Case Study: PARTS iD

With a catalog of more than 17 million aftermarket specialty products for automobiles, boats, campers, and more, a PARTS iD agent needs to be an expert in vehicles and customer experience. The online automotive superstore, which sells everything from wheels to wiper blades, is a one-stop digital commerce platform serving professional mechanics, at-home garage tinkerers, and everyone in between. When the pandemic forced the company’s agents to work from home, PARTS iD turned to CXone Supervisor to gain real-time insights, automated coaching functions, and a single source of truth for agent performance.

01 BEFORE

On a mission to do more with less

Across approximately 1,500 chat and talk interactions per day, PARTS iD’s agents deliver knowledgeable expertise to customers that range from automotive experts to first-time do-it-yourselfs. To best service its customers, PARTS iD organizes and manages its agents by expertise. Those most knowledgeable in the intricacies of automotive suspension systems, for example, are reserved for priority, suspension-related inquiries.

However, like all contact centers, PARTS iD’s was always aspiring to do more with less. To relieve wait times, empower supervisors, and boost agent utilization, PARTS iD turned to the legacy NiCE Supervisor solution. From here, supervisors could monitor queues and move agents from quiet specialty queues into busier ones. Prior to the application of CXone Supervisor, supervisors were spending a lot of time manually balancing the queue to decide which agents should be shifted and where.

Moreover, the moving of agents across specialty areas required a level of supervision and real-time coaching that was labor-intensive and time-consuming. To understand agent performance on specific interactions, PARTS iD established an external quality assurance (QA) team. However, without real-time insights and alerts, by the time the QA team identified an opportunity for improvement, hours, or sometimes weeks, had passed, and the customer relationship had already been impacted.

02 DESIRE TO CHANGE

Making remote work really work

With fewer than one hundred agents, this arduous process was still effective in a contact center environment. The office visibility has allowed supervisors to supplement harder-to-access insights with physical observations and real-time coaching.

However, when the pandemic hit, PARTS iD supervisors were working with a process that required them to manually cross-reference multiple tabs and systems, take numerous steps, and improve performance with limited visibility and stale insights.

Yet PARTS iD agents enjoyed working from home. As pandemic restrictions allowed for a return to the office, PARTS iD upgraded to CXone Supervisor to streamline its management workload in a remote environment while maintaining—and even improving—the customer experience.

03 NiCE SOLUTION

AI-driven guidance and coaching transform performance management

The upgrade to CXone Supervisor provided PARTS iD supervisors with a one-stop-management-shop. From a single dashboard, supervisors were armed with a bird’s-eye view of their skills, agents, and contacts, as well as real-time insights into specific interactions across digital and voice. Critical data was easily searchable, sorted, and made actionable through widgets. Alerts—not proactive, manual monitoring—notified supervisors when agents exceeded defined thresholds or negative sentiment durations. Agent behavior skills could be reviewed at a glance with Real-Time Interaction Guidance breakdown scores, which include both customer satisfaction scores (CSATs) and sales effectiveness.

Management time previously spent shifting between tabs and cross-referencing disparate sources was directed at agent performance management. And just in time: A necessary headcount reduction meant that agents in any specialty area were more likely to support all specialty areas. As agents were stretched to quickly grow their expertise across PARTS iD’s 17 million parts, supervisors were empowered to efficiently manage channels, discreetly coach in real-time, and join interactions as needed.

04 RESULTS

The power of connection

Utilizing CXone Supervisor has been a game changer for PARTS iD. Supervisors, empowered by real-time analytics, alerts, and intervention options, successfully reduced the contact center’s AHT by nearly 30% and cut the average hold time in half. Even amidst workforce reductions and remote working conditions, PARTS iD maintained its CSAT scores and improved its employee relations.

“CXone Supervisor has helped establish a much NiCEr connection between supervisors and agents,” said Gazzara.

“Our agents have the flexibility of knowing that they can proactively reach out for assistance and that because of Supervisor, their manager is going to be able to get to it right away without much stress.”

05 FUTURE

Resilient operations on the road ahead

PARTS iD is extending the power of NiCE by tapping into CXone Supervisor features and fully optimizing NiCE WFM with its agents. The integration of NiCE solutions will also enable greater automation in functions like forecasting, which are still managed manually. Gazzara anticipates that forecasting with AI will increase accuracy and save time to focus on other activities.

Additionally, with cross-training and reskilling efforts now better targeted at the deficits and opportunities identified through CXone Supervisor, PARTS iD is growing its agents’ capabilities more efficiently. PARTS iD plans to add more digital engagement channels in the future and aims to continuously improve its customer experience as indicated by CXone Supervisor-managed CSAT scores. “With CXone Supervisor and supplemental NiCE solutions we’re all able to do more with less,” said Gazzara.

“Our supervisors are doing a million things at once. They’re stretched thin. But they’re excited by CXone Supervisor, and its ability to give them more reach and more opportunities to connect.”

Justin Gazzara

Manager of Contact Center Operations PARTS iD