The challenge

A global payments technology provider understood the value of an excellent customer experience but struggled to scale its customer support and maintain its high standards of excellence. The tech firm, which was new to outsourced support, needed a trusted partner that would be an extension of its brand and provide customers with care that was seamless and agile.

Our solution

Based on our track record of proven results, the firm selected TTEC for a six-month pilot with 10 associates to provide customer support from the Philippines. In true TTEC fashion, our first step was to assess and understand the client’s needs. We worked closely with the client’s customer support team in gathering information, identifying pain points in the customer journey—long hold times, high abandon rates and abandoned calls, among others—and recruiting and hiring associates to address those issues.

Based on our observations of the customer and agent pain points, we also recommended creating a help desk portal and interactive knowledge base to help agents be more agile in finding the information they needed and assist customers more effectively and efficiently.

The next phase included immersive onboarding and training sessions that reflected the client’s culture and mission, followed by a nesting period to test the team’s customer support readiness. Open communication was critical and so our launch team met twice a week with the client. TTEC support departments also held daily huddles to ensure the program launch was on track, and when needed, individual departments had project calls with the client.

One of our best practices is to enable associates to benefit from cross-program experts and with this in mind, the support team was strategically placed in the middle of the production floor. This allowed for many collaboration opportunities for the agents, shared operations managers, and dedicated team leads. And even when agents shifted to working at home in response to the government-mandated quarantine, service levels were unaffected.

The results

The pilot was a huge success; The resolution rate increased from 56% to 65%, the number of calls handled per hour rose 7%, and there was a 2.5% reduction in rate dispatches (meaning agents were able to solve more customer problems without having to dispatch a technician). The abandon rate also dropped from 8.6% to .7% and the average handle time decreased from an average of 9 minutes to 6 minutes. The client was very pleased with the results and we are in the process of expanding the pilot into a formalised program.