Content area
Full Text
American General Finance, a subsidiary of American General Corp., approves loans in an hour in selected cities with the help of new telemarketing technology.
A key to the success of the two-year program is the technology being used by the firm's telemarketing agency, Telenational Marketing, through which "the decision maker is allowed to decide instantaneously" whether or not to approve a loan, said Mark Blankenau, general manager of Telenational.
The telemarketing company promises "technology with a personal touch."
Pam Waitman, media manager at American General Finance, said the "loan in an hour" program, which runs in such cities as Fresno, Calif., Shreveport, La., and Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville, Fla., is "a new operating procedure for a need that could and should be filled. Getting money quickly was a reason people were coming to us."
"Nothing like this had been done before," said Blankenau. "We had to develop a system and technology that would respond to potentially hundreds of consumer calls an hour, acquire the information to complete a...