CUSTOMER PROFILE
ABOUT
Beacon Health Options (“Beacon”) is a behavioral healthcare management company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with more than 70 locations across the United States. The company’s 4,700 employees serve 40 million people and 180 employer clients, including 43 Fortune 500 companies. Beacon partners with national and regional organizations, and federal, state, and local governments in supporting commercial, FEP, Medicaid, Medicare, and Exchange health plans, including services for 5.4 million military personnel and their families.
Beacon’s contact centers are located in Latham, New York; Woburn, Massachusetts; Miami, Florida; and Cypress, California. They employ over 500 frontline agents, who handle an average annual volume of over two million interactions.
BUSINESS NEED
- Meeting service level guarantees
- Accurate forecasting
- Improved performance efficiency
- Operational consistency
- Management standardization
NICE SOLUTIONS
- Workforce Management
- Value Realization Services (VRS)
- Engage Recording
RESULTS ACHIEVED
- Nearly 100% service level adherence
- Accurate forecasting, occupancy planning, scheduling, and service modeling
- WFM centralization across multiple service centers
- Reduced wait times
- Better routing of calls and internal communications
- Increased availability of skilled agents
- More effective employee training
THE CHALLENGE
Beacon had neither a centralized workforce management tool nor a centralized workforce management program after its predecessor companies merged at the end of 2014. Each contact center had certain limited processes and protocols of its own, but they remained siloed and used locally only. The processes also consumed time and resources, with supervisors and managers constantly having to manually adjust information on agent skills, schedules, and more.
The lack of standardization affected everything from phone scripts to scheduling, with patchwork solutions and no effective forecasting. The result was ongoing struggles—often unsuccessful—to meet service performance guarantees. Moreover, strategic or tactical changes were very difficult to implement across the company due to operational inconsistencies across the various contact centers.
Beacon examined the challenges caused by the organizational pastiche and concluded that integrated workforce management was necessary for the service centers. The company established a workforce management team to look toward the future and determine what could be done to most effectively allocate resources in a holistic manner encompassing all the contact centers.
THE SOLUTION
Beacon was already using the NICE recording solution in its contact centers for several years and through past iterations, including the most recent Engage Platform. The existing positive relationship with NICE led the company to consider NICE Workforce Management (WFM) for its standardization and organizational needs.
Beacon decided to begin implementing the comprehensive WFM solution by establishing a staffing model, drafting universally applicable agent templates, and focusing on forecasting— which had been previously nonexistent—as a primary objective. In addition, to allow for tweaks along the way and to use its resources correctly, the company planned to roll out NICE WFM to its contact centers serially, one at a time.
From Learning to Crawl to Running with NICE VRS
The Beacon approach to deployment of new solutions is generally very aggressive in terms of timelines and integration. NICE Value Realization Services (VRS) made this possible for the WFM implementation by investing in preparation and guidance, metaphorically taking the company from learning how to crawl to running in terms of workforce management.
Beacon and NICE VRS worked very closely together, beginning with the VRS team’s onsite discovery and detailing specifically what WFM would mean for the company. The VRS team clarified definitions of the processes involved and identified best practices applicable specifically to Beacon.
The NICE VRS team also provided real-world guidance on potential missteps and correct prioritization for effective deployment. They spent a lot of time on maximizing the potential of NICE WFM, including, for example, designing innovative solutions to the problem of migrating information from disparate older systems to WFM.
In addition, Beacon praised the VRS team for always being available and able to adapt the WFM solution to meet the company’s specific needs. As it was a true partnership, Beacon also made changes to its own systems and processes in alignment with newly defined WFM requirements. The common goal was to ensure that both the company and the solution were prepared to go live rapidly and successfully.
Aaron Bennett, Director of WFM Command Center for Beacon, said of the experience with NICE VRS, “There was never a time when we needed a helping hand when we didn’t get it, no matter how chaotic it got.”
The VRS combination of consultation, training and post-deployment follow-up accelerated adoption of the NICE solution, maximized its impact, and promoted a faster ROI.
Centralized, Standardized and Thriving
Within a single year, Beacon went from having no WFM solution to centralization, coordination and standardization across multiple locations with NICE WFM. This is a testimony to Beacon’s determination and willingness to learn, as well as to the NICE VRS team’s flexibility and mindfulness.
NICE WFM has provided the necessary data and analysis to go from reactive to predictive management. Rather than depending on guesswork and last-minute workarounds, Beacon contact centers now leverage hard data for accurate forecasting, availability, occupancy planning, scheduling, and creating service models.
As a result, Beacon is now meeting its performance guarantees nearly 100% of the time. Customer wait times have been reduced thanks to staffing levels that accurately meet changing needs and better routing of calls. Internal communications among the staff are also faster thanks to the WFM solution.
With the savings in time and resources, including automation of routine tasks and fewer “fires” to put out, supervisors and managers are able to focus on high-value activities. They are devoting more time to growing and developing their teams, taking on new people, and analysis.
NICE WFM has also had an impact on Beacon’s human resources processes, as it has helped refine in-house understanding of the best characteristics of contact center agents. It has similarly increased the pool of agents available at any one time, as they are now trained in a set of fungible skills, rather than to handle specific clients.
Expanding and Raising the Level
Beacon intends to duplicate its success with NICE WFM and its WFM program. It will be doubling its contact center agent pool managed in WFM, as well as expanding the WFM solution to encompass Beacon’s clinical staff and multiple smaller engagement centers.
The company will also continue its relationship with NICE VRS as it takes its WFM program to the next maturity level. This will include developing further WFM governance and defining more KPI metrics to track for further performance optimizations.
