Member Services Online?s key features indeed streamline a formerly time-consuming task requiring reams of paper. At the end of each day, businesses nationwide report their credit card transactions to banks, which in turn request funding approval for those transactions from MasterCard through authorization research requests. Before Member Services Online, it took a MasterCard customer service representative 36 to 72 hours to complete a single request and fax the results to the bank. Now, clients can log on to Member Services Online, conduct the research themselves and have an answer within 10 seconds without having to speak with anyone from MasterCard.

Since the introduction of Member Services Online, MasterCard has seen a significant drop in expenditures. Expenses affiliated with authorization research requests dropped 67 percent from 2000 to 2001, a savings of more than $73,000 now that this research can be sent electronically. In that same year, MasterCard saved around $300,000 in outside vendor expenses for the paper delivery of settlement advisements, $220,000 in production of hard-copy manuals and publications that are now downloadable. And online billing is expected to entirely eliminate an annual cost that once exceeded $500,000. With 88 percent of the total first-level support now online, the customer support group was able to maintain the same headcount, on average, throughout 2001 despite an increase in support requests of nearly 69,000.

Member Services Online was built mostly out of new applications and is accessed through a secure extranet. Downloadable Member Publications were developed using a number of common platforms including Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Office. All data from eService is retrieved from servers via a direct connection to a database or a file transfer. The eService tools run on a Sun Solaris server through Oracle databases and have several J2EE applications. The eService information is accessed through internal systems including the mainframe, NT servers and other Sun servers.

Customer Satisfaction

Clients say the new system reduces the amount of actual paperwork they must deal with and increases their ability to access information. Kalli Conklin, a compliance manager for Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data Merchant Services, used to talk with a MasterCard customer representative a couple of times a day, but now she can access the information she needs through Member Services Online, eliminating those phone calls.

?Before, just getting updated forms from MasterCard would take a few days or a week,? says Conklin, who acts as a liaison between banks that employ First Data and major credit card companies such as MasterCard and Visa. ?It would come via fax or through the mail, but we would have to interact with MasterCard.? Now, forms are sent electronically, landing in Conklin?s inbox a matter of seconds after they are requested. In the past, once reports the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica would come to Conklin by fax or mail, they were copied and mailed to clients, at First Data?s expense, often requiring staff to work a Saturday afternoon in the office. Now those reports are quickly downloadable. Conklin says Member Services Online ?saves time in every possible way.?