Case Study: Coast Capital & ECSI

CUSTOMER PROFILE

ABOUT COAST CAPITAL AND ECSI

Coast Capital’s mission is to provide basic financial help to its 593,000 members in British Columbia. It’s the largest credit union in Canada by membership, with more than 52 branches. Coast Capital’s contact center typically employs 165 licensed advisors who specialize in different financial areas, such as banking, insurance, investments and lending.

ECSI is the largest provider in the U.S. of loan servicing and tax document services for the higher education industry. With over 45 years of experience and a 99.9% client retention rate, ECSI employs 100–140 agents, who assist student borrowers with questions, ranging from account management issues to loan payment questions.

THE CHALLENGE

As essential financial services businesses, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, both Coast Capital and ECSI moved quickly to transition agents to a work-from-home model to comply with their respective government regulations and keep employees safe from the virus.

Both companies made the transition in just a handful of days. Mike Bowman, Director of Servicing Operations, ECSI, explains the situation his organization faced: “The governor of Pennsylvania put a stay-at-home order in place on a Thursday night. By Saturday, all businesses had to have their employees working from home. We had to respond very quickly.”

At the same time, both companies experienced sudden increases in call volumes because their customers needed help with COVID-19-related issues, such as mortgage or student loan payment deferrals.

Coast Capital also received many calls about government support programs. Chad Vestergaard, Vice President of Coast Capital’s Advice Centre, explains: “The Canadian government announced a number of programs to support citizens who lost their jobs or had reduced income. Our members turned to us for support with those programs.”

Both companies found a perfect storm of quickly transitioning employees to working from home while handling high contact volumes. Fortunately, both had NiCE CXone™ already in place.

“We couldn’t have made the transition to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic without CXone—it’s a key part of our business continuity strategy.”

CHAD VESTERGAARD

Vice President of the Advice Centre
Coast Capital

“NiCE CXone was a true partner to us during the COVID-19 crisis. I will never forget it.”

MIKE BOWMAN

Director of Servicing Operations
ECSI

THE SOLUTION

As a cloud solution, CXone is ideally suited to supporting agents wherever they’re located. “We couldn’t have made the transition without CXone,” says Chad. “It enabled us to get everyone up and running very quickly.”

Due to increased call demand, Coast Capital was also forced to scale its workforce quickly. “Our call volume jumped 158%,” says Chad. “We grew our workforce 25% to meet the new demand. And thanks to CXone, we trained and deployed our new hires quickly.”

Unfortunately, at the worst possible moment, ECSI’s softphone system software, which was from another vendor, failed. “We were just starting to feel like we had everything under control, and the softphones stopped working,” says Mike. “It was imperative that our customers be able to get through, so the phone system shutting down wasn’t acceptable.”

“Fortunately, NiCE CXone had already offered its support,” says Mike. “Within minutes, we had options on the table. We decided to go with its voice-as-a-service solution.”

In fact, NiCE CXone offered these services to ECSI at no charge during the crisis. “NiCE CXone was a true partner to us during that difficult time,” says Mike. “I will never forget it.”

Both Mike and Chad foresee a continuing need for their employees to work remotely, even when the height of the pandemic passes. “We will absolutely have home-based agents in the future,” says Chad. “Having the flexibility to move our workforce home—or to any other location—is great for business redundancy.”

OPPORTUNITIES IDENTIFIED

Maintaining high performance

While the transition to working from home went smoothly, both ECSI and Coast Capital were concerned about managing agents’ productivity. Fortunately, CXone Workforce Management allows supervisors to continue monitoring adherence, shrinkage and absenteeism just as though agents were working in the contact center.

Chad explains the situation at Coast Capital: “Not all agents had the ideal technology setup at home, which resulted in performance challenges at first. But now, using CXone Reporting, we’ve found that our absenteeism rate is under 2%!” says Chad.

ECSI had put measures in place to help with productivity well before the pandemic hit. With Advanced Chat for CXone, for example, agents can choose from a toolbox of pre-scripted responses to answer common questions, saving time and effort. As a result, ECSI had already experienced a 58% reduction in average chat time and an 86% reduction in the chat abandon rate.

“As a result of these earlier changes, our agents could service more customers concurrently.” says Mike. “So when the pandemic hit, our team was already working efficiently and was able to pull together and do a great job.”

Keeping agents engaged

For both ECSI and Coast Capital, the pandemic highlighted the importance of boosting agents’ morale, so they feel engaged. “People are critical in a time of crisis, and you need to make sure they feel supported and connected,” says Chad. “Having everyone on the CXone platform definitely helped with that.”

Mike agrees: “Managing a workforce that’s widely distributed is definitely a challenge. You need to keep everyone connected—CXone is a big part of that.”

Ready-to-go disaster recovery

As financial services companies, both ECSI and Coast Capital prioritize disaster recovery as a requirement for their contact center solution, which is one of the reasons they chose CXone. “My number one priority was redundancy, and that definitely came into play during COVID-19,” says Chad.

Chad and Mike both consider CXone a key part of their business continuity strategies. “CXone enables our advisors to work from an alternative location and continue servicing our customers, whether we’re facing a pandemic or some other emergency,” says Chad.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic was unexpected, Mike and Chad believe CXone helped them maintain unwavering customer support, even under trying circumstances.

“I feel really good about being a customer of NiCE CXone,” says Mike. “They’ve saved me many times, including during the pandemic. To have them as a partner—and to have them approach me with an offer to help—was very meaningful.”

Chad concurs: “Our main priorities during the pandemic were ensuring the safety of our employees and supporting our members in these challenging times. CXone helped us do both. I couldn’t be happier with our decision to go with NiCE CXone.”