CheckFree Raises the Bar for Quality With New Service Level Agreements for Consumer Service Providers
Tuesday April 29, 8:30 am ET
CheckFree Shares Benefits From Sigma Quality Performance to All Clients By Proactively Raising Its Own Industry-Leading Service Guarantees
ATLANTA and ORLANDO, Fla., April 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Payments 2003 Booth # 201 -- CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR - News) today announced that it is strengthening service level agreements across its entire base of consumer service provider customers that offer electronic billing and payment services, including banks, credit unions, brokerage firms, Internet portals and personal financial manager software providers. These new service level agreements result from a level of operational excellence that has been consistently achieved, making it possible for CheckFree to "raise the bar" in its standard quality service level agreements with all consumer service providers.
The company has raised its service level agreement commitments to emphasize the importance of quality in meeting and exceeding the expectations of mainstream consumers who are steadily entering the electronic billing and payment marketplace. Mainstream consumers generally have higher service expectations and are less forgiving of errors than typical "early adopters" of emerging technologies. As the market leader, CheckFree is continuing to define the service standard by which electronic billing and payment services should be measured to ensure that consumer confidence in these types of online financial services continues to grow.
In 1998, CheckFree adopted a Sigma Quality Program methodology with the objective of reaching and sustaining "dial-tone" quality across its entire suite of electronic billing and payment services. This Sigma Quality Program, which is now integrated across its entire electronic processing division, has enabled CheckFree to establish the highest level of quality for the electronic billing and payment industry. This includes strengthening its processing efficiency, accuracy and quality, while processing steadily increasing transaction volumes as consumer service providers marketed the ability to view and pay bills online from their web sites. Today these operations benefit 842 consumer service provider clients and more than 9 million consumers who initiated online payments through CheckFree-backed sites.
Specifically, for CheckFree's consumer service provider clients, these new service level agreements reflect guarantees that include higher levels of online service availability, file processing delivery, payment accuracy, and payment investigation among other measurements. These improved commitments are made possible by the consistent level of efficiency and performance that CheckFree's end-to-end Genesis electronic billing and payment platform achieves. In addition, CheckFree is raising the minimum service requirements for its customer care operations, including e-mail inquiry resolution, and is adding a new minimum threshold for telephone hold times, to guarantee continuous and timely response for first-tier customer support on behalf of consumer service providers.
CheckFree is also deploying more sophisticated self-measuring and reporting techniques resulting from knowledge management initiatives, system utilization capabilities, and consumer behavior modeling.
"CheckFree does not take its leadership position for granted, but continually seeks to define quality, innovation and value for our industry," said Stephen Olsen, executive vice president and general manager of CheckFree's Electronic Commerce Division. "With even higher Service Level Agreement standards, and the industry's leading electronic payment rate, and lowest inquiry rate, we intend to pass along the benefits of our operational efficiency for end-to-end electronic billing and payment services to our customer base. In turn, consumers will have consistently positive experiences, which will stimulate grassroots recommendations that impact the success of consumer service provider adoption initiatives. Our entire organization is dedicated to enabling our customers to meet the demands of mainstream consumers, who in turn expect that electronic bills and payments will be consistently delivered safely, securely, accurately and on time."
Consumers who pay bills online from a CheckFree-backed site are protected by the CheckFree Guarantee, which minimizes consumer liability for unauthorized transactions, and late fees resulting from processing delays. . .
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