Contact center comparison: Flexibility yields unexpected results

Customer insights from a modern approach to contact center services

Contact center optimization is a persistent issue for customer service leaders. In industries as diverse as retail and healthcare, for example, common business themes emerge: the need for real-time analytics to inform strategy, the challenge in sourcing highly qualified agents, and the flexibility to ramp up when customer service needs spike.

We took at look at three successful companies and their results using a modern, flexible approach to contact center services with Liveops to learn how this compares to the traditional brick-and-mortar model. In addition to satisfying common business challenges, the modern approach had the added benefit of evolving the customer’s business.

IMPROVING REVENUE WITH REAL-TIME ANALYTICS

“Liveops helped us transform our business model by consistently delivering high-performing agents with a scalable model to help us grow. This has enabled us to quickly move forward and realize a much faster return on each campaign,” said Jaime Minnella, Director of Sales at Ideal Living. With more than 3 billion in global sales, Ideal Living is a product-development incubator and multichannel marketer focusing on health, wellness, and personal care solutions that include well-known brands such as Prosvent, Walkfit and Miracle Blade.

The company, which reaches customers via direct-response TV, catalogue and web, is competing in a landscape constantly in flux. To maintain its competitive advantage, Ideal Living needed high-performing, on-demand personnel and sophisticated telemarketing tools. It sought a partner that could be responsive to needs as simple as the quick procurement of Toll Free Numbers (TFNs) to complex requirements such as script testing and optimization.

In addition to having top-shelf analytical resources, the company also looked to Liveops for a scalable workforce of agents that could meet unpredictable call demands to achieve its ultimate goal of maximizing per-call revenues on an ongoing basis.

Results include an average order value of $108 and a net conversation rate of 71 percent. Ninety-six percent of calls are answered in 20 or fewer seconds and 99.2 percent of calls offered were handled.

“Liveops has been immensely vested in our best interests and has been proactive on all of our campaigns,” Minella said. “We can always count on Liveops to follow up with us, whether it’s offering guidance throughout the duration of a campaign, or providing feedback on products that we’ve been testing for a number of years.” See a video with more about Ideal Living’s story.

SCALE AND FLEXIBILITY ARE KEY TO OPTIMIZING CAMPAIGNS

Another LiveOps customer, a nationwide provider of diabetic testing and other medical supplies, needed help dealing with demand surges.

Short-form commercials and corresponding demand necessitated a workforce that could flex up during times when those commercials played, which happened relatively irregularly in comparison with the standards of a traditional brick-and-mortar contact center. Commercials aired at irregular hours, which led to an influx of calls for which it could not effectively staff.

With a patient base of 260,000 and as one of a select few providers authorized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the company has complex needs for its contact center services.

For instance, agents must be certified to handle patient information and available for short bursts of work. Liveops agents schedule shifts in 30-minute blocks and they are certified for HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which defines confidentiality for patient health information). This allows for a superior agent who fields complex calls and enrolls new patients.

All of this enables the company to ramp from a zero need to more than 1,000 agents. Resources are available for as many as 2,300 agents simultaneously taking calls.

Liveops provides granular, real-time reporting and campaign tracking to help the medical supply company make informed decisions and optimize media buys for future planning. The company also benefited from 24×7 access to call recordings to ensure quality.

The results tell the story:

• 20 percent improvement in agent productivity.
• 15 to 34 percent better order values than the industry average.
• 99.99 percent availability.
• 30 percent reduction in agent ramp-up time.
• 90 percent of calls are answered in 20 seconds, previously unprecedented for this company.
• Post-call quality audits benefit from an average 94 percent satisfaction score.
• In one week’s time, more than 17,500 calls were taken.

“Liveops is a trusted partner that enables us to keep up with customer service demands. They have played a critical role in our business model and have become a perfect extension to help deliver an outstanding customer experience,” said a representative for the company.

AGENT RETENTION IMPROVES PATIENT OUTCOMES

In another health care scenario, a major pharmaceutical company hired Liveops to support patients on its advanced drug therapies. It’s noteworthy that the patient audience is one the company expects to have for the long-term because of serious chronic diagnoses. This is why providing the highest quality experience is critical.

At the same time, dynamics of a traditional contact center pose hurdles in providing high long-term patient satisfaction. Agent attrition and changing drug regulations that require constant learning present challenges. Yet Liveops already has depth in providing contact center support for healthcare audiences and agents who are HIPAA-certified, have health care experience and usually a college degree.

The pharmaceutical company is seeing greater consistency in service delivery and its patient satisfaction scores have increased 20 percent.

Additional results are impressive as well:

• 85 percent of calls are answered within 30 seconds.
• Attrition is less than 10 percent.
• The time it takes an agent to onboard has been reduced 30 percent.

For these reasons, the model introduced by Liveops is a vital part of this company’s brand.

Learn more about how enterprises are leveraging flexible workforces to achieve greater business agility and cost containment while accessing top-quality talent in this white paper.