Case Study: newcastle strategic solutions

BEFORE

An under-resourced contact center

Newcastle Strategic Solutions manages savings accounts on behalf of some of the UK’s leading banks and lenders. They support UK banks and building societies in launching robust savings programs and also transforming existing portfolios. Historically, the contact center team operated without a CCaaS solution while fielding calls from banks and their end customers about their savings accounts. The team relied on monthly estimates from individual clients for their business needs. This left a lot of manual work for the planning specialists to schedule work and plan for headcount.

DESIRE TO CHANGE

Getting stakeholder buy-in for a transformation

Paul Air, Customer Operations Manager at Newcastle, said that several years ago it became evident that the company needed a more modern workforce planning approach. “I
could see that we needed an actual system to get better control on who was doing what and who was needed where,” he said.

Though Air approached leadership with this idea and researched vendors, the stakeholder buy in wasn’t quite there at the time. The changes COVID-19 brought, as well as some fresh faces on the management team, gave Air the opportunity to reopen the conversation in 2022. Leadership agreed it was time to modernize workforce planning and explore how it could boost customer experience at the same time. After research, Air and his team eventually landed on NiCE IEX Workforce Management with CXone Mpower.

We didn’t want to be shoehorned into features and random KPIs that didn’t matter
to us. With WFM, we configure things to
what need and just focus on providing
great service.

Paul Air

Customer Operations Manager Newcastle Strategic Solutions

NiCE SOLUTION

A modern CCaaS platform to power real workforce management

Knowing that a workforce planning platform was new to the team, Air took a very thorough, thoughtful approach to change management and onboarding of NiCE Workforce
Management. The work the company’s contact center does can be complex, and it was important to show that the new platform would enhance their day-to-day work, not add
additional burden. The team created physical posters for the office space as a countdown to launch day; offered indepth multimedia training videos; and conducted drop-in sessions with team members to walk through expectations. A resource team was also implemented to offer peer support through the process.

“Through previous internal surveys we had learned that many colleagues felt they didn’t have time for things or the support they needed,” said Air. “We used the ramp-up to the launch to explain how WFM would solve these issues they’d been asking about and make it clear that this was for them.”

The configurability of NiCE WFM was a key selling point for Newcastle. With WFM, Newcastle now has Power BI integration. The team were able to offer a data led approach to review real-time scheduling needs via streamlined dashboards. Individual client workload estimates are compared to actual rates, allowing Newcastle to shift team members as needed to where more agent support is needed, offering more flexibility in how resources are utilized. The Power BI dashboards are used post-day to evaluate performance as well, offering opportunities to refine decisions and maximize resources further. In combination with CXone MPower, Newcastle has implemented a call back program that allows customers to hold their place in the queue and wait for a call from an agent. This has reduced repeat customer interactions, and clients experience less frustration during peak call times.

Newcastle also opted for Interaction Analytics as part of their package. The contact center now has access to a deep dive into every interaction, producing actionable insights
for the business. The analytics provide clarity on customer needs and how to solve them more quickly.

RESULTS

Organization that meets—and exceeds—customer needs

Newcastle’s contact center is now leaps ahead of where it started and is a more forward-thinking organization. Efficiency has improved by 10% as individual account teams are more appropriately staffed. This was vital for when Newcastle recently had a record-breaking month of 100,000+ interactions. Upskill time is also used much more effectively as the team are able to hone in on training needs based on workload volumes across work types.

As staffing needs shift from account to account, Air said the team has also been able to make room for agent preferences. “Some folks have expressed a preference for different
accounts or tasks and we’re able to accommodate them,” he said. The business’s bottom line has also seen a positive impact, with 7.5% savings in workforce costs.

The team was a finalist for the Professional Planning Forum Awards, showcasing their success with their new WFM platform.

FUTURE

An organization positioned to adapt and meet challenges

As Newcastle looks ahead, it sees ample opportunity to continue challenging itself and growing in customer service. The company has plans to integrate WFM with their
Workday HR solution to expand WFM’s impact further across the organization.

The company is beginning to experiment with AI features within NiCE, like AutoSummary, to explore where |automation can make agents’ lives easier. Additionally, Newcastle is rolling out more features around time off and self-service scheduling.

“We don’t want our system to be a simple ‘yes or no’ approach for agent requests,” Air said. “NiCE is helping us build something that considers what our agents really need.”