American Century Investments Case Study

Optimizing Client Experience with Analytics-Driven Quality Assurance and Performance Management

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Challenges with Legacy QA

With a business focus that emphasizes the quality of customer care, contact center quality assurance (QA) has always been very important to American Century Investments. In the past, QA methodology was focused primarily on agent performance, with a manual process of call selection, export, evaluation, and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) tracking. The company’s manual processes presented multiple challenges, including limited agent visibility into QA scoring results and improvement trends, as well as incomplete agent and manager guidance. “We wanted to move from a somewhat adversarial relationship with our agent teams and managers to a partnership, but our legacy QA process was a roadblock. We also needed to find a better way to clarify our expectations to agents as we transitioned to a client experience model. It became obvious very quickly that our existing technology was unable to help us with improving quality and efficiency of call sampling for review,” explained Jana Meyers, Director of Training, Development, and Support at American  Century Investments. The challenge was two-fold: “How do we move from data consumption to actionable intelligence,” and “How does our quality review become business-directional instead of solely agent-definitive.” To resolve these challenges, American Century entered into a partnership with VPI to expand to the VPI EMPOWER suite of products.

Implementing the Right Technology

American Century selected the award-winning VPI EMPOWER suite as the best fit for its needs for a single software tool to integrate call recording, quality assurance, e-learning and performance reporting. VPI  EMPOWER has the ability to assist the team with automated call selection and scheduling for QA evaluation based on business rules that reflect the company’s business goals. The consistency and speed of agent skill development, whether remedial or as continuing education, is assured by integrating e-learning into the QA process. The VPI call recording system is enhanced with the VPI Fact Finder Interaction Analytics in-call data collection mechanism that tags CRM events and data to each recorded call. This additional metadata reveals the root cause of each recorded call and provides insights into its outcome. American Century Investments uses the combination of CRM and telephony metadata to define business rules for call selection. “Improved analytics has enabled better decisions for our teams,” said Meyers. “We’re now able to set  performance targets, trend against business goals, trend by business area, measure our execution on business initiatives, and can also better isolate issues such as client satisfaction, representative effectiveness, and  training gaps.”

Interaction Analytics captures key data and events

 

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Improving Business Outcomes with Analytics-Driven QA

Managers and teams at American Century benefit from the combined value of objectivity and business insights from QA evaluations. The QA group defines a selection of recordings for review targeted to specific business goals and outcomes. Automated call selection will be more objective and save time to be used to increase sampling and analysis. QA reviewers can assign an e-learning module manually if a review reveals an agent gap in understanding. American Century teams designed a variety of courses  ranging from 5-minute refreshers to 30-minute product and industry updates.

Precise identification of the targeted calls within automated call classification adds value to each QA rating session. It optimizes review of calls for better business insights, and it also speeds up the process by automating assignments of the appropriate QA form to each call recording. American Century Investments quality reviews both inbound and outbound calls, with forms for each, as well as targeted specialty team and post-training QA forms.

Automated classification of calls for QA evaluation

Real-time Performance Management

VPI consolidates data  from American Century’s phone system, customer relationship management (CRM) system, and the VPI Quality Assurance module to present KPIs to managers and frontline agents in real-time desktop tickers.  This empowers agents to better self-manage and managers to intervene more quickly when issues and opportunities arise.

Real-time Desktop Tickers deliver personalized metrics for each agent and manager.

Consolidated data capture from multiple apps for real-time performance management reporting

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Significant Benefits and Results

Results from Automated, Targeted QA

Within the first 6 months, the following QA skill score improvements were achieved:

• 8% improvement in overall QA score
• 9% improvement in client experience
• 40% improvement in a targeted cross-sell initiative
• 38% improvement in non-transactional calls
• Agent efficiency improved

Results from Agent Desktop Tickers

Within the first month, displaying real-time tickers with ACD metrics displayed on agent’s desktops resulted in:

• 10% improvement in talk time
• 25% improvement in after-call wrap time
• 7% improvement in agent availability

[divider]“Improved analytics has enabled better decisions. We’re able to better isolate issues such as client satisfaction, training gaps or representative effectiveness.”
Jana Meyers, Director of Training Development and Support

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Challenge

• Improved match between corporate customer satisfaction goals and contact center’s QA processes
• Improved internal visibility into call quality and employee performance
• Timelier and more actionable reporting and information sharing

Solution

VPI EMPOWER™ workforce optimization suite:

• Recording of ACD calls with CRM data automatically tagged to calls for enhanced call search and classification
• Business goals-driven quality assurance and integrated e-learning
• Real-time performance reporting with personalized desktop tickers and interactive reports

Benefits

Improved management efficiency with automated processes and actionable, personalized reporting

• Improved employee knowledge and efficiency with timely information
• Boosted service quality and customer experience

Results

• 8% improvement in overall QA scores
• 9% improvement in client experience scores
• 10% improvement in talk time
• 25% improvement in after-call wrap time
• 7% improvement in agent availability

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About American Century Investments

American Century Investments is a privately held investment management company that oversees more than 80 mutual funds and strategies, including US growth and value equity, international equity, quantitative equity, fixed-income and asset allocation. Over 40% of their corporate profits support research to help cure genetically-based diseases including cancer, diabetes and dementia. The company is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri and has additional offices in New York City, Mountain View, California, and London, England.

About VPI

Founded in 1994, VPI is the world's leading provider of contact center performance optimization software. VPI EMPOWER™, a powerful Web-based software suite, integrates call recording, quality assurance, analytics, performance management, workforce management, E-learning and Virtual Call Agents to help you rapidly identify and solve your critical contact center operational and customer experience issues. For more information, visit https://www.VPI-corp.com or call 1-800-200-5430.