Case study: PayPal

PayPal, a global leader in financial technology, set out to transform its customer experience by embedding AI and automation into its global operations. Facing fragmented quality assurance processes, inconsistent coaching, and legacy workforce management systems, PayPal partnered with NiCE to drive measurable improvements. Using NiCE Interaction Analytics and NiCE AI alongside IEX Workforce Management, PayPal now delivers objective, data-driven coaching, ensures regulatory compliance across key markets, and has achieved a leap forward in workforce agility and employee satisfaction.

01 Before

Manual programs, inconsistent coaching

Prior to NiCE, PayPal’s QA efforts depended on a fragmented approach. Subjective scoring by different leaders based on a small sample of interactions, spreadsheets for data collection, and monthly reports lacked actionable insights. Survey data supplemented evaluations, but overall visibility was limited, and alignment across global teams was inconsistent. “Automation was a foreign concept,” said Jared Shumway, Global Quality Technology Manager at PayPal. “Agent scoring was all subjective and based on inconsistent leadership interpretations.”

Additionally, PayPal was using a legacy WFM solution that the team found frustrating and inefficient. Analysts were bogged down by manual tasks and poor system usability, leading to widespread dissatisfaction and limited scalability. The system couldn’t keep up with PayPal’s size or operational complexity, resulting in delays and headaches for workforce planners.

02 Desire to change

The opportunity to improve

PayPal was frustrated by the inefficiencies and blind spots in the old system and started searching for a solution that could offer reliable, credible, scalable insights. “We were just a step above paper file cabinets at that point,” Shumway joked. “Data was scattered, processes were clunky, and we were stuck piecing together a picture of performance from spreadsheets and surveys that barely scratched the surface.”

The company also needed a more powerful, intuitive solution to handle workforce operations at scale. Analysts wanted solutions with modern capabilities, including better forecasting, management unit control, and integration for remote work and complex back office teams.

“We’re laying the foundation for a next-generation CX ecosystem that’s automated, adaptive, and always learning. NiCE solutions aren’t just part of our strategy; they’re helping accelerate our future.”

Jared Shumway

Global Quality Technology Manager PayPal

03 NiCE Solution

Driving data-led coaching and scalability

Using NiCE AI, PayPal was able to begin objectively scoring agent soft skills across all calls, allowing leaders to focus on high-impact behaviors like effective questioning, active listening, building rapport, and demonstrating ownership. These behaviors showed strong, often near perfect correlations to influence the customer sentiment score. By visualizing interaction data, PayPal empowered leaders to coach based on objective metrics instead of intuition. The Value Realization Services team guided the roll-out strategy and ensured PayPal’s teams had the right context and training to activate NiCE AI’s full value in Interaction Analytics and Quality Central.

NiCE Interaction Analytics surfaced specific call patterns and behavior triggers across vast interaction datasets. This empowered quality teams to pinpoint coaching opportunities, flag noncompliant behaviors, and correlate soft skills with sentiment trends at scale.

PayPal implemented IEX WFM to replace an under performing, manual legacy system. With 131 management units and more than 6,000 employees across diverse teams, the roll-out required a well-coordinated, phased approach. The implementation plan emphasized hands-on training, strong internal communication, and responsive support, leading to smoother transitions at every stage.

Employee Engagement Manager played a key role in improving accessibility and experience for frontline staff by supporting self-service for scheduling, and time off management requests, all of which reduced administrative overhead and gave employees more control over their work-life balance.

“The difference was night and day,” said Michael Stroud, WFM Leader at PayPal. “NiCE IEX Workforce Management with Employee Engagement Manager brought the sophistication and adaptability our teams had been missing for years.”

04 Results

Clear sentiment gains, confident leaders, and global impact

Coaching has evolved from an inconsistent, box-checking task to a strategic practice grounded in objective data analysis. Leaders now tailor sessions around specific behavioral levers that drive positive sentiment rather than outdated metrics. In one pilot cohort, sentiment scores jumped substantially in just 10 weeks.

Analytic dashboards make performance patterns visible at a glance, empowering leaders to prioritize development opportunities and spot top performers more easily. Coaches have gained confidence, and agents have responded positively to more relevant, personalized feedback. “It set them free,” Shumway said. “They didn’t need to coach to repeat contact rate or average handle time—they could coach to behavior and let the results follow.”

PayPal is also applying NiCE AI for Vulnerable Customers in Interaction Analytics to support its regulatory responsibilities in the UK and Australia, specifically around the FCA requirement for vulnerable customer identification and management. Using NiCE’s vulnerable customer AI models, PayPal is setting thresholds to flag at-risk individuals and tailoring interactions to ensure ethical, compliant handling. In addition to compliance, these insights are informing future product risk strategies and economic trend tracking across the collections team.

With the guidance from VRS, PayPal was able to increase user adoption with WFM. “Our Senior Managers were asking for a lot of statistics about the value of NiCE,” Stroud said. “VRS helped us show the ROI we are getting with NiCE.” The workforce analysts reported fewer technical issues, better forecasting accuracy, and improved scheduling flexibility across remote and hybrid environments. Word-of-mouth from successful teams is spreading adoption quickly.

05 Future

Next-level automation and a broader workforce vision

Looking ahead, PayPal is preparing to adopt Gen-Insights, NiCE’s newest AI capability built into Interaction Analytics and Quality Central. This functionality will allow the team to move beyond manual quality evaluations and into real-time, fully automated insights across thousands of interactions.

Training is also evolving. NiCE AI is being used to track new hire cohorts and tune onboarding programs based on soft-skill performance over time. This allows PayPal to personalize onboarding paths, reduce time- to-proficiency, and create a more supportive and responsive learning experience for new hires.

PayPal’s WFM team is looking ahead to deeper adoption of NiCE across non-traditional and back office teams to unify scheduling, forecasting, and intraday management under a single intelligent platform that can handle the complexity of varied work types and hybrid arrangements. With the foundational rollout complete, PayPal’s workforce team is eager to extend the success of NiCE tools even further.