Unfortunately, scheduling and forecasting were negatively impacting Oscar Health’s service levels, agent productivity and customer experience. Schedules were created manually using Google Sheets—an onerous and time-consuming process that was subject to error.
“We had so many pain points related to building schedules,” explains Bianca Brooks, Workforce Manager. “One of our biggest issues was that we had long-standing assumptions about the best times to do certain tasks, like pulling agents off the phones for company meetings, but we couldn’t verify them against any hard data. We also couldn’t accurately measure schedule adherence, which impacted our service levels.”
“One of the biggest issues, though, was how long it took to build schedules. Three of us would spend two to three days each week creating just the next week’s schedule. When changes occurred, as they inevitably do, we had to manually update the schedule again and make sure it was correct for everyone. This limited schedule view also made it difficult for our agents to plan their work and personal schedules ahead of time.”
THE SOLUTION
Service Levels Rise 71% with CXone Workforce Management Enterprise
To support its rapid growth, the company needed an automated solution that would quickly and easily produce extended accurate and actionable forecasts and schedules.
“We realized we couldn’t continue supporting a manual scheduling process because it was so time-consuming to manage, and it was negatively impacting our agents’ productivity and the customer experience,” explains Bianca. “We chose CXone Workforce Management Enterprise to minimize our administrative burden, help us schedule more than one week out, and improve agent engagement and schedule adherence. The implementation of CXone Workforce Management Enterprise was so successful that productivity increased 40 percent, and service levels soared 71 percent.”
More Accurate Schedules in Less Than a Day
The time savings Bianca’s team realized by using CXone Workforce Management Enterprise has been tremendous.
“With CXone Workforce Management Enterprise, we can create an accurate schedule in less than one day. Now, rather than spending hours manually updating and reviewing the next week’s schedule, my team can focus on other important tasks that add real value to the company,” she says.
“We can also do long-term planning, because we’re creating schedules two to three weeks in advance. Our agents love it, because they now know when they’ll be working and when they’ll be off. They can request specific vacation time, and we can accurately forecast exactly how much staffing we need on those days. We can also plan the best times for agents to be off the phones for company meetings or training sessions.”
Productivity has increased dramatically because agents clearly understand Oscar Health’s goals for their performance. “They now know there’s an expectation for how much they need to be on the phone,” says Bianca. “Call abandonment has fallen 33 percent since we implemented CXone Workforce Management Enterprise, and speed-to-answer improved 71 percent. At the same time, our average wait time fell 77 percent—from 30 minutes to seven—because we know exactly how much staffing we need at a given time.”
“Our customers love our improved service levels. We’re getting comments like, ‘You must be hiring, because I got through to an agent quicker.’ In reality, our call volumes doubled, but we needed to increase staffing by only 60 percent to service that growth, because CXone Workforce Management Enterprise makes us so much more efficient,” she explains.
CXone Workforce Management Enterprise has been a Game Changer
Bianca describes her experience with NICE CXone as very positive. “The experts from NICE CXone were very engaged in helping us make this transition,” she says. “They listened carefully to our current processes and made suggestions for improvement. We had all 250 agents trained within three months, and we’ve been running full speed with CXone ever since.”
“CXone Workforce Management Enterprise has been a game changer for my team and Oscar Health,” she concludes. “The company now realizes that the workforce management team provides great value and that accurate scheduling and forecasting are paramount to delivering an outstanding customer experience.”
ON THE NICE SOLUTION
“With CXone Workforce Management Enterprise, our agents’ productivity rose 40%, and service levels increased 71%. We’ve made great improvements in providing service to our members.”
Workforce Manager, Oscar Health
“The time savings we’re realizing with CXone Workforce Management Enterprise is enormous. It used to take three people two to three days to manually build our schedule. Now we have an accurate schedule for the next few weeks in less than one day.”
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Oscar Health is focused on one mission: to be a health insurance company centered around the patient. Located in nine states, the company serves more than 250,000 individual members and small businesses—and it’s growing steadily every year.
Oscar Health’s 250 agents handle more than 615,000 interactions annually. About 85 percent of calls are inbound, with agents assisting members with a wide range of queries including claims, benefits coverage, provider recommendations, and technology issues such as how to use Oscar Health’s mobile app.
