Discover Financial Services is a leading player in the financial services industry, recognized for its innovative credit card solutions and commitment to customer satisfaction. With a large-scale contact center operation,Discover places a premium on delivering an exceptional customer experience.
The Problem
Discover Financial Services, like many financial institutions, grappled with several challenges in their customer support operations:
Rising Handle Times: Lengthy customer calls were straining agent efficiency, leading to increased operational costs and potential customer frustration.
Manual Coaching: Team Leaders spent significant time consolidating call data and preparing reports, reducing their availability for focused, impactful coaching sessions.
Coaching Follow-through: Documenting feedback and action plans from coaching sessions was time-consuming, limiting the ability for follow-up and tracking progress toward goals.
The Opportunity
Discover recognized the need for a data-driven solution to enhance agent performance and streamline coaching processes. After evaluating options through a rigorous RFP process, they selected AmplifAI for its AI-powered performance enablement capabilities.
This partnership aimed to optimize both frontline agent and leader efficiency and effectiveness. This implementation went through the Capital One merger, and despite many contracts being put on hold, Discover decided this was a priority for them to push through.
The Solution
Discover partnered with AmplifAI to implement an AI-powered performance enablement platform specifically designed to address the unique challenges of financial services contact centers. This platform provided critical capabilities:
Data Consolidation: The platform brought together disparate contact center data into a centralized location, providing a single source of truth with frequently refreshed metrics.
Performance Transparency: Agents and team leaders gained on-demand access to clear performance data, fostering ownership over individual metrics and streamlining the identification of areas for improvement.
Next Best Coaching Action: The solution analyzed agent performance and provided data-driven recommendations to team leaders. This included pinpointing specific goals to prioritize during coaching sessions as well as opportunities for both recognizing wins and addressing performance gaps. This empowered team leaders to make the best use of their limited coaching time.
Team Leader Coaching Effectiveness: By tracking the percentage of coaching sessions leading to measurable agent improvement, the platform helped isolate team leader effectiveness from the overall raw performance of their team. This provided valuable insights into where to target team leader development efforts for maximum impact.
The Results
Discover's implementation of the AI-powered platform yielded remarkable improvements within a 7-month pilot program:
Agent Efficiency Boost: Pilot agents achieved a 14-second reduction in average handle time (AHT) while improving customer satisfaction (NPS) by one point. In contrast, non-pilot agents experienced a 3-second increase in AHT.
Cost Savings: Annualized savings of 14 seconds per call across 300 agents translated to $380.6K in reduced call handling costs.
Streamlined Coaching: Team Leaders saved an average of 15 minutes per-coaching session, resulting in an estimated 52,956 additional calls handled annually at the pilot site, and the potential to reduce coaching staff by 30%.
Company-Wide Expansion: Due to pilot success, Discover signed on and is expanding the solution for all 10,000+ agents.
