CASE STUDY: PSCU

PSCU, a payment processing and transaction service provider to over 1,800 financial institutions, implemented NiCE Employee Engagement Manager to add intraday schedule changes and a robust set of employee self-service options to the contact center.

01 Before

A lagging approach to agent self-service

For decades, PSCU offered agents very limited scheduling flexibility. Only in recent years did the organization add minor adjustments such as flexible break scheduling. PSCU also had no reliable mechanism to inform agents of new overtime opportunities, and very limited options to alter scheduling on an intraday basis.

02 Desire to change

Aligning business objectives and employee engagement

PSCU reviewed situations when net staffing did not meet the demands of customer programs and concluded that greater employee engagement and scheduling flexibility could address the gaps and restore service levels. Agent surveys found that employees were also very interested in gaining more control over their schedules. PSCU concluded that a coordinated employee engagement effort could reduce attrition, reinforce client service delivery, and reduce management burdens on real-time workforce coordinators.

The first wave of self-service options required agents to sign in from their workstation and typically required manager approval. Overtime and voluntary time off (VTO) programs also required a great deal of manual communication and adjustment. “Manual schedule cleanup was one of the biggest jobs occupying the real time team,” said Brian Vogel, manager workforce, PSCU.

These early self-service efforts were made further complicated by a lack of intraday scheduling controls compounded by forecasting difficulty. PSCU serves a wide variety of institutions. Although some engagements have a predictable call volume at predetermined times, many clients use PSCU for overflow or disaster continuity and may elect to forward member services calls to PSCU at any time. “Volume is up in the air for the most part, from a day-to-day perspective,” Vogel said. “So, we have to manage around that.”

03 NiCE solution

A fresh start for powerful self-service

Having reached end-of-life on several stand-alone contact center solutions, PSCU decided to consolidate and upgrade operations on the NiCE platform in March 2020. The introduction of NiCE Employee Engagement Manager (EEM) made schedule self-service considerably more convenient. Instead of a system where agents could only request changes from their workstation and most types of changes needed supervisor approval, EEM has web and mobile access options available from any connected device. A wide variety of transactions can be automatically approved based on management rules. “Now, someone can be at a doctor appointment, call up their schedule, and make changes or swaps,” Vogel said.

EEM also processes overtime, trades, VTO, schedule swaps, and absence requests, respecting the business distinctions of the 60+ skills represented in the PSCU contact center. Business rules are automatically applied to most requests without supervisor intervention.

As the pilot group gained experience with EEM, their enthusiasm for self-service options previously available but difficult to access became clear. PSCU will be further encouraging adoption and engagement through automatic login to the agents’ operational program vault, so opportunities are visible right away.

04 Results

Strong and growing employee adoption

As new agent populations are added to EEM, each has responded positively, taking advantage of long-overlooked self-service options and increasing engagement over time. Mobile engagement continues to climb. Costs associated with workforce management and schedule self-service are also declining. EEM processes thousands of transactions per month, with seasoned EEM users engaging with nearly five times as many self-service hours than they did on the previous system. Trades in particular have grown in popularity, after being mostly overlooked in the former interface.

Upwards of 85% of all self-service schedule changes are automatically approved by EEM. That’s thousands of transactions per month which don’t require intervention from WFM specialists whose time is better spent on real time optimizations. “That’s been a huge time-saver for us. Our analysts only need to get involved for employees who have special schedule needs or who build rules for,” Vogel said.

05 Future

More assistive tools, renewed focus on retention

With strong returns on the self-service scheduling tools already in play, PSCU plans to introduce more agent advisory notifications to assist with intraday planning, such as short and medium meeting alerts. The organization is also looking at potential efficiency gains from automatic intraday adjustment of breaks and lunches to better meet current queue demands. After a period of pandemic disruption to normal workforce rhythms, PSCU will also re-open analysis of how greater employee engagement can reduce attrition.

NiCE Employee Engagement Manager is delivering on our business goals to align staffing with the needs of our client programs and helping us get our real-time WFM analysts away from data entry so they can focus on more analytical work.

Brian Vogel

Manager Workforce, PSCU