Case Study: Bose

CUSTOMER PROFILE

01 THE BEFORE

Running a complex, opaque environment

Before switching to NiCE CXone, Bose and its BPO partners managed a contact center operation that lacked both central controls and consistent technology standards. Key technological and process knowledge was siloed among a small number of specialists, making it difficult to adjust to urgent situations as well as conduct routine maintenance. And because processes were not centrally governed, the triage process was often made even slower by having to determine whether Bose, a BPO, or a data carrier needed to implement the change.

02 DESIRE TO CHANGE

Modernizing away from reactive and expensive processes

The complicated environment meant Bose had little real-time insight into trends and issues affecting customer experience and employee performance. Reports relied on data rollup from multiple sources and provided only a general overview. This made Bose’s approach to customer service trends almost entirely reactive, rather than proactive. “We were constantly challenged to track down issues and generally didn’t know we had an issue until there was a complaint,” said Ryan Stanard, Bose’s global director of customer enablement and engagement.

Leadership at Bose targeted a wide range of corporate improvements as part of a brand reimagination program. Streamlining the contact center operation and improving the customer experience were high on the list of priorities. “You can’t reimagine the brand without reimagining the customer experience,” Stanard said. “And we failed to create value because we were spending most of our time just trying to operate the previous end-of-life solutions.”

03 THE SOLUTION

Taking control of the customer experience

The rollout of NiCE CXone was as much about implementing a modern, cloud-based global contact center operation as it was about ensuring that Bose regained control of every customer interaction. The single platform also helps Bose hold agents to the same standards of training and performance, no matter where they work from or which customers they serve. “Increasing our quality and our speed to resolution were the top opportunities, because we all know that when a premium brand resolves a customer’s issue, they feel warm and fuzzy. And when the customer sees that a brand is proactive about that resolution, it makes them feel that every dime they spent was worth it,” Stanard said.

With centralized real-time command over the entire service organization, Bose can now make the kinds of intraday corrections that turn headaches into relief. Agent scheduling can be adjusted (away from training and into active queues, for example) to meet unexpected demand.

Retiring legacy systems, some of which dated back 20 years or more, also means that control over key customer interactions no longer depends on the availability of just a handful of subject matter experts. Centralizing control over everything from direct-response telephone routing to floating national holiday scheduling will pay ongoing dividends.

04 THE RESULTS

Rapid rollout leads to fast-forwarded results

Just 60 days after signing a contract, Bose rolled out NiCE CXone in three key contact centers supporting the North American market with several hundred agents. The rollout came in time for the key holiday 2021 season, which creates both challenge and opportunity for all consumer brands. Customers signaled strong approval, with a 34% increase in satisfaction ratings for the year-overyear period. In large part because of the improved agent availability and reduced need for callbacks, contacts also declined 23% year-over-year in the rolled-out markets. And agents successfully doubled service-related revenue year-over-year.

Moving to NiCE CXone has also dramatically reduced the time needed to identify and triage customer issues, by seamlessly capturing customer feedback on their contact center experience. Bose leverages Speech to Text and Text Analytics to identify areas for agent training and operational efficiencies improvements, while also comparing customer satisfaction with the contact center to other journey touchpoints such as website and in-store experiences.

Establishing a new contact center is now much faster, easier, and cheaper. And Bose realized all these gains while reducing the overall agent pool by 27%. “Customers demand efficiency,” Stanard said.

Building on these early successes, Bose accelerated rollout to the bulk of its other service centers, first to centers in the UK and ANZ and then pushing into additional markets in 13 total languages. The fastpaced deployment landed in 80% of Bose’s markets a full six months ahead of schedule.

05 THE FUTURE

Greater opportunities await in the data

As Bose works toward 100% global deployment by wrapping up in EU and APAC markets, the next orders of business will focus on expanding the use of predictive analytics to further refine employee performance, and automating follow up on customer feedback to improve loyalty and retention. The global rollout of NiCE CXone will also give Bose its first-ever completely integrated workforce management solution, expected to unlock further efficiencies.