The challenge

A company’s ability to meet customer expectations and needs is only as good as the support and resources that its associates receive. A global information and financial services company has engaged TTEC to upgrade its customer service centers, which were failing to keep pace with the rapid changes in technology within the organisation, as well as its product lines, and was struggling to provide adequate—much less excellent—customer support.

The solution

Following its work in redesigning internal customer service facilities, TTEC was engaged to transform the customer-facing contact centers to provide an agile environment that could keep pace with the ever-changing business and technology environment of the organisation. We deployed a team of experts in both customer service best practices and the proposed technology platforms to conduct an in-depth discovery process.

The organisation includes multiple business units, each with unique requirements. Discovering how they operate involved working with leaders and operations staff within the business units, IT groups, and an internal task force focused on the standardisation of systems and processes that had evolved from natural growth and many acquisitions.

TTEC has evolved the technology platform with integrations into multiple solutions, including the TTEC Humanify Portal. This infrastructure provided an integrated solution and support hub with sophisticated and flexible capabilities, which transformed the client’s ability to provide state-of-the-art service to its customers.

For example, using omnichannel routing with contextual information about the customer, associates can identify the caller prior to being connected, enabling them to provide a more enhanced customer experience, in addition to increased efficiency. The solution is cloud-based rather than on-premise, allowing easier adaptability to the major changes expected following the sale of a large part of the client’s business.

With this new capability, the client will be able to quickly introduce new functionality to improve communications with customers. When an internal systems outage affected customers receiving its services, the organisation had previously faced a flood of calls requesting support. It will now be able to rapidly deploy proactive communications to customers, such as SMS messages advising them of the situation or incorporating call response messages such as, “If you are calling in connection with a problem with service ‘X,’ please be advised that we are aware of the problem and are working strenuously on its resolution. If you would like us to contact you with updates, please press option Y.”

This will reduce call volume and provide customers with more choices for support. The solution will be deployed in controlled stages to individual business groups, starting with a team of 400 associates in Q4 2018, reaching a total of 4,000 associates located in 24 countries by Q3 2019. The scope of the deployment covers three divisions of the business, providing information and advice in the legal, tax and accounting disciplines, to corporate, professional and government customer segments, in addition to internal groups such as billing, collections, and sales teams.

We have also provided interactive digital training content to be delivered by the client’s internal learning hubs. Train-the-trainer sessions, for instance, are being conducted via webinars. Additionally, an initial training program will be updated and available for on-going training needs. Plans are also being developed for integrating an analytics solution with the client’s internal data warehouse and enterprise reporting team.

Results

The solution being deployed will empower the organisation to rapidly adapt its contact centers to handle unforeseen events or scheduled changes such as changes to or introductions of new products. The agility of the platform will also allow guided call routing related to changes in the international regulatory environment, which have an impact on many of the client’s customers. Call volumes will be reduced, enabling high-cost associates, such as legal advisors, to concentrate on providing appropriate support.