Report: GPR Cardholders Call Customer Service 2.7 Times per Month (July 3, 2013)
July 3, 2013
Prepaid cardholders’ customer service needs vary widely based on the type of card they are calling about, according to new research Contact Solutions LLC, and analyzing those patterns can go a long way toward cutting operating costs, the firm says. Cardholders of large government prepaid card programs make an average of 5.5 calls per month to customer service centers while cardholders from payroll, gift, rebate and GPR cards make an average of 2.7 calls per month, the firm said. Reston, Va.-based Contact Solutions released its white paper, “Voice of the Prepaid User: Roadmap for Creating an Effective Customer Service Strategy,” last week, based on customer service behavior data gleaned from its operations involving 50 prepaid card programs and 25 million active cardholders.
The average cost for a call to a live prepaid card customer service agent is $1.70, compared with 10 cents for an IVR call, Contact Solutions says. For all prepaid card customer service contacts, 70 percent of calls originate from mobile phones, and less than 10 percent of customers use either text messaging or the Web to resolve customer service questions. There is minimal use of mobile apps for prepaid card customer service inquiries, according to the report. Interactive voice response telephone channels are most popular. For self-service calls, 93 percent of questions involve balance inquiries; account maintenance and disputes each account for 2 percent of self-service calls, while transaction history accounts for just 1 percent of all self-service calls. Requests to reset a PIN comprise 28 percent of all calls to live agents, followed by general inquiries which account for 26 percent of live-agent calls. Other requests include card activation (16 percent), balance inquiry (13 percent), card replacement (10 percent), and funds load or transfer (7 percent).
