The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

Las Vegas – At the 2010 Best Practices Conference – The Top Ranking Performers in the Contact Center World – delegates heard from the best in customer services in the Contact Center World. The top 3 contenders from the world included St. George Bank (Australia), Qatar Telecom (Qatar) and CVS Caremark (USA)

St.George, part of the Westpac Group, is one of Australia’s leading Retail and Business Banking brands.Founded in 1937 as a housing based financial institution, St.George built a reputation as Australia's foremost building society, before achieving full banking status in July 1992.

St.George’s key strategy is harnessing the potential in the franchise and building on its strengths and capabilities. These strengths include a track record of superior credit quality, positive customer service ratings relative to the industry, and product management and product innovation capabilities.

Commenting on the win and the best practices conference where St George staff presented, Antoine Casgrain, General Manager Customer Contact Centres- Retail Banking St. George told us "We learned of so many leading edge operating practices ... and most importantly we learned how organisations have applied them!' The Networking opportunities were invaluable. In our part of the world you always talk with the same people. It was so refreshing to meet new practitioners and hear about their refreshing perspectives. Our group sat down at the end of the conference and agreed on 20 top learnings/initiatives to explore once we got back home. Within 2 weeks of our return, we have already implemented three ideas and have IT excited about another two that could really steer us apart from our competition in our part of the world.".

Raj Wadhwani, President of ContactCenterWorld added "I am always amazed at how the best in the industry work their magic and all three of the contenders were stellar. What I really liked about St. George is the fact that they focus so much on people in their contact centers and the customer and ensure that everything they do does not negatively impact either of these two groups – they are simply the best and every time I hear their story they share so many tips and I am ‘wowed’ – amazing people and amazing service. I congratulate St. George in particular Antoine Casgrain and his team on sharing so much. It’s fantastic to hear that they came away with lots from the conference and awards – they certainly are open to sharing and learning from others as well – they are a brilliant yet very humble group of people"

Antoine Casgrain (right) answering questions at the Best Practice Conference and the company mascot! (left)

Casgrain concluded " We have now participated on three occasions to the World Awards process and have learned so much every time and have implemented so many new initiatives that we were exposed to. We will be back next year ... and the year after that!

"No other Contact Centre conference offers such a great opportunity to learn from colleagues from right around the world in a format conducive to short and crisp sharing of practical initiatives and best practices."

The Top Ranking Performers in the Contact Center World Awards is an annual benchmarking and best practices awards program run by Contact Center World. More details of the 2011 awards which are open for entry until middle of January 2011 at this link http://www.contactcenterworld.com/worldawards

The Top Ranking Performers Conference is a conference series that consists of 4 events around the world – 3 regional and 1 global best practices conference that is open for anyone to attend. More details of the 2011 conferences are at this link http://www.contactcenterworld.com/conferences

A full list showing the 2010 Global Rankings for all awards can be found at this link

http://www.contactcenterworld.com/worldawards/award-rankings.aspx?id=B1AF3648-3E6D-4B47-9219-FDE4BD016F25

About St George Bank:
The St.George Bank brand is the 5th largest banking brand in Australia. Recently merged with the Westpac group to form the largest financial institution in the country employing over 37,000 people. It 19s national operations span all aspects of the financial industry including retail banking, institutional and business banking, and wealth management. At the banks core is a close relationship with it 19s customers and this remains the cornerstone of future strategies, an important tradition that distinguishes the St.George bank brand from other Australian banks. The brand promise of St George is 'Big Enough, Small Enough and the customer proposition is that you have the security and strength of a big bank, with all of the soul from a small bank.