Let’s face it, your branch staff does not always have the time to answer the phone. It is no wonder that many customer calls into the local branch go answered, resulting in lost branch business. As banks work to leverage their retail footprints to offer more lines-of-business, branches will have to deal with more calls that cannot be handled in the banks central contact center. That is why we created Bank Direct, to handle incoming branch calls without burdening branch employees so they can focus on generating more branch revenue and servicing customers.  

Designed For Bank Branch Locations
We designed Bank Direct for branches with many different lines-of-business. Combined with Cisco’s Unified Communications platform, it provides a robust, feature-rich solution that transforms your phone system from merely a few telephones to an automated communications solution, intelligently integrated into your business process. Bank Direct can be deployed in distributed or centralized models, but provides localized functionality to the individual stores, such as store hours and directions. In addition, you can choose to perform system management either locally or remotely.

Makes Branch Employees More Productive
Every minute a customer waits on hold, or is transferred around the branch risks that they will hang up and take their business to a different bank. Moreover, the walk-in business in your branch needs all of the employees you can spare. Freeing up the branch operators and getting customer calls routed to the correct department quickly will produce more revenue with the same or fewer employees.
With Bank Direct, incoming callers hear the branch greeting, followed by the questions “how may I help you?” The caller can respond with a question such as “What are the branch hours?” or “who can help me with credit cards?” or statements like “I want the mortgage department”. The application quickly responds with “please hold while I connect you with the mortgage department”. The caller immediately hears the mortgage department phone ringing, and is just a few rings away from getting the help they asked for. 
Additionally, the Bank Direct management dashboard produces historical call reports, including successful calls, missed calls, wait time, etc. With Bank Direct providing unprecedented access to this information at a local branch level, managers can better understand customer behavior and calling patterns to ensure high performance from their staff and to make adjustments accordingly.

Keeping It Simple
Bank Direct is tightly integrated with Cisco’s Unified Communications product line. The hardware for individual stores can be as simple and cost-effective as a Cisco Integrated Services Router (2800/3800 series) running Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager Express and some Cisco IP Phones. This offering includes a fully functional IP PBX with optional T1/EI trunk interfaces and integrated unified messaging and automated attendant capability, as well as routing, switching, and security features.

Together with Bank Direct, it’s an unparalleled all-in-one solution that will help you to give your bank branches the unfair advantage you’ve been looking for...

Key Benefits:

• Support an increased number of lines-of-business in retail branches
• Increase sales
• Improve customer service
• Ensure customer loyalty
• Better understand customer behavior
• Differentiate from competition
• Enhance operational efficiency

Application Features:

• The system recognizes naturally spoken sentences, discerns the department that has what the caller is looking for, and routes the call
• Management dashboard produces historical call reports, including successful calls, missed calls, wait time, etc.
• Callers can always ask for the operator to be routed

Hardware Components:

• Bank Direct Application Server (does not require proprietary server)
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) or Communications Manager Express on ISR routers
• Cisco Unified IP Phones

Software Components:

The following Voice and Application Servers are supported:	The following Voice XML Browsers are supported:
IBM WebSphere Voice and Application Server (included) IBM WebSphere Voice Server (included)	Cisco IOS Voice XML Browser 12.4(3) +
The following Database servers are supported:	The following Operating Systems are supported
Informix (included)	Server: Linux Red Hat Enterprise 3 Update 5 Windows Server 2003
The following Web browsers for administration are supported:	The following PBX’s are supported
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5,  6.0, 7.0 Mozilla Firefox 2+	Cisco Unified Communications Manager 5 + Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express Most other PBX's

Question: Bank Direct seems like it does many of the things that contact center IVR applications do. Is it as complex and as difficult to operate as a contact center solution?

Answer: No, Bank Direct's overriding design guideline is small size and simplicity. It is designed to be installed in a large number of branches, and operated by in-branch personnel.

Question: Can Bank Direct be managed by a centralized IT or telecom group?

Answer: Yes, Bank Direct's flexible architecture allows either local or remote management of the system within the branch.

Question: Given Bank Direct does many things that contact center IVR software does, is it expensive?

Answer: No, Bank Direct is priced to be attractive for banks that wish to deploy it in as few as a dozen branches, or as many as thousands of branches.