When Tom Laird, CEO of Expivia, started the company in 2012, he knew exactly what he wanted in a contact center platform. “We weren’t switching from another system,” Tom recalls. “Rather, we were a startup that needed a flexible, cost-effective solution that could grow with us.”
A contact center industry veteran, Tom had experience with systems at previous employers. “I used to be the head of call center operations for a large BPO, and we used an on-premises Avaya system,” he says. “I knew an on-premises solution wasn’t a good option for Expivia, because it would be too difficult and costly to maintain. We needed a system that didn’t require a large IT department, because we had to support and customize it ourselves.”
Expivia also needed a flexible system that’s easy to customize and integrate and cost effective to operate. “Each of our customers has different requirements, so we needed a customizable solution. We also had a limited budget, so flexible pricing was a must.”
THE SOLUTION
Given Expivia’s requirements, a cloud-based platform was an obvious choice. “We looked at Five9, 8x8, Genesys and NICE CXone. NICE CXone had the most attractive price and ease of use,” Tom says.
With CXone, Expivia can quickly expand and contract the number of agents it employs, based on clients’ changing requirements. “CXone lets us scale quickly and cost-effectively,” he says. “If we need to increase our workforce by 10%, we can do that very easily. Conversely, if we need to shrink, we aren’t stuck at an outdated capacity level.”
“With CXone, we’ve scaled from four agents up to 500-plus,” he continues. “The fast speed to market is something I credit NICE CXone with. It helped us grow our company quickly and cost-effectively.”
OPPORTUNITIES IDENTIFIED
Integrated channels result in cost savings
As a U.S.-based BPO, Expivia focuses on differentiators that set it apart from offshore competitors. “We offer substantial savings to our clients, because we can service multiple channels very cost-effectively,” explains Tom. “Many of our new customers were using separate systems and teams of agents to handle phone, chat and email, which is expensive.”
“Since CXone is an omnichannel solution, we can handle all channels much more efficiently and with fewer agents,” he says. “For example, one of our customers previously used 27 agents, and we cut it down to just 15, because we’ve integrated all their channels into CXone.”
Sentiment scores improve 22%
The top driver of Expivia’s new business development is sentiment and keyword analysis, using CXone Interaction Analytics. Sentiment analysis deciphers meaning and context from customer interactions and quickly identifies root causes of dissatisfaction.
“CXone Interaction Analytics is the coolest tool,” Tom says. “We’ve moved away from focusing on older satisfaction metrics like Net Promoter Score®, which has limited actionability.”
The impact on the customer experience has been dramatic. “Interaction Analytics has helped us improve customers’ sentiment score by 22%, on average,” Tom explains. “With it, we can quickly understand why a client’s sentiment score is low, make some quick changes and increase it. The return on investment is fantastic.”
“We use Interaction Analytics to look for repetitive keywords in conversations,” he says. “We can improve performance by understanding which agents need coaching on their conversation skills.”
“We can also correlate other metrics to sentiment, such as average hold time,” he continues. “We can actually quantify how long a client’s customers are willing to wait on hold before sentiment is negatively impacted. That helps us satisfy expectations and deliver outstanding service.”
Expivia uses Interaction Analytics to uncover issues that its customers had no idea were occurring. “We had a client in the hospitality industry, and the word ‘elevator’ kept coming up in the sentiment analysis,” he says. “We dug into the transcripts and discovered they had a very slow elevator at a New Orleans property — it was so slow that people were calling to complain. The company had no idea there was an issue until we gave them that insight.”
Expivia regularly shares CXone Interaction Analytics reports with its clients. “Every Friday, we send each client reports on their top three frustration categories and relevant sentiment and keyword analysis,” Tom says. “This information gives our clients peace of mind, because they can access their data at any time.”
Unlimited flexibility with CXone APIs
Thanks to CXone APIs, Expivia supports integration with its clients’ internal systems, notably their CRMs.
“CXone’s flexibility has really revolutionized our business,” Tom explains. “I’ve never had to tell a customer that I can’t integrate with their application. We use the pre-built CXone Agent for Salesforce to integrate with Salesforce, or we can utilize CXone APIs to integrate with other CRMs such as Zendesk or Zoho.”
“We also don’t need an army of programmers to utilize the APIs. I just hired our second programmer, which speaks volumes to CXone’s ease of use. The platform’s flexibility has saved us a ton of money.”
CXone plays a critical role in helping Expivia stay competitive. “CXone lets me compete with giant BPOs at a very reasonable cost,” Tom says. “My technology is as good as anything the ‘big guys’ have. We can also offer value-added services, like sentiment analysis, which truly differentiates us.”
“And when it comes to the basics, such as system uptime, CXone has everyone else beat with an uptime guarantee of 99.99%.”
CXone has revolutionized Expivia’s business. “CXone is best in class. I would absolutely choose it again, and I recommend it to many companies,” Tom says. “It’s the fastest-to-market solution you can get, and the technology is second to none.”
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ABOUT
Expivia Interaction Marketing Group is a U.S.-based business process outsourcer (BPO) that serves a wide variety of clients, including healthcare organizations, financial services companies and professional associations. Expivia’s goal is to build strong, long-term client relationships while promoting its customers’ brands.
Expivia is an omnichannel contact center, supporting interactions via phone, email and chat. The company’s 500+ agents are located at its Erie, Pennsylvania, headquarters and handle up to 30,000 contacts daily.
INDUSTRY
Expivia is a U.S.-based business process outsourcer.
