How AI can improve CSAT and slash AHT

Each interaction an agent handles contains a great deal of valuable insights into both the organization’s customers and its agents, but manually reviewing and analyzing each one is nearly impossible. Instead, quality management teams might choose to evaluate a small selection of calls each month, ultimately missing out on a full, complete picture of agent performance or opportunities to identify gaps in contact center efficiencies or strategically improve agent coaching and customer satisfaction (CSAT).

Today, however, AI-enabled tools are changing the contact center landscape, enabling organizations to get more insights out of their interaction data analysis. In fact, using AI to analyze CX data has become a best practice for organizations like Kaiser Permanente. Contact center leaders are increasingly taking advantage of AI capabilities in their analytics and quality programs to support their teams’ daily work to make it more efficient and beneficial to the organization at large.

With AI-enabled solutions like NICE Enlighten AI for Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) which is embedded in Interaction Analytics, Quality Management, and Real-Time Interaction Guidance, Kaiser Permanente has been able to boost CSAT while reducing average handle time (AHT).

How Kaiser Permanente brightened its pharmacy experience

One of America’s leading healthcare providers, Kaiser Permanente serves as an example of how to effectively use AI to streamline both the in-call and post-call experience. The pharmacy operation of the business serves 2.5 million customers annually, answering questions about prescriptions, shipping, coverage and more. Kaiser Permanente has recorded all calls using NICE Engage for years but lacked the capacity to analyze more than one or two calls per agent per month. The organization had a plethora of patient interaction data it was unable to parse and leverage for improvements.

Kaiser Permanente also required agents to sort completed calls based on customer sentiment, but they were given a few categories to choose from to save time between interactions. Inefficiencies in the analysis process and a lack of detail about customer disposition left Kaiser Permanente with superficial information about both ends of the contact center experience.

After hearing about other NICE solutions during a NICE user event, Kaiser Permanente moved quickly to add NICE Enlighten AI for CSAT, Interaction Analytics, Quality Management, and Real-Time Interaction Guidance to its operations. At the time of implementation, Kaiser Permanente was analyzing less than 1% of its total call volume monthly. This sample size was too limiting for the changes and improvements Kaiser Permanente wanted to see in its contact center—in particular, leaders wanted to reduce average handle time and improve customer satisfaction by drawing stronger insights from disposition tracking.

With Enlighten AI, Kaiser Permanente was able to automate the analysis of 100% of interactions, unlocking deep insights into customer sentiment and agent performance. This allowed them to categorize calls, identify pain points and track handle times with greater accuracy and efficiency. By understanding the drivers behind customer sentiment and agent soft-skill behaviors, Kaiser Permanente can now make informed, data-driven decisions to improve operations and enhance the customer experience.

By introducing Real-Time Interaction Guidance, Kaiser Permanente was able to offer agents immediate, actionable feedback during calls—focusing on key soft-skill behaviors that affect CSAT, including empathy, demonstrating ownership, effective questioning and active listening as well as adhering to procedural changes. This helped agents respond more effectively to customer needs, reducing handle time and improving overall call quality. With automated intent analysis and workflow reminders, the solution also ensured that agents had the information they needed at their fingertips—streamlining the call process and boosting CSAT.

After a call ends, Kaiser Permanente now uses NICE Interaction Analytics to determine call dispositions more quickly and with greater precision than the previous manual agent post-call menu could. Team managers now have dashboards to monitor team AHT across numerous call intents and can send out agent alerts based on sentiment scoring or other insights from Enlighten AI. In addition, Quality Management enables Kaiser Permanente’s quality teams to continuously monitor and evaluate agent performance—ensuring that best practices are consistently applied across the contact center.

Results: Improved sentiment and insights

Kaiser Permanente has seen improvement in both customer and agent sentiment thanks to NICE’s AI-enabled solutions. The pharmacy now enjoys significantly improved insights into root causes and call drivers.

Other results include:

• Realizing a 14% reduction in AHT within 12 months.
• Giving agents faster and greater access to information related to performance and excellence.
• Realizing year-over-year improvements in customer sentiment.
• Enabling 100% interaction analysis and intent classification.
• Leveraging automated insights to answer multiple questions on previous call evaluation form.

Kaiser Permanente's experience using AI to improve interaction analysis and automation, leading to better outcomes such as an increase in CSAT and reduction in AHT. Additionally, NICE Interaction Analytics automated workflows from Enlighten behavioral analysis—freeing up time for supervisors to focus on coaching agents.

Learn more about Kaiser Permanente's experience with Enlighten AI and other AI-enabled NICE solutions.