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NICE PERFORM: HELPING SAXON MORTGAGE SERVICES, INC. GET TO THE HEART OF CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS

For Saxon Mortgage Services, Inc., the mantra "Where relationships mean everything" is more than a tag line. It's a reality of business. The mortgage servicer, located in Ft. Worth, Texas, specializes in servicing loans made to borrowers who require non-conforming loans or who may have a past history of impaired credit. This previously under-served segment of the mortgage market is growing - some would even say it's 'on fire.' But as barriers to entry fall, competition is also heating up.

Saxon's passion for great service comes across in everything the company does, especially in its contact center, where 149 CCRs (Customer Care Representatives) interact on a daily basis with many of Saxon's 170,000 plus customers. Historically, Saxon has taken a proactive approach to quality by routinely monitoring its representatives' interactions with customers. Recently the company invested in a new solution from NICE Systems. NICE Perform Advanced has increased their call handling efficiencies while enhancing the customer experience. Saxon's NICE Perform system not only captures interactions, it provides new tools, such as word spotting and emotion detection, to analyze those interactions in ways never before possible.

"This technology really helps us to get at the heart of what customers are thinking and feeling," said Sandy Bartlett, Assistant Vice President of Quality Assurance for Saxon Mortgage Services. "We can be more proactive with our business and identify customers' needs more effectively," she added. That high level of service, Bartlett predicts, will ultimately result in increased customer retention. Saxon uses the recording function to insure quality measures are correct for the proper customer experience and to reward their employees for performance in this portion of their job.

Understanding root causes: staying in touch with customer's needs
When customers call the Saxon Mortgage Services contact center, they could be calling about any number of matters concerning their mortgage: a change of address, a change in marital status or loan status, or a payment. Specialized departments or areas within the center handle different types of customer issues and delinquencies.

Saxon is using its new NICE technology to identify and better understand the root causes of specific issues that impact its business, such as customers impacted by life changing situations. Trends are then identified, and Saxon can begin attempting to resolve issues with their borrowers at earlier stages of delinquency.

Bartlett explained: "We set up lexicons in the NICE system for delinquency." (Lexicons are words or groups of words that the NICE system uses in its analysis of recorded customer interactions.) Saxon selected words that are indicators or predictors of delinquency. "Words like 'sick,' 'laid off,' 'bankruptcy,' 'divorce', and 'disability', were selected," said Bartlett, and input into the system. The system finds those words in the recorded customer interactions. Saxon can then focus on specific customer needs.

Another unique feature of Saxon's NICE Perform Advanced system is its emotion detection software, which analyzes interactions and detects callers who are in a highly emotional state. According to Bartlett, Saxon plans to use this capability, combined with word spotting, to better quantify and understand the nature of customer questions. "These are the types of calls we really want to listen to," she said. "This is going to give us better insight into what customers are thinking."

QA in the Saxon center: reviewing more interactions, more efficiently, in more ways
With NICE Perform Advanced, the center can review more interactions more efficiently and analyze them in more ways.

Saxon's quality assurance (QA) staff uses NICE Perform Advanced to review in excess of 2,000 recorded customer interactions each month. "We do 15 QC's per month per rep," said Bartlett. Twice each month, a separate quality assurance review committee meets to calibrate how calls should be scored, and that information and guidance is fed back to all impacted departments including the QA staff.

The NICE system is helping Saxon's QA staff see customer interactions with more clarity. The system can perform emotion detection or word spotting analysis on the complete interaction, or on either "side" of the interaction to look individually at what the customer or the CCR said. "We can run queries to determine if the CCR or the customer is talking," explained Bartlett.

A helping hand: NICE Perform Advanced helps Saxon review more interactions in less time
While most of the quality control is done by the QA team, Saxon's NICE system is also lending a helping hand. The system uses word spotting and CTI to automate the QA review of certain types of calls or certain aspects of call handling, so more interactions can be reviewed in less time.

Saxon has applied this QA technique to what it calls "welcome" calls. As part of its ongoing business, the company will often acquire loans from other mortgage originators. When that happens, each new customer receives a welcome call from Saxon.

"We'll make a welcome call to these new customers to make sure that all of their information is in our system correctly," said Bartlett. Saxon worked with an analytics specialist at NICE to set up rules to automate the review and scoring of these calls. First, the system identifies that the call actually is a 'hello call' using word spotting. Then, because representatives are required to speak certain words during the call, the system looks for each of those words in scoring the call.

Word spotting also makes it possible to automate the review and scoring of other types of calls, such as outbound collection calls. Saxon's contact center is a blended environment, so when there's a lull in inbound customer service calls, reps work on outbound collection calls. During a collection call, the rep is required to state what Bartlett calls a "mini-Miranda," to the customer.

The system can even capture and analyze CTI data to automate scoring for other aspects of the CCR's call handling - such as whether or not the rep put the customer on hold numerous times during the call or whether the rep had an excessive hold time.

The Saxon approach to training: trend and then train
Of course, the information garnered during the QA process is only valuable if it is used to improve future performance.

Using the NICE word recognition, Saxon can also identify internal training needs. Stellar performance by CCRs is easily identified and their best practices are then captured, shared and incorporated throughout the contact center. Word spotting enhances Saxon's CCRs' ability to quickly identify opportunities and provide customers with appropriate resolutions. "We trend and then we train," said Bartlett. "From a QA standpoint, if we can identify where our CCRs need additional training, we can then provide just in time training."

The system also ensures that CCRs get the help they need to handle difficult calls. Bartlett explained: "An escrow call is one of the more difficult calls we take in our business. Using NICE Perform Advanced, Saxon can easily zero in on these calls to ensure they're being handled properly. "We can identify calls where the word 'escrow' was spoken," said Bartlett. "We can listen to those calls or trend off of them to determine if a specific rep needs help in that area."

When it comes to training, the system has helped in other ways too - by reducing training time and costs. Bartlett elaborated: "Our QA specialists previously went through a four-week training program to familiarize them with our loan operating system." NICE Perform Advanced has the ability to capture the complete customer interaction - both the voice and the screens - and has cut that training time down to one week. Specialists are on the job and quality checking calls sooner and faster.

Just how did that happen? "The NICE Perform Advanced system provided screen captures and all the bells and whistles," said Bartlett. "Before, when our specialists would QC calls, they'd actually have to navigate the loan system while reviewing the voice recording to see if the CCR was giving the customer the right information. This required in-depth knowledge of the system, the kind of knowledge that the specialist could only get through extensive training." Saxon's new NICE Perform Advanced system records the CCRs screens along with the voice interaction so specialists can QC calls without having to navigate the loan system live. "It has saved training time and increased the productivity of my staff," said Bartlett.

Big plans for the future
While NICE Perform Advanced is already putting Saxon on the path to better service results, Bartlett expects her organization, and others within the company, will benefit even further.

"We have a new call center in Virginia that is just starting up, and we expect that in 2006 they'll be up and running on their own NICE system," she said.

Saxon is also using NICE Perform Advanced to capture and analyze other forms of customer interactions, such as email and written correspondence. Their Customer Relations Department is benefiting from this technology as well.

Read more about NICE Perform Advanced at www.nice.com/products/multimedia/nice_perform.php.