Case Study: Telecom Provider

The Challenge

Our client is an American telecom provider with a large regional footprint. Their product offerings include cable television, high-speed internet, and VoIP phone service. The firm’s strategy entering 2020 centered around an aggressive pricing model that relies on adding subscriptions to meet profit targets. Critically, operations costs must remain low as the number of customers grows for this gambit to pay off.

As this strategy rolled out, the firm was already working with an outsourcing vendor for customer care, but the results were not in line with the telecom provider’s goals. Customers weren’t happy with these interactions, and costs were out of line with expectations. Managers contracted OutPLEX to launch customer service operations in June of 2020 to get a fresh start.

The Solution

Our team knew from the start that automation and nearshoring were the keys to getting this new client’s digital messaging costs under control. With physical offices and work-from-home presences in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, OutPLEX has access to highly talented, multilingual agents in convenient time zones for our client firm’s customers. In order for automation to pay off, we had to start with a top-notch training and quality assurance regimen to make sure agents were performing at their best.

Callers’ overall satisfaction had been an issue with previous vendors, so OutPLEX managers started daily detractor analysis to get the project off on the right foot. Relying on 20 years of experience in white-glove customer service, the team implemented weekly training sessions coupled with an immediate coaching to help agents improve every day.

After spending the summer making sure everyone was playing at the top of their game, by August it was time to bring in the bots. We added a platform to existing operations which made it possible to automate user interactions across multiple platforms like SMS, WhatsApp, web messaging, Apple Business Chat, and Google Business Chat. Getting simple queries out of the queue allowed for agents to focus on more challenging inquiries, and it showed immediate results.

The Results

Rapid Deployment

OutPLEX’s combination of coaching and automation proved to be more than twice as efficient as the competitor. This has allowed volume to scale up quickly–in the second half of 2020, total closed contacts hit 1.3 million across three lines of business. As 2021 opens, the team is already on pace for 2 million.

Improving Quality

More important than sheer quantity, the quality of these interactions has also increased. The overall satisfaction score was just 4.5 when operations began. The winning combination of skilled coaching and continuously improving automation has raised this metric to 6.5, beating the industry average, in just the first few months. 

If your customer care operations need a boost in quality, efficiency, or reliability, contact our team to learn more about what OutPLEX can help your brand achieve.