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When the Stakes Are High N.C. State Employees Credit Union Looks to IQ Services For Load Testing Before Going Live With Contact Center Upgrade The stakes are undeniably high anytime the North Carolina State Employees Credit Union (NCSECU) makes changes to its automated delivery technologies, tools such as voice response and e–commerce systems that allow members to gain access to and manage their accounts. The credit union's reputation for excellent service — a reputation that has propelled it to the second largest among state credit unions — is clearly on the line. Especially in a region where larger competitors can make banking feel like an 'extreme' sport, a reputation for top–notch service and convenience is critical to attracting and retaining members. Further raising the stakes: Any investment in new technologies comes from credit union member funds. As a non–profit financial cooperative that operates under a "people helping people" philosophy and commits to returning earnings to members in the form of lower loan and higher deposit rates, NCSECU has an obligation to make sure that its technology investments yield improved service, lower costs — or both. So when NCSECU's popular interactive voice response system, ASK SECU, faced a capacity problem in 2003, the decision to invest in an upgrade was not taken casually. Nor was its implementation, which expanded the system from 211 to 480 concurrent callers and added richer, faster, more robust features. And with sensitivity to customer service and reputation always foremost, the system's architects were determined that member experience with the upgrade, from the moment it went live, would be purely positive. "It was really important that we could prove in advance that the system would work," says Rick Rhoads, senior vice president of e–services and lead strategist behind the organization's advanced automated delivery channels. "We were very aware of the costs and benefits of our investment because every penny we spend is our members' money."
The challenge Rhoads faced: Demonstrate under "real world" conditions that the upgraded system would scale successfully to the anticipated number of calls and that its features, tested in the same ways members would actually use them, would function flawlessly. IQ Services' testing methodologies fit Rhoads' needs. To perform load testing, IQ Services launches real telephone calls — hundreds of them — from its Minneapolis headquarters to the installation. During the test, IQ Services technicians observe the calls and document system performance, monitoring how well it handles various traffic loads, identifying trouble spots and, as they are addressed, verifying that the corrections were effective. "IQ Services has a really cool testing format," Rhoads says. "They began testing in a 100–call increment, then 200, 300, 400 to 480 and then back down." Along the way, testing was performed on a variety of different scripts — common paths that credit union members take to manage their money, such as checking balances and transferring funds. NCSECU engineers and IQ Services experts monitored the tests, alert to dropped calls and bottlenecks. As bottlenecks were discovered, IQ Services suspended tests to allow NCSECU to make the corrections needed.
"IQ Services gave us flexibility in our testing timeframe in the event we ran into a problem outside of their control," says Rhoads. The test ran over the course of a week, he says. |
