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Penguin power at UTI Bank

The bank is hosting the IVR and CRM applications for its call centre on Linux, says Venkatesh Ganesh

As an account holder calling up your bank’s customer service number, you must have experienced the frustration of being kept on hold listening to jingles. Although most private banks have call centre agents, the time taken by an agent to close a call has an impact on the number of calls that a bank can handle at any given point of time. This in turn depends on how fast an agent is at retrieving data from a customer database for answering a call. Typically, the moment a customer calls a bank, the unique number given by the customer (a telephone personal identification number or account number) is used by the IVR (interactive voice response) application to pull data from the bank’s database and push it to the agent’s desktop. The agent, now equipped with the requisite data, is better prepared to handle the call and close the transaction faster.

UTI Bank wanted to avoid a situation where customers were put on hold. The scalability of its call centre applications in handling large volumes of calls was therefore a crucial factor.

After scouting for the relevant platform, the bank decided to go in for Red Hat Linux 9. The platform was chosen on account of the bank’s realisation that it could scale up to handle the huge number of calls it receives. Red Hat was asked to complete the project within three months; the project rolled out on time.

A thousand calls a day

Says a satisfied M S Nagarajan, Vice-president, IT, UTI Bank, “The scalability of the platform is proven as we can handle close to 1,000 calls a day without disruption.” Additionally, the choice of Linux gives the bank the option of scaling up its infrastructure in a cost-effective manner using Intel hardware to run Linux. The IVR application pulls data from an Oracle CRM application that’s hosted on Linux. The CRM software keeps tab on all the information that can be gleaned from a call. The middleware that connects the IVR and the Oracle CRM application is Intel’s CTI Connect call processing software, which permits caller data to be associated with a call and made available to each application that handles the call. Typically, the initial caller data is collected by the IVR and passed on to the customer service representative who handles a call. As soon as a call is connected, the IVR application provides the customer’s identification number, and information regarding the account holder is displayed on the agent’s desktop. In case of a fresh call, a customer record is created in the CRM system.

Linux’s open architecture was crucial as the bank has customised and added several features to the application as per its needs. UTI benefits because agents need only a Web browser to access the system; this significantly reduces the IT overhead when deploying, maintaining and upgrading the platform.

The Linux platform’s

scalability has translated into better productivity. Comments Nagarajan, “On an average our employees attend hundreds of calls for relaying information as well as calls pertaining to account balance enquiry and cheque clearance status. This takes so much time that other activities such as selling loans and mutual funds take a back seat.” The time saved on these routine enquiries is being used by UTI Bank to perform more rewarding activities.

Easy to scale up

The application can be scaled up by adding a few low-cost Intel servers. Adds Nagarajan, “Support has not been a critical issue at all. Once the operating system is installed and configured, there’s little to actually support.” As Linux is open source, UTI has customised the application to plug potential security holes. Nagarajan says that security is one of the biggest advantages of using a Linux-based system.

UTI Bank has saved money and used the penguin-powered system’s performance to boost revenue-creation opportunities. The Indian BPO sector could well take a leaf out of the bank’s book, and use Linux-based call centre applications to control costs and boost productivity.

venkatesh@expresscomputeronline.com