|
| H&R Block |
| Technical Statistics |
- Server Platform:: UNIX
- Database: Oracle
- Operating System: Hewlett-Packard
- Amdocs CRM Modules: Sales, Support, CallCenter, Script Manager, HelpDesk, Quality
- Users: Tens of thousands projected
- Interaction Volume: 20,000 per day, including 7,000 emails
| | | | | | Every tax season, millions of taxpayers descend upon H&R Block, hoping to discover new deductions. With the deregulation of the financial services industry, H&R Block had a unique opportunity to provide added value to its tax customers through expanded financial services.
As part of this evolution, the company opened financial centers nationwide and consolidated its call centers into a single, integrated contact center. To support its transformation into a full financial services organization, H&R Block is implementing Amdocs CRM. With Amdocs CRM, H&R Block has the foundation for extending its client relationships across multiple financial services offerings.
With Amdocs CRM, we have all of our customer data in one place, so every H&R Block representative has a complete picture of the customer when making financial recommendations.
Kathy Pickering
Vice President, Corporate Systems
H&R Block
H&R Block already has strong brand equity as a tax preparation company, but to successfully take advantage of financial industry deregulation, the company needed to leverage the relationships with its traditional tax customers.
Much of this effort falls on its tax preparers. As the first point of contact for customers, theyre charged with gauging the interest level and potential value a tax customer would receive from other financial services, including mortgage products and investment plans.
Once customers express interest, the company needed an efficient way to pass information to the appropriate financial advisors and ensure every inquiry was addressed. That was the hard part, with 1,600 advisors spread across 190 financial centers nationwide.
Having a single, integrated solution ensures complete accurate customer information, as well as faster deployment.
John Thompson
Director, Financial Services Practice Management
H&R Block
But, in Amdocs CRM, H&R Block found its answer. The company deployed Amdocs CRM across its enterprise, including in the customer contact center, the tax preparer group and other financial services organizations.
In the first phase of the roll-out, Amdocs CRM was deployed in 94 offices, reaching about 700 advisors. Subsequent phases will complete the implementation enterprise-wide, in 190 offices and 1600 advisors.
Today, when a tax customer requests more information on other H&R Block services, information on that customers background and interest area is automatically routed to the most qualified financial advisor for an immediate, tailored response. By enabling its financial advisors to provide personalized sales and service, H&R Block is giving its customers reason to be loyal and creating a return on relationship over the customer lifecycle.
We chose Amdocs CRM as the solution to support our long-term strategy for web-enabled customer relationship management (CRM), said Bryan DiGiorgio, vice president of H&R Blocks service center. Our goal is to completely understand the lifetime value of each customer.
Amdocs CRM helps us gain this understanding, so we can provide value added services and grow that customer over their lifecycle. After all, its less expensive to keep a customer than acquire a new one.
During peak periods, H&R Blocks contact center manages approximately 20,000 customer inquiries each day, including more than 7,000 emails.
In its recent tax season, H&R Block used Amdocs CRM to manage nearly a quarter million email interactions from January through April, up from 65,000 email transactions during the same period in the previous year.
When H&R Block receives email inquiries, Amdocs CRM automatically creates a case and places it into the contact center queue for resolution. Customer inquiries are often very similar during tax season, since everyone is going through the same experience at the same time.
One of the most common questions taxpayers ask, for example, relates to the status of their tax returns. By identifying all the emails addressing the same issues, H&R Block is able to send out mass responses, handling much greater quantities of emails in a much shorter time.
In the tax return status example, for instance, H&R Block can send a mass response directing its customers to the IRS for status inquiries. Then, the email inquiries that remain are tended to individually by an agent. Amdocs CRMs strong workflow ensures efficient ownership and escalation of customer emails.
We absolutely want to dazzle our customers, because customer loyalty is everything, says Kathy Pickering, vice president of corporate systems at H&R Block. In accordance with our business strategy, we want to serve customers as they go through different life stages, that way we can keep them through their lifetime. Using Amdocs CRM, we have all of our customer data in one place, so every H&R Block representative has a complete picture of the customer when making financial recommendations.
A single solution tailored for H&R Blocks needs
While piloting its financial service center concept, H&R Block initially used a contact management and lead distribution application, but it ultimately lacked the robustness needed. Thats when the financial services group began seeking a new sales force automation solution.
Meanwhile, the company had chosen Amdocs CRM as its scalable, web-ready CRM solution to track and route customer inquiries whether they come in by phone, email, the web or in personin the companys newly consolidated customer contact center.
Its individual call centers had been using disparate call center tracking software, which meant that the company wasnt getting a single view of each of its customersor their profitability levels. The new customer contact center serves the tech support needs of the companys 10,000 offices as well as its client relations, financial and e-commerce groups.
Whats more, it is designed to be a profit center by tracking customer interactions, it can bring to light insights on each customer that H&R Block can use in marketing and cross- and upselling efforts. Says DiGiorgio, Of all the software we evaluated, I was most impressed with Amdocs CRM because it was a single, integrated solution that we could customize to our hearts desire without risk of losing any of our customized fields during upgrades.
In order to take advantage of a single, integrated solution, H&R Blocks financial services group also implemented Amdocs CRM for its sales operations. Notes John Thompson, director of Financial Services Practice Management, Having a single, integrated solution ensures complete, accurate customer information, as well as a faster deploymentcritical to the success of our financial services offerings.
Building a full financial services business
In its first tax season in operation at H&R Block, Amdocs CRM managed more than one million customer interactions in the contact center, and shared an additional 1.4 million leads from its tax preparers to its financial advisors. Using the business rules developed in Amdocs CRM, as well as its workflow features, advisors can track the progress of each lead as the customer relationship changes.
Notes Thompson, For tax customers interested in our other financial services, we can get their information to the appropriate financial advisor within 24 hours. According to the business rules weve established, if the interested customer isnt contacted by an advisor within the specified period, Amdocs CRM notifies the advisor and supervisor so they can take action to ensure prompt attention to the customers inquiry.
Now that H&R Block has strengthened its ability to cross-sell and up-sell its financial products and services, it stands to gain better value from each of its customer relationships. Notes DiGiorgio, As customers evolve from purely tax customers to also use our mortgage services or other financial products, their value to H&R Block increases, creating stronger return on relationship.
Amdocs CRMs power to navigate within the application in a variety of ways provides added flexibility.
John Thompson
Director, Financial Services Practice Management
H&R Block
As H&R Block continues to develop into a full financial services organization, Amdocs CRM will scale to support tens of thousands of users. The flexibility and power of Amdocs CRM were also strong selling points. Our users can look something up or jot down a note about a customer interactionno matter where they are in the application, says Thompson.
Instead of having to back out of the application and start over, advisors simply navigate a few screens, and click on a button to complete the task they need. Amdocs CRMs power to navigate within the application in a variety of ways provides added flexibility.
Turning loyal customers into lifelong customers
One of the essential factors that clinched H&R Blocks decision to go with Amdocs was the companys commitment to customer satisfaction. Notes Bernie Smith, director of contact center operations, Like Amdocs, we feel strongly about delighting our customers so theyll be with us for the long term.
Completing its transformation from tax provider to financial services provider, H&R Block is well aware that it is entering into some stiff competition from brick-and-mortar to click-and-mortar and strictly online ventures. But with Amdocs CRM supporting its CRM vision, the company is poised to provide the personal touch that eludes so many organizations in its industry.
Concludes Thompson, Weve built an amazing brand based on trust, honesty and customer service, so our customers come back year after year. Now were working to extend the same level of customer service and commitment in our financial services business. Having Amdocs CRM in place is critical to making this happen.
|