How Snap Finance Reduced AHT by 40% and Increased QM Automation to 100% with Cresta
Summary
- Average handle time (AHT) lowered by 40%
- Deflection/containment rate increased from 7% to 30%
- Went from random sampling to 100% QA automation on all calls
- Employee Net Promoter Score and engagement scores increased
Challenges
“We were experiencing 40 to 50% growth year over year. We had to learn how to scale the business, build in business continuity, bring in the right technology and the right partners to be able to expand the business,” Mike Mossman, Senior Vice President of Customer Service and Collections, explained to us. Amidst this exponential business growth, Snap Finance faced the daunting task of managing operational expense.
Due to inefficient reporting systems and outdated workforce management tools, Snap Finance also dealt with a lack of visibility into frontline agent performance and customer interactions, leading to inconsistent performance and missed opportunities for agent coaching and improvement. Compounding this was the fact that quality management was a largely arbitrary process, with a handful of random calls every month offering little visibility to supervisors into how their agents were holistically performing.
“When I got here, there was very little in the way of workforce management. Technology solutions were anemic, there were lots of problems with reporting.” added Adam Christensen, Senior Director of Resource Management. Also – as a provider of diverse financial product offerings, Snap Finance must adhere to rigorous regulatory standards and compliance requirements. The company required modern, robust technology and processes to ensure adherence and mitigate risk.
Solution
With agents located all around the world, Snap Finance sought a platform that could reduce complexity, scale with their global growth, and provide real-time insights and actionable data to drive informed decision-making.
After evaluating a number of vendors in the space, Snap Finance ultimately decided to work with Cresta and our end-to-end generative AI platform. The biggest drivers of the decision included the multi-channel capabilities, cost effectiveness, and the deep partnership that allowed for collaboration between the two companies.
“Their expectations were realistic and frankly they over-delivered in everything. Consequently, the ease of implementation, the professionalism of the staff from the sales staff to the technical staff to everyone involved with Cresta is impressive.” explained Christensen. “They were really the only ones in the market that did everything…and if they weren’t able to accomplish our vision, they were happy to do some development work to get us there.”
Results
Snap Finance saw the impact of implementing Cresta quickly, and across multiple areas of the organization. Now, the team has overhauled its approach to quality management, and can monitor 100% of calls in real time, from both a quality and a compliance perspective.
This has also had an impact on agent performance and engagement, increasing both Net Promoter and engagement scores. “It allows the agent to breathe a little bit more knowing that they’re not going to be held accountable for one lousy or subpar call. We can take their full portfolio of work into account now.” Christensen told us.
Prior to implementing Cresta, 80-90% of the volume coming through Snap Finance’s contact centers was voice based. With Cresta’s Virtual Agent chatbot, the team was able to uncover conversation behaviors and drivers and resolve more of the common inquiries through digital channels on their website. “Pushing volume from voice into digital is not an easy feat,” Christensen explained to us. “We were able to move faster than the rest of the business because of what we had with Cresta.” Now, they’ve improved their deflection rate from 7% to 30%.
Powered by Agent Assist, supervisors can coach agents in the moment to help with calls, ensuring that all agents, regardless of where they are geographically, are speaking “one cohesive language”. Because of the way that the team can identify and course correct on emerging trends and changes in customer behavior in real time, Snap Finance has also seen an improved customer experience. With assists coming to the agents in real-time, they have seen average handle time (AHT) reduce by a staggering 40%. “When [agents] followed prompts from Agent Assist, not only were their compliance scores higher, but their handle time was lower than those that weren’t following as much as they should have.” Christensen told us.
What’s up next for the team? Mossman tells us: “We have been with Cresta for a year and in that year we’ve made such great progress that we’re anxious to keep rolling it out to more segments of our business and to continue to utilize the skills and the tools that they have that have helped make us better”
