A Conversation With ... Michael Replogle

Title: Vice president and Springfield call center site lead

Education: Earned an associate’s degree in business administration at Northeastern State University and says education has been gained through experience.

On industry trends: More cardholders want credit card information and services via instant messaging

Tell us about the Springfield Chase call center.

Of all the domestic sites – there are six – we are the largest in terms of card member services. I have about 1,350 (employees) on the card member services side, plus our retail division has 250 to 300 seats in our building. We have five different lines of business. We support service-to-sales, and we have inbound service. We also have a re-engagement outbound program, going to customers who are showing signs of (leaving), or possibly, they’re not as engaged as we’d like them to be. … We try to get them in the right product. We also have a card member care unit. … Lastly, we have card activation (for customers who) get a card in the mail. It’s more than activation. It’s also customization (to) change the (account) due date or upgrade to different rewards. Ninety-five percent of (calls) we handle are incoming, and we take calls from all over the world.

How did you get into this line of work?

I’ve been in the call center business 23 years. … I’ve been managing sites of this magnitude since about 1995. I worked for USAA in Tulsa, Okla., (for 10 years), and started pushing a mail cart for $5 an hour. That was a military insurance company based in Texas, but they started a card division in 1984, and I started in 1985. Three months later, they put me on the phones, and I worked my way up through the company. In 1995, I left the company and three of us (USAA employees) started a company called Direct Merchants Bank … and took it public. … That is my formal education, so to speak. I’ve been with Chase for a year and a half.

What brought you to JPMorgan Chase?

I got out of call center operations and went into retail (working) for 1-800-Flowers.com. I ran their largest site, in southern Oklahoma, and then, their smallest site in Ohio. In August of 2006, I was contacted by JPMorgan Chase and Bank One, and took (the position) with JPMorgan Chase. My family’s all in Tulsa, Okla., and we were 18 hours away (in Ohio). I have two kids out of high school, one in college, and I really wanted to try to get back to where I was closer to them.

What are some new customer services or changes for JPMorgan Chase?

We’re taking on a whole new dynamic of how we interact with and service our customers. We’ve created a Web site, www.chaseclearandsimple.com, for our customers, and we’re trying to take bank jargon out and explain things very simply to our customers. … We removed universal default. Historically, if you were late on another account, that could impact your rate with us. We’ve eliminated that. We only look at how (customers) pay us. We’re trying … to service customers the way they want to be serviced, whether it be through texting or whatever means they need.

How does the availability of services online affect the call center?

We take about 7 million calls a month as an enterprise and about 1.3 million a month (in Springfield). I do have a group here that does nothing but support Internet users. If they’re trying to log on but they can’t get in because the browser’s not working, they actually contact us and we walk them through the steps. But there’s no shortage of calls. Really, where it’s going is that people want to have services through texting and instant messaging.

Chase is celebrating the Springfield call center’s 10th anniversary. Can you tell us some history and how the occasion will be marked?

The call center was initially FirstCard, then First USA, then Bank One, and now Chase. We’ve planned an event for every single month (to) brand ourselves in the community and telling people who we are as JPMorgan Chase. We want people to understand what we do. We have many off-the-phone jobs. One month, we’re going to have an ice cream social for the whole town, and we’re partnering with an ice cream company on the West Coast. We’ve also made a corporate commitment as a site to contribute 10,000 volunteer hours in the city of Springfield in 2008 in three focus areas: community life, community development and youth education.

Tell us about your family and your hobbies.

I have a 21-year-old son, Colt, a 20-year-old daughter, Whitnye, a 17-year-old son, Dalton, a 4-year-old son, Tristan, and a 2-year-old son, Parker. My wife, Hilarie, and I have been married for six years. The two little guys take up a lot of our time.

Interview by Features Editor Maria Hoover. You can e-mail her with suggestions for future installments of this feature at mhoover@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]