CUSTOMER PROFILE
THE CHALLENGE
Quality assurance at TASC contact centers was dependent on manual workflows, tracked in Excel. The calls evaluated by the quality assurance personnel were randomly sampled from among all customer interactions, making it hard to get a clear, accurate and comprehensive picture of quality issues and specific agent strengths or weaknesses. This also meant that questions asked for quality assurance purposes were often not correlated with actual KPIs, due to a lack of information.
The process to access and listen to contact center calls was also convoluted and time-consuming. This barrier further eroded the likelihood of getting actionable, timely information.
The company was facing similar issues with its agent scheduling and forecasting. Like quality assurance, schedules were made manually and forecasting was often incomplete, leading to inaccurate results. Moreover, TASC was faced with an end-of-life decision for its workforce management solution. In-house IT efforts to handle the issues were inefficient, as the company executives preferred to focus on the core business, rather than on addressing technical problems.
TASC sought clarity in reporting across multiple, disparate system applications. Even more importantly, they desired to reassign IT talent to support other projects and applications. By moving much of TASC operations to the cloud, greater centralization, reduced costs and increased data security would result.
THE SOLUTION
Turning to NICE was not a difficult decision for TASC. Key personnel had experience using NICE solutions with its proven track record of success. But more critically, the TASC personnel working on implementing NICE Nexidia Analytics for analyzing customer interactions, saw that a similar NICE solution could effectively replace TASC’s manual quality assurance workflows.
To that end, the company decided to adopt NICE Quality Central for end-to-end automation and insight across its complex processes. As the first quality management solution that works with any recording platform and data source, NICE Quality Central is robust enough to handle any developments in the TASC portfolio.
TASC also had intimate familiarity with NICE Workforce Management (WFM), as it was a NICE solution that was reaching end of life. In order to maximize the benefit of the upgrade, TASC chose to launch a completely new cloud-based deployment, with fresh configurations and data feeds.
Starting with NICE Value Realization Services
To accelerate adoption and ROI with NICE Quality Central and Workforce Management, TASC worked with NICE Value Realization Services (VRS). VRS provides a combination of consultation, training and post-implementation follow-up.
The VRS team identified best practices applicable specifically to TASC and the NICE solutions, as well as provided real-world guidance on potential missteps and correct prioritization. With VRS change management assistance, there was greater continuity before, during and after the implementations at TASC.
Deployment and adoption were fast, with iterative training, ROI tracking and follow-ups delivered after go-live. VRS thus provides the support to maximize the business impact of TASC’s investment.
A New Approach to Quality Assessments
With NICE Quality Central, TASC reengineered its quality model and scoring. The solution offered a clearer line of sight into agent performance, robust reporting, and increased form design options. These capabilities and a comprehensive portal rapidly improved QA processes and agent engagement.
Current quality assurance processes are streamlined and more precise. This has improved evaluation timeliness and scoring, which benefits agents, managers and, ultimately, the customer. TASC leverages Quality Central, along with NICE Nexidia Analytics, to identify best practices in handling specific call types and then leverages that information for better coaching that leads to improved performance. In addition, the quality assurance process identified which calls needed automated reminders to ensure compliance with given protocols.
For agents, the Quality Central portal means easy access to their own call recordings and evaluations, as well as certain broader reports. The platform also provides an integrated appeals process. All these features mean greater employee engagement at TASC contact centers.
The financial savings of NICE Quality Central’s automated workflow processes and portal reports are rapid and clear. TASC saw a 45% increase in the number of evaluations quality analysts are able to complete on a monthly basis. This allowed the company to repurpose 40% of its QA analysts to other roles while still increasing evaluations.
Streamlined Planning Means More Accurate Forecasts
NICE Workforce Management streamlined scheduling, schedule changes and time-off management for agents and supervisors alike. The schedule and time off manager modules bring agent requests directly to supervisors, while the automated system allows supervisors to immediately assess their needs, reply and update schedules.
Auto-approvals, whenever possible, and the rapid turnaround of other requests means greater efficiency among contact center supervisors and less frustrated employees. Unsurprisingly, feedback within the first week of the new NICE WFM deployment was overwhelmingly positive.
For TASC, going from a manual system to an automated scheduling processes led to an immediate savings of at least one FTE. It also improved occupancy and shrinkage calculations, which lead to increased forecasting and reporting accuracy. The result was a savings of at least two to four agents per shift.
Furthermore, NICE WFM weekly and monthly adherence reports provide better insight into areas where supervisors may need to focus attention. At the same time, adherence management with NICE WFM has saved TASC at least 0.5 FTE.
