CUSTOMER PROFILE
ABOUT
A green lawn is a healthy lawn, and over 2.3 million residential and commercial customers across the U.S. trust TruGreen to keep theirs in top shape.
A highly seasonal business, TruGreen has a contact center staff that fluctuates between 500 and 3,000 agents. They work in three major call centers across the country and in smaller, regional “telecenters,” fielding up to 100,000 phone, email, chat and SMS interactions each day during the busy summer season. During the slower winter months, the number of interactions falls to about 30,000 daily.
THE CHALLENGE
Before NICE CXone, TruGreen’s busy contact center used an on-premises Cisco platform that was unreliable, inflexible and difficult to scale.
Senior Voice Engineer and Enterprise Architect Chris Scholl explains: “Our old platform was difficult to support. The technology was limited and required a very large physical footprint. As an on-premises system, it was expensive and difficult to update. Poor reliability resulted in our contact centers being frequently off-line.”
“It was difficult to customize and expand,” he says. “We were unable to extend to third-party APIs that allowed us to build new features or integrate with other solutions. Essentially, we were stuck with an outdated system that couldn’t address our needs, and it was negatively impacting our ability to deliver outstanding customer service.”
NICE SOLUTIONS
- CXone Omnichannel Routing
- MAX — My Agent eXperience
- CXone Personal Connection
- CXone APIs
- CXone Workforce Management
- CXone Quality Management
RESULTS ACHIEVED
- Collected $85 million in payments using selfservice IVR
- Saved over six figures by eliminating outsourced call center
- Reduced support and implementation hours by 80%
- Reduced call connection time by 35 seconds
- Lowered telecommunication expenses
THE SOLUTION
Intelligently routing interactions
TTruGreen selected NICE CXone, and Chris says the impact has been tremendous. “One of the major wins with CXone is that we now need only two people to support the entire system. The old Cisco system required seven people total, which was far more expensive.”
CXone has produced additional efficiencies, such as intelligently routing calls from TruGreen’s 4,500 inbound phone numbers. “We’ve set up smart IVR routing, so we can regionalize our support,” explains Chris. “For instance, CXone analyzes incoming phone numbers to determine whether the caller is an existing customer. We then use CXone APIs to pull relevant information, such as the customer’s location and past services, and present them with a customized IVR menu tree.”
“If they’re calling about a generic issue, such as making a payment, the call will automatically route to one of our national contact centers. But for specific questions about their lawn, we route them to an agent in their region who will know the area’s weather patterns and which types of grass grow best there.”
Intelligent routing has also reduced the amount of time customers spend waiting to connect to an agent. “With CXone, we can automatically pull 80% of callers’ ZIP codes from our CRM, which saves 35 seconds on every call,” says Chris.
“Considering that we take up to 100,000 calls daily, saving 35 seconds per call is dramatic. It also means we’re no longer paying for 35 seconds of telecom usage for each of those calls.”
OPPORTUNITIES IDENTIFIED
Delivering an omnichannel customer experience
TruGreen’s customers have enthusiastically adopted chat and email in the 18 months since the company rolled out these options: About 15% of interactions now originate as email or chat.
Recently, TruGreen implemented Omnichannel Session Handling (OSH) in conjunction with MAX — My Agent eXperience, which allows agents to actively work on multiple interactions across different channels and to seamlessly elevate a customer across channels. As a result, agents can be more productive while improving the customer experience and complying with PCI regulations.
“We’re running a pilot OSH program in Canada, and it’s working really well,” explains Chris. “OSH is especially helpful when we’re talking to a customer via chat or email and need to take a credit card payment. Within our contact centers we only allow agents to accept payment information by phone. OSH lets us seamlessly extend a voice channel to the customer while still offering a positive experience.”
Generating $85 million in customer payments with self-service
Agent productivity and efficiency increased with implementation of self-service options in the CXone Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
“About 15% of our interactions are now being handled through self-service,” says Chris. “That means 10,000 agents are not picking up the phone, which translates into greater efficiency and cost savings, and provides more flexibility, because it’s available 24 hours a day.”
Chris has also designed the self-service options in the CXone IVR to take customers’ payments. “We’ve taken well over $85 million in payments through our self-service channels,” he says. “That’s been a huge win and another way to free up agents so they can focus on more complicated issues.”
Eliminating outsourced call center saves six figures
To confirm upcoming service appointments, TruGreen had been using an outsourced contact center that would call 100,000+ customers each day. “We had limited visibility and minimal reporting,” Chris says. “Some customers reported never receiving a call, while others said they were cut off before the call ended.”
TruGreen now uses CXone Personal Connection, a proactive dialer, to call customers. “Personal Connection solves all the issues we were experiencing with the outsourcer,” Chris says. “Reporting can reveal exactly which customers received calls. We can also personalize the calls so that customers hear information about their service rather than a generic greeting.”
“Not only are we able to present our customers with a more personalized experience, but we’ve also saved well over six figures with this strategy,” he adds.
Chris’s enthusiasm for NICE CXone is particularly evident when he discusses the platform’s flexibility. “There’s really nothing we can’t do with CXone,” he says. “The CXone APIs have enabled us to intelligently route calls, provide better customer service, generate more revenue and streamline our customer support.”
“Our customer satisfaction has increased, because we can engage customers outside the voice channel. And our agents are happier, because the platform is easier to use.”
“The NICE CXone technology is truly phenomenal, and the support team always goes above and beyond to wow me,” he says. “I’ve even called on Christmas Eve and gotten help. I highly recommend NICE CXone to any contact center.”
