Case Study: Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Pharmacy Call Center supports millions of prescription requests across Livermore and Sacramento each year. In 2023, the team saw an opportunity to evolve its service model by improving efficiency, enhancing soft skill coaching, increasing employee engagement, and delivering stronger member service. Central to Kaiser’s goal was striking the right balance: reducing average handle time and improving operational performance without compromising the empathy and attentiveness that members expect. Kaiser implemented the NiCE Interaction Analytics as part of a broader transformation. This led to faster handling time, sustained JD Power scores above 940, and a pharmacy contact center equipped to deliver both efficiency and empathy at scale.

01 Before

Manual QA and limited tools constrained service and coaching

Kaiser Permanente’s pharmacy call center had long relied on manual processes to evaluate agent performance. QA teams performed subjective, post-call assessments that provided just a snapshot of agent performance in a small subset of interactions. Agents had limited visibility into how they were performing.

“We didn’t have any tools to help agents assess how their calls were going in real time,” said Joenil Mistal, Senior Manager, Managerial Consulting. “Everything was based on subjective feedback. The goal was good service, but we didn’t have the infrastructure to measure or reinforcethat effectively.”

02 Desire to change

Balancing operational efficiency with frontline empowerment

Kaiser Permanente faced a dual challenge: improving efficiency without sacrificing customer experience. With call volumes rising and service expectations evolving, leaders wanted a scalable solution that could objectively measure soft skills, provide data-driven coaching, and give agents actionable insights on the spot. The company also needed to ensure user adoption in a union environment.

“AI has helped us strike a balance: lower handling time, higher service levels, and customer sentiment that hasn’t dipped. We’re getting the best of both worlds.”

Joenil Mistal

Senior Manager - Managerial Consulting
Kaiser Permanente

03 NiCE solution

AI-driven guidance and coaching transform performance management

Kaiser Permanente partnered with NiCE to implement a suite of solutions designed to modernize coaching, evaluation, and insight across its pharmacy contact centers. With Real-Time Interaction Guidance, agents receive live feedback during calls with dashboards that track key soft skills such as empathy, active listening, and ownership. Agents appreciate the visibility, which empowers them to self-correct in the moment.

Other solutions in use include NiCE Interaction Analytics, Quality Central, and Enlighten AIfor Customer Satisfaction. Supervisors and analysts rely on Interaction Analytics to uncover call patterns, identify friction points, and guide improvements in workflows and service delivery. Quality Central has helped automate QA scoring across a broader range of interactions, increasing consistency while reducing the manual lift required for evaluations. Enlighten AI for CSAT continuously uncovers objective insights on agent behaviors that influence customer satisfaction on every interaction.

Kaiser Permanente worked closely with the NiCE team to refine the implementation. NiCE partnered with Kaiser to create a streamlined web version of the agent interface tailored to the pharmacy environment.

“The desktop version was too large for our agents,” Mistal explained. “The NiCE team collaborated with us to develop a web-based version of Real-Time Interaction Guidance that’s adjustable and less intrusive. That kind of responsiveness made a big difference.”

Union engagement was also a key priority during the deployment. “We were intentional about including union representatives in the pilot,” Mistal said. “We wanted agents to see this as a tool to help them, not to penalize them.”

04 Results

Higher service levels, lower handle time, and a culture of feedback

In just one year, Kaiser Permanente’s pharmacy call center saw clear, measurable gains. Average handling time dropped as agents leaned on real-time guidance to stay aligned with updated scripts and workflow changes, reducing delays and minimizing the need to pause for help. Even as average handle time dropped, agent sentiment scores remained consistently strong, reinforcing that efficiency gains did not come at the expense of member experience.

Kaiser Permanente focused on four specific behaviors— empathy, active listening, demonstrating ownership, and effective questioning—using them as the foundation for performance tracking and coaching. By zeroing in on these high-impact skills, the team was able to align service quality with member expectations and maintain strong sentiment even as efficiency improved.

Coaching also became more focused and effective. With Quality Central automating the evaluation of soft skills, and if the customer was properly greeted, the team was able to eliminate seven manual QA questions, cutting evaluation time by an estimated 50% and freeing supervisors to spend more time on coaching strategy and development.

Adoption of the new tools was high across the board: Nearly 95% of agents now actively use Real-Time Interaction Guidance, and supervisors rely on NiCE Interaction Analytics dashboards to support real-time and long-term performance improvement.

“With the new tools, agents get kudos alerts when all four soft-skill behavior metrics are in range and guidance if performance starts to dip,” Mistal said. “That has helped create a culture where feedback is timely, transparent, and welcomed.”

05 Future

Expanding automation and insights across the contact center ecosystem

Kaiser Permanente is now focused on expanding the reach of AI-enabled QA. The team is exploring NiCE’s generative AI capabilities to auto-fill complex QA forms and further streamline agent evaluations using large language models.

Mistal sees even broader applications ahead. “We’re pulling data from NiCE Interaction Analytics into Power BI to visualize trends across teams, including sentiment, non-talk time, and handling time. That’s not just helping our pharmacy team—it’s informing how we collaborate with departments like Member Services.”

As automation continues to mature, Kaiser Permanente’s leadership is confident in its direction.

“AI is changing how we work,” Mistal said. “Instead of sampling two calls, we’re measuring 1,000. That shift is giving us better insight, better performance, and better outcomes for our members.”