Highlights:
- With RingCentral Contact Center, the Member Service Center’s support agents can handle their 44,000 monthly calls more efficiently than ever.
- Using RingCentral Video, employees are having more video meetings than they ever have—and feeling more connected as a team.
- With the unified RingCentral MVP (Message, Video, Phone) platform, Credit Human’s geographically distributed staff remained productive and connected during COVID.
A financial partner for underserved populations since 1935
For people who struggle gaining access to traditional loans or banking services, Credit Human Federal Credit Union offers a valuable financial partnership. For nearly a century, Credit Human has been providing underserved populations a full suite of traditional financial services—checking accounts, credit cards, loans, financial planning—at competitive rates.
With a reputation for excellent service, the member-owned cooperative has enjoyed significant growth over the years. Today Credit Human is one of the largest credit unions in Texas, manages $3 billion in assets, and serves more than 250,000 members throughout the US.
But for an organization serving so many members, across such a wide geographic area, Credit Human needed a more modern, flexible communications solution.
Standardizing communications with RingCentral MVP
Prior to RingCentral, Credit Human’s staff were doing their best to communicate using an outdated phone system and a variety of disjointed platforms for video conferencing and team messaging. “As an organization, we weren’t nearly as efficient as we could have been with our IT communications,” says IT Manager Justin Collins.
“But when we rolled out the unified RingCentral solution, the entire organization was finally on a standard cloud platform that we could use anywhere, on any device. Our employees in Vermont could dial an extension on their RingCentral app and reach coworkers in Colorado, or us in the Texas headquarters. And we could use our RingCentral apps to talk, message, or host online meetings.”
Eliminating legacy telephony costs
Justin also points out that, before RingCentral, Credit Human’s Member Service Center had to pay $300 for phones capable of connecting to its legacy phone system—plus additional license fees for soft phone capabilities. “We were spending a small fortune on hardware and software tools for each agent in our Contact Center,” he says. “Now it’s all included with RingCentral.”
Improving member service with RingCentral Contact Center
Winston Cook is the Department Manager for Credit Human’s Member Service Center, a support department with dozens of agents fielding tens of thousands of calls from members each month. As Winston explains, the department is improving efficiencies and agent performance with RingCentral Contact Center.
“Contact Center is so easy to use that we can easily make changes on the fly ourselves. If we’re getting a lot of calls on a particular topic, we can create a skill in Contact Center for that right away or, if it already exists, we can quickly add more agents to cover it.”
As Winston points out, another benefit of Contact Center—and the RingCentral cloud platform in general—is its business continuity capabilities. “Let’s say a hurricane made our Houston office unsafe, or just knocked out service to the region. It would take only a minute to go into RingCentral and redirect those calls to our Washington or North Carolina agents. Our members would still be getting great service, but we could let our Houston team focus on staying safe.”
Staying productive and connected during the lockdowns
Although Credit Human had already had its rollout of RingCentral prior to the pandemic, the quarantine orders accelerated the organization’s need to equip all employees with the unified communication suite.
“While I don’t know how anyone could have been fully prepared for the impacts of the pandemic and lockdowns,” says Justin. “We were well positioned since we began our implementation in January of 2021, our RingCentral team helped us make sure everyone had RingCentral on their computers and mobile devices months ahead of schedule—and our teams got right back to serving our members from home.”
Winston notes that a key reason the staff remained so productive through COVID was that their new RingCentral solution gave them more communication flexibility than they’d ever had. “I can take or make a Credit Human call on my computer through the RingCentral app, and if I need to change locations mid-call, I can just flip it to my cell phone. That’s amazing.”
And as Justin explains, Credit Human’s employees found another RingCentral tool to be an invaluable source of team cohesion when they couldn’t be in the same location as their coworkers. “RingCentral Video has been great for maintaining that sense of team, especially during the lockdowns when we were all remote.”
“I’ve heard from several of our offices that they feel more connected to the company now that we’re using RingCentral Video for most of our meetings. Just being able to see each other on a regular basis makes a huge difference.”
Originally published Aug 24, 2021
