Alltel Sees Growing Internet Role in Customer Service; B2B Transactions.(business-to-business)(Brief Article)

Anticipating increasing consumer demand for online access to mortgage account data, Alltel continues to enhance Customer CareNet, a tool rolled out for mortgage servicers to provide customer service over the Internet.

The Alltel customer service on the Internet product gives consumers access to information about their loan, including transaction histories. This year, Customer CareNet (which can be seen at www.alltelmd.com) has evolved to allow consumers to request payoffs, receipts, and perform other types of interaction with their lender.

In addition to allowing lenders to provide information to their customers, Susan Casillas, a vice president for sales and marketing in Alltel's strategic solutions and e-business area, said that lenders have found that many customers want a two-way street. When they need to tell their lender something, they want to be able to do it online.

So Alltel has adapted the system to allow consumers to provide information such as a new address or e-mail address to their lender.

When the service was first introduced in 1998, one lender reported that Customer CareNet led to a 10% reduction in the lender's call center volume, she said. More recently, one lender has reported a 40% reduction in phone calls. And as technology advances, more and more of the ...