This CRM platform will deliver several advantages to this retailer," said Mr. Seth Todd, Director of Business Management for NCO Customer Management. "It provides our client with the knowledge it needs to market its products more efficiently, and it allows our agents to achieve key performance metrics by putting so much information at their fingertips."

The software platform is robust enough to provide agents with immediate access to existing customer history and other demographics, while allowing agents to scrub and validate customer information while going through the normal process of handling customer contact calls.

The CRM system also provides an unparalleled level of flexibility, allowing the client to make complex changes within minutes. For example, NCO’s IT team has the ability to easily configure the software to support a week-long promotion being run by the client. The system can gather important information about the customers who are calling the client in response to that promotion, and it can generate insightful, automated reporting. NCO also provided the client with access to this tool, so they could follow up on any issues that arise in our call center.

NCO was also able to help improve the company’s business continuity by building a mockup of their existing transactional tool into the platform. In the event of an outage, NCO agents will be able to process transactions in the CRM tool and forward them to the client’s transactional tool once it is operational again.

"Developing a CRM platform for this client was a major step forward for our organization," said Mr. Bob Corsi, Senior Vice President of Operations for NCO Customer Management. "NCO plans to use our partnership with this client as a template for how we can help other organizations aggregate customer information and turn it into actionable intelligence."

NCO also built several features into the CRM platform to meet the client’s future and evolving needs, including automated reporting and graphing, CTI integration, queue management between multiple channels, and agent workflows.

About NCO
NCO Group, Inc. is a global provider of business process outsourcing services, primarily focused on accounts receivable management and customer relationship management. NCO provides services through over 100 offices in the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Panama, the Caribbean, India, Mexico, Guatemala, the United Kingdom, and Australia. For more information, visit www.ncogroup.com.