Mercantile Bank, the upmarket banking and financial services group, has installed Ixchange`s Customer Ixchange (CIX) in its internal help desk and call centre. The call centre offers a broad range of commercial banking services, such as savings and credit facilities, and professional financial services such as risk management and insurance.
Rick van der Westhuizen, senior manager: IT and risk control management at Mercantile, says the bank was looking to replace its internal help desk with a product that combined the benefits of paperless communication and Internet connectivity in one integrated solution.
"It`s important that the group manage change control," he says. "This requires an extensive database of inventories and associated issues for our Sandton head office and branches nationwide."
CIX is used in Mercantile`s internal support centre to log all reported faults to the IT department. Once a call is logged, CIX is used to control and monitor responses. Faults are assigned to the relevant service department, either internal or third-party.
"Mercantile uses third-party suppliers for equipment provision, so CIX allows us to view at a glance how efficiently suppliers are responding to faults, and which are recurrent faults," says Van der Westhuizen. "In this way we can track and optimise resources."
CIX Internal combines advanced asset management and change control facilities with a Web interface that lets users access the system remotely and electronically communicate logged information.
"It`s the only solution we found that enabled both event and change control functions," says Van der Westhuizen. "All others had one or the other, but not both, and none could ship data by e-mail or the Internet."
The bank is moving away from paper-based correspondence, and CIX ties in with this initiative. "We don`t have to generate and distribute manual reports," says Van der Westhuizen. "Call distribution is fully automated by CIX, which quickly escalates a report through our intranet."
Mercantile is developing a fully automated user support centre extending from head office to branches, subsidiaries and third-party suppliers. "We still have some way to go," says Van der Westhuizen, "but we`re confident CIX will grow with us, while keeping overheads low."
The bank is working with Ixchange to customise CIX for its varied needs and applications.
"Our goal is that our branches don`t have to log calls telephonically to head office, but log, track and solve their own faults using the Internet," adds Van der Westhuizen. "CIX makes a distributed system easier for the user, and streamlines the services we can provide the bank with our own staff."
Mercantile is proactive in its service delivery initiatives and is looking to extend the benefits of the help desk to all internal divisions. "We`ve seen such an increase in our service levels, we`re looking to extend CIX beyond IT to other departments," says Van der Westhuizen. "Then we can take full control of our internal service requirements and push them to the high levels our users demand."
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