CASE STUDY: HGS

HGS is a leader in digital CX. The company works to enhance every step of the consumer journey and increase customer lifetime value. HGS embraces a true omnichannel approach and engages with consumers via phone, chat, email, mail, video, self-service and social. With all of these channels comes a wealth of important data; yet HGS historically struggled to get the most out of this deep bank of knowledge. Evaluation and reporting processes were completely manual, resulting in significant time and manpower costs. HGS partnered with NiCE’s Value Realization Services (VRS) to implement NiCE Quality Central (QC) to bring the company into a new chapter of quality management.

01 Before

Lack of governance and consistency

HGS’ customer experience centers tracked all reporting and quality evaluations manually. Reporting was done in traditional Excel spreadsheets that had to be replicated and reproduced for different teams and needs. Due to the significant amount of time and labor needed to complete this process, consistency suffered over the years. “There was no continuity or governance,” said Doreen Campbell, Head of Quality at HGS. “We’d just have conversations about changes we wanted to make to forms, for example, and then just do it.” The combination of these challenges created a tangled mess of processes that hindered the quality team’s ability to move forward.

02 Desire to change

Looking for the “HGS Way”

The lack of consistency meant that HGS didn’t have an “HGS way” or set of quality principles that were adhered to from client to client. “Instead, our partners and clients were leading things and it meant different experiences for everyone,” Campbell said. It was clear the team needed more structure to create a streamlined, excellent experience for all stakeholders. In addition to a robust and approachable reporting tool, HGS wanted a centralised space where the entire team could interact. Other features of interest included coaching options and dashboards to give senior leadership the insight they require. Overall, HGS needed a platform that improved performance, reduced the time spent on evaluations, and created a consistent quality process across all clients. NiCE’s Quality Central turned out to be the solution to HGS’ challenges.

03 NiCE solution

Deploying with a flexible approach

With the help of NiCE’s VRS, HGS began implementing Quality Central one client at a time. The team geared their efforts toward creating an improved customer experience with faster resolutions and higher net promoter scores while optimizing reporting output. The company identified several areas to improve work processes, including shifting reporting responsibilities. It also streamlined the team’s onboarding process and increased initial adoption, thanks to key stakeholders who were well-versed in the benefits of the platform. “Change management was a key factor in our success,” Campbell said. “VRS hosted workshops with team managers, senior operational teams and other stakeholders to drill down into coached versus non-coached reporting and evaluations.” Next, HGS deployed a “Heroes” award system for the operational team and monitored progress throughout the deployment.

The HGS quality team realised further adjustments to the training and deployment approach needed to be made after completing the process with the initial few clients. “We noticed our mindset was in the ‘quality’ space, which didn’t always translate for agents and clients,” she said. To address this challenge, the team made short videos that answered the most common questions they’d gotten during the deployment process. These were then used during the training cycles for the next clients. These initiatives helped provide evidence of improved competency within the company, resulting in the successful adoption of Quality Central.

04 Results

A cultural shift

Campbell said HGS gained significant benefits from Quality Central and the support of VRS. Staff can now move between campaigns with ease, as Quality Central’s flexibility and consistency eliminated the need for extensive retraining. This gives the operational team time to focus on developing agents instead of onboarding when flexing agents across campaigns internally. HGS can also see details about coaching processes and identify whether smart objectives are being set. This new capability has already resulted in better identification of skills gaps. Managers can better meet agents’ needs through coaching, ensuring they are focusing where the individual team member most needs support. One senior operations manager told Campbell that agents are commenting on their improved work/life balance and feel more supported. Campbell credits the streamlined quality processes across all clients and the visibility for agents to compare their performance against the team adding to the improvement in agent performance. She says, “We haven’t had to apply additional coaching or other actions to achieve this.”

Reporting has been a major improvement for HGS, too, with increased access to data. “Our reports are now produced and distributed in record time, without sacrificing accuracy,” Campbell said. The time saved from the previous manual reporting process has resulted in a savings of one FTE position, which Campbell expects to increase to three or more after full rollout of Quality Central to all campaigns. Agents are now able to pull their own data and reporting, resulting in a positive cultural impact. In one example, HGS noticed a training gap for a particular call type. They were able to facilitate advisor workshops and provide feedback to the related customer.

Within two weeks, the team saw improvement of over 90%. Campbell noted that this gap likely would have been missed without Quality Central and the designated workflows.

And finally, HGS is seeing expedited onboarding of new clients, leading to an efficient experience for the client and the operations team. “The universal scorecard cut down on client sign-off meetings. Onboarding took months in the past and now takes just weeks,” says Campbell.

05 Future

Voice analytics, AI, and interrogating data

Campbell sees exciting things ahead for HGS and Quality Central. “We’ve already made continuous improvements and are now positioned to evaluate non-voice mediums such as web chats, email, WhatsApp, and social media,” she said. Voice analytics and implementing AI will be another future focus for HGS, which Campbell said will be a “game changer.” The move will allow managers to move from lower-level evaluation work toward a dive into analytics to find opportunities for further growth. “We’ll be able to interrogate the data instead of just pull it,” Campbell said.

Finally, the universal scorecard cut down on client sign-off meetings, helping us onboard new clients faster (took months in past now takes weeks).

Having Quality Central has brought HGS more in alignment with their mission for customer service. “If you’re in a situation where all your efforts are manual, it takes away from the reasons people actually join a quality team,” Campbell said. “We want to make a difference in the customer experience.”

If you’re in a situation where all your efforts are manual, it takes away from the reasons people actually join a quality team. We want to make a difference in the customer experience.

Doreen Campbell

Head of Quality, HGS