Discussion Paper

Improving experience in the prepaid card industry: a customer service workshop

Abstract: Contact Solutions LLC provides third-party contact center support for a number of government-sponsored prepaid card programs, including U.S. Treasury?s Direct Express. One of the explicit objectives of these programs is to link previously unbanked individuals with access to electronic banking services. With little prior experience as banking consumers, these individuals exhibit usage and behavior patterns, including their consumption of customer service, that differ from those of customers more familiar with financial services. This has presented some new challenges for contact centers. Contact Solutions executives facilitated a Payment Cards Center workshop during which they described some of these challenges and discussed how contact centers are responding.

Keywords: Contact center; prepaid cards; interactive voice response; underbanked consumers; customer-operator;

JEL Classification: D1;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Part of Series: Consumer Finance Institute discussion papers

Publication Date: 2014-05-01

Number: 14-1