At Pershing, your call may be recorded not only for quality assurance purposes, but for a voice analysis of expressed empathy, silent time on call and a range of behavioral factors expressed in phrases such as "I'm so frustrated" and "I can't believe this takes so long."
"We're able to detect the words that agents are using in every single call," says Jim Halloran, vice president and manager of the Jersey City, N.J.-based RIA custodian's service excellence program, where the firm maintains its voice analytics unit.
Welcome to the brave new world of big consumer data, where technological advances allow companies to track employee-customer conversations using quality-monitoring metrics. Approximately 300 call center agents receive a weekly performance evaluation scorecard that their managers use for "targeted coaching" as well as a gauge of customer satisfaction, Halloran says.
Apple, Google and Even Starbucks Serve Up Inspiration
To be sure, Pershing, a Bank of New York Mellon affiliate, is able to leverage the deep pockets of its corporate parent – to the tune of a $2 billion annual tech budget. And Pershing CIO Ram Nagappan is using a significant portion of that budget to focus on the end-user experience – much as Apple, Google and even Starbucks do now.
"A big strategic focus for us is on the investor experience," Nagappan says, adding that greater mobility on devices is especially important. "It should have been like this from the start, but now the user interface has become key."
Pershing's CIO post has looked like a game of musical chairs in the past two years as BNY Mellon ramps up its end-user game.
Earlier in 2013, Nagappan took over as Pershing's sole CIO when his co-CIO, Lucille Mayer, moved on to become CIO at BNY Mellon, leaving Nagappan free to act more independently at Pershing.
"I meet with a lot of clients now," Nagappan says. "Because I do, the changes come faster and it's easier for me to release them."
Mayer, meanwhile, is now responsible for bringing all of BNY Mellon's access touchpoints into a converged, common technology product and service experience for customers. She shares BNY Mellon CIO duties with Suresh Kumar, who in 2012 left ther Pershing CIO position, which he held for 10 years, for the BNY Mellon post.
NetXInvestor Sharpens Focus on End User
