Deliver Faster, Smarter CX Resolutions Through AI-Powered Efficiency
In today’s fast-paced customer service environment, complex customer interactions are a daily challenge. High call complexity can frustrate customers and overwhelm agents, leading to inefficiencies that hinder first call resolution and weaken the overall customer experience.
Part of iQor’s Symphony [AI]TM ecosystem, this transformative tool equips agents with instant insights and guidance to resolve even the most intricate issues with precision and speed. With AI-powered efficiency, CX BPO teams deliver faster, smarter resolutions that enhance customer satisfaction, optimize operational performance, and support regulatory compliance.
As industries across the board adopt self-service options and automation, the need for more effective tools to handle evolving CX needs is clear. In this post, we outline the benefits of iQor’s real-time AI agent assist as part of our intelligent operations designed to meet the needs of today’s customer.
Say Hello to AI-Powered Results
Long handle times. Inconsistent service quality. Escalations and transfers. Missed upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Frustrated customers.
No CX professional wants to see these KPIs, but they’re often the case when customer service agents are expected to quickly solve complex problems with insufficient or overwhelming resources to sift through.
iQor addresses these challenges through its strategic use of AI. iQor’s AI-powered agent assist technology monitors calls in real time and analyzes conversations to provide agents with the guidance they need. Whether troubleshooting a technical issue or navigating a customer inquiry, the system instantly displays relevant information and step-by-step instructions in a clear and concise format. This minimizes the need for agents to search through lengthy databases or escalate issues, reducing both call handle time and customer effort.
AI-powered tools like real-time speech recognition and sentiment analysis equip agents with immediate insights, helping them respond quickly and confidently. This boosts agent productivity and ensures a superior customer experience with every interaction.
Natural language processing (NLP) plays a crucial role in this process. By analyzing conversations in real time, NLP helps the AI understand customer language, detect emotions, and recognize patterns from past interactions. This capability allows agents to respond more accurately and empathetically. NLP-informed AI also suggests resources specific to the conversation, accelerating resolution time and reducing call complexity.
Win and Keep Customers With AI Agent Assist
Empowered by AI agent assist, iQor’s agile CX teams deliver optimal results across key performance indicators for global brands.
iQor’s agent assist technology helps reduce call handle time by up to 30%.
Coupled with iQor’s proprietary AI-powered interaction analytics that identifies key phrases, customer emotions, and potential signs of frustration during calls, AI agent assist enables agents to adjust their approach in real time.
What does all this mean for you? You can keep your customers loyal and win new ones with a reputation for superior CX, regardless of the complexity.
Gain a Competitive Advantage
Real-time AI agent assist redefines what’s possible in customer care. By integrating advanced AI technology with human expertise, iQor’s real-time AI agent assist transforms high-complexity interactions into opportunities to exceed customer expectations.
With instant insights, step-by-step guidance, and intelligent recommendations, agents are equipped to handle even the toughest customer challenges with speed and accuracy. When agents are supported, customers feel valued — and that’s the foundation of a CX strategy that wins.
Why Choose iQor?
iQor is more than a provider — we’re a strategic CX BPO partner dedicated to delivering transformative results that help you win and keep customers. With advanced AI-driven technology, global scalability, and tailored CX strategies, we empower brands to excel at every stage of the customer journey.
Expert Partnership
Agile Operations
Scalable Solutions
AI Innovations
Compliance & Efficiency
Proven Results
Transform your CX strategy today. Contact us to learn how iQor’s intelligent operations can deliver results that matter.
Prabhjot “Pj” Singh is chief digital officer at iQor. He drives digital transformation and innovation across global operations, leveraging advanced AI technologies to enhance customer experience strategies. Connect with Pj on LinkedIn.
Accelerate Agent Proficiency, Maximize Sales Conversions, and Deliver Superior Customer Satisfaction with High-Impact, Scalable Training Solutions
For subscription services providers, agent training is crucial to maintain a high standard of customer experience (CX) for sustained and scalable growth, minimized churn, and optimized operational excellence.
As subscription-based service models revolutionize industries from travel and hospitality to financial services, maintaining high customer satisfaction is a key differentiator in a competitive marketplace. J.D. Power reports customer care as a critical factor for business leaders investing in the success of their subscription services.
iQor’s Symphony [AI]TM provides subscription services a robust ecosystem of AI tools that equip agents with the necessary skills to deliver optimized CX across the customer’s entire lifecycle. Through Symphony [AI], we optimize complex interactions with customers using agent-facing AI-simulated training. This intuitive system empowers supervisors to identify and address specific areas where agents can improve their performance, ranging from new account sales to retention and winback. Such an approach leads to more effective training and coaching sessions, as well as more accurate testing results.
For leaders in this sector, reducing customer churn and enhancing service quality are top priorities. iQor, a leader in data-driven solutions for CX operations and strategic outsourcing, offers AI-driven training and coaching programs designed to tackle these challenges head-on.
Specialized AI-Simulated Agent Training Is Key to Subscription Service Success
Subscriber loyalty hinges on one crucial element: customer satisfaction. Traditional customer care, as well as inbound and outbound sales models, operate in a fast-paced digital environment. AI-simulated agent training leverages real-time analytics capabilities to unlock success for both customer care and sales in the subscription services world in the following ways.
Deeper Understanding of Customer Needs: Subscription services cater to specific niches or interests for their valued members. Well-trained CX reps have a deeper understanding of the product’s or service’s intricacies and the unique challenges users face. This allows them to provide faster, more effective solutions, fostering trust and loyalty.
Personalized Communication and Scripts: Today’s customers expect more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Highly skilled CX reps can tailor their communication to each customer’s situation, building rapport and ensuring a positive experience.
Proactive Problem Solving: Subscription services are all about ongoing perceived value by the customer. By equipping CX reps with access to proactive data, they are empowered to anticipate customer issues and proactively offer solutions, preventing frustration and reducing churn.
Upselling and Cross-Selling Opportunities: By proactively sharing data that shows customer needs and usage patterns, proficient CX reps can identify potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities. This boosts revenue and demonstrates a genuine interest in the customer’s experience.
Accelerating Agent Training With VALDI Analytics
iQor utilizes our proprietary interaction analytics platform, VALDI, to continuously improve the success of agents.
VALDI enables supervisors to identify and address specific areas where agents can enhance their performance, leading to more effective training and coaching sessions. These insights fortify customer relationships with every interaction, translating to happier customers and a more successful subscription service.
The Option of On-Site or Work-at-Home Agents
AI-powered training creates skilled agents in both on-site and work-at-home environments. Here’s how:
Increased Save Rates: BPO agents are extensively trained using iQor’s AI-simulated training methods, which enhance their communication skills and confidence with custom speech analytics. This results in higher save rates sinceagents are better equipped to leverage the analytics and improve scripts and training for outbound retention services.
After partnering with iQor, a home warranty client has experienced a 32% increase in its save rate and 12% increase in its calls per hour (CPH).
Improved Rebuttal Rates: Preventable subscription service cancellations can lead to significant revenue loss. Advanced AI tools and real-time feedback systems informed by data analytics enable agents to uncover the reasons for cancellation requests and implement strategies to retain customers.
The home warranty client’s rebuttal rates increased from 18% to 90% in four weeks, demonstrating how iQor’s AI-powered speech analytics can turn customer interactions into lasting relationships.
Addressing Traditional Training Challenges With AI and Active Learning
Traditional training methods can be time-consuming and disrupt daily operations, impacting operational performance. iQor’s active learning training solution overcomes these obstacles by providing:
Immediate and Detailed Feedback: Objective, data-driven insights on key communication metrics, fostering continuous improvement of sales outcomes.
Customizable Training Modules: Tailored scenarios that allow agents to practice in a safe, pressure-free environment.
Gain a Competitive Edge With iQor: AI Training Simulations Designed to Revolutionize Subscription-Based Success
For subscription services leaders, doing business with BPO partners who use AI-simulated training can address key pain points such as customer churn, retention and winback, and customer service quality. This is vital to reach customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace, provide incentives for loyalty and engagement, and drive conversions.
Leverage iQor’s Industry Expertise and Proven Results to Drive Growth and Loyalty
Choosing to partner with a trusted third-party provider like iQor offers a strategic advantage for subscription services leaders looking to overcome operational challenges.
Here’s why:
1. Unmatched Process Expertise: With decades of accumulated process knowledge and a deep understanding of customer behavior across more than 500 million interactions annually, iQor is uniquely positioned to refine your subscription model’s customer experience. Our AI-driven simulations are built on a foundation of diverse industry insights, enabling us to tailor training for any scenario. This ensures your agents can tackle complex customer needs with confidence and precision, delivering a level of expertise that sets you apart from competitors.
2. Accelerate Customer Acquisition: iQor’s AI training simulations don’t just train agents — they create high-performing, conversion-driven sales teams. By simulating real-world customer interactions, our platform prepares agents to engage, persuade, and close more deals. This results in faster ramp-up times, reduced training costs, and an immediate impact on customer acquisition. Our focus on optimizing every touchpoint ensures that your agents are not only ready for today’s demands but equipped to turn prospects into lifelong customers.
3. Boost Retention and Loyalty: Customer loyalty is the backbone of successful subscription models, and iQor excels in keeping your customers engaged. Our AI simulations train agents to resolve issues swiftly, provide personalized experiences, and anticipate customer needs — key drivers of long-term loyalty. By empowering agents to deliver superior service in every interaction, we help reduce churn and foster deep customer relationships, giving your business an unfair advantage in retaining customers against competitors who fail to prioritize consistent, high-quality customer care.
Partnering with iQor allows subscription services operations to focus on core business activities while leveraging the expertise and resources of a leading BPO to handle complex and labor-intensive tasks. This approach mitigates operational risks and positions companies to sustain growth and customer satisfaction at scale.
Optimizing Employee Experience With a Holistic Approach to AI
iQor’s approach to integrating AI into employee experience is comprehensive. By leveraging our Symphony [AI] ecosystem, iQor creates an environment where employees are more engaged, informed, and empowered. This approach enables real-time data analysis and feedback, providing valuable insights that empower employees to make better decisions and perform their tasks more efficiently.
Award-Winning Training That Yields Exceptional Performance
iQor’s commitment to excellence in training and organizational development has earned numerous awards. Our training programs are designed to be flexible, scalable, and highly effective, ensuring that every employee is equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to excel in their roles.
Our iLead program has been recognized with a Stevie® Award for Sales and Customer Service and a Brandon Hall GroupTM Gold award for excellence in Leadership Development Competency Models, underscoring our commitment to exceptional employee and customer experiences.
Data Annotation and Labeling Capabilities Unlock Analytics Insights
Data annotation and labeling are critical components of AI development, and iQor excels in providing high-quality services in this domain. These processes are the backbone of training AI models to improve their accuracy. Here’s how data annotation and labeling can help agents succeed in delivering smile-worthy CX:
Enhancing AI Training Through Data Annotation Expertise: Building on our strong foundation in data annotation and labeling, we enhance the capabilities of AI models and empower our workforce with the essential skills required to thrive in a technologically advanced environment. Our commitment to delivering high-quality data annotation and labeling services ensures that both our AI systems and employees are well-equipped to handle complex analytical tasks.
Deepening Understanding of AI Applications: Precise data labeling significantly boosts the functionality and reliability of AI applications. By training our employees in these meticulous processes, we equip them with a nuanced understanding of how data influences AI behavior and decision-making processes. This knowledge is crucial for managing AI tools effectively and ensuring they perform optimally in real-world scenarios.
Strategic Learning and Development: Leveraging our insights from successful BPO partnerships, we implement strategic learning initiatives that mirror our data handling excellence. These programs are designed to systematically enhance the AI literacy of our teams, enabling them to better support and improve the AI solutions we deploy. This approach increases operational efficiency and fosters a culture of continuous learning and adaptation.
At iQor, the synergy between our advanced AI models and well-trained employees creates a dynamic environment where analytical insights are quickly transformed into actionable business strategies. By focusing on both the technological and human aspects of AI training, iQor ensures that our teams are drivers of innovation, leading to superior outcomes for our clients and a competitive edge in the market.
Exceptional CX Operations Designed for the Future of Subscription Services
The integration of AI-simulated training represents a significant advancement in the way subscription services brands can train their customer-facing teams. This approach offers a scalable, efficient, and effective solution for delivery of operational excellence and customer satisfaction.
Through iQor’s integrated ecosystem, we optimize complex interactions using agent-facing AI-simulated training tools. This intuitive approach empowers supervisors to identify and address specific areas where agents can optimize their performance, leading to faster speed to proficiency and more effective coaching sessions that support sustained performance results.
Subscription services brands that leverage iQor’s AI-simulated training position themselves for market share leadership with an ability to adapt to the ever-changing needs of their customers.
Experience the iQor Difference
To navigate today’s subscription services market, you need more than just a BPO provider. You need a trusted CX Solutions partner who understands the unique challenges you face and can deliver solutions that drive real results.
iQor is a globally trusted managed service provider of digitally enabled business and CX solutions recommended by the world’s leading subscription brands as an advisor and partner that seamlessly integrates with the needs of their organization.
We go beyond traditional outsourcing to offer a comprehensive suite of services designed to optimize your entire customer journey. Here’s how we can help your brand soar:
Deep Industry Expertise. Our team boasts extensive experience in subscription support, including navigating our customers’ proprietary CRM platforms and maximizing sales opportunities.
Data-Driven Insights. We implement innovative data science and AI to unlock actionable insights from your customer data. This empowers us to optimize channel utilization, identify risk areas, and personalize the customer experience for increased satisfaction.
Global Capabilities & Security. With a presence across 10 countries and a private, high-performance CX cloud, we offer scalability, security, and seamless global support.
Next-Generation Solutions. We are early adopters of innovative technologies like VALDI, our proprietary analytics platform, and AI tools that equip us to continually invest in creating the future of customer service.
Trusted Partner Approach. We foster a consultative partnership, deploying dedicated account teams with industry expertise to guide you every step of the way. You’ll gain a reliable advisor who understands your business and is invested in your success.
iQor offers the perfect blend of innovative digital support CX solutions and expert leadership dedicated to creating exceptional customer experiences. Ready to transform your subscription services? Contact us today, and let’s discuss how we can turn more subscribers into enthusiastic brand advocates.
Gail McLaughlin Toti, vice president of global sales at iQor, is a dedicated CX leader who champions GenAI’s impact on sales performance for subscription services. Connect with Gail on LinkedIn.
Leveraging Machine Learning to Predict Employee Attrition Risks and Guide Retention Interventions
How Machine Learning Can Help You Reduce Employee Turnover is a free webinar available on demand, presented by iQor’s Vice President of Operations Terri Robertson, Senior Vice President of IT Joe Przybylowski, and Data Scientist Andrew Reilly. Here’s an overview of what they discussed.
Why Retention Strategies Are Critical to Your Business Success
Employee attrition is a more pressing concern for organizations than ever, as evidenced by cultural dialogue like “The Great Resignation” and “quiet quitting.” Attrition is even more significant for BPOs like iQor whose business is to deliver outsourced customer service to the brands that entrust us.
The cost of employee attrition is significant in both direct and indirect ways. For example:
Replacing an experienced employee with a new hire can lead to a decrease in productivity and efficiency, which can affect revenue.
A high turnover rate can lead to discontinuity in customer service, which can result in loss of business.
High turnover can impact morale among other employees and cause a snowball effect of attrition, incurring further costs.
The value of investing in employees speaks for itself. At iQor, employee experience is a cornerstone of our business model. Creating a work environment that promotes job satisfaction, recognition, and growth opportunities is critical to retaining valuable tenured employees.
Using Predictive Analytics to Help Prevent Attrition With Proactive Retention Strategies at iQor
For over 15 years, iQor has used cutting-edge technology to provide an irresistible employee and customer experience (CX). Our team of expert data scientists has developed models for predictive analytics to guide our strategies for revenue recovery, customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter scores (NPS), and more. So, why not leverage our data analytics expertise to predict attrition before it has a chance to materialize?
Using the power of predictive analytics, we asked the fundamental question of attrition: How do you know when an employee is thinking about leaving?
To answer this question, our team of expert data scientists developed a machine learning model to identify variables that correlate with attrition and predict which employees might be at risk of leaving the company. Our goal was to play offense rather than defense to the problem of employee attrition by developing proactive retention strategies for at-risk employees. The model successfully:
Analyzes which variables influence employee attrition.
Using the power of predictive analytics, we asked the fundamental question of attrition: How do you know when an employee is thinking about leaving?
Customized Employee Retention Processes Guided by Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics placed the ball in our court to proactively shape a positive employee experience that improves retention. The foundation of machine learning and predictive analytics is data. To begin, iQor’s data scientists needed to know what data they required to build their “crystal ball” for proactive employee attrition prediction.
Their approach to data modeling consists of three stages:
1. What data is available?
The existing body of structured data could include tenure, compensation and benefits, workforce management data, interaction analytics, coaching outcomes, performance reviews, bonus history, training data, and other information that iQor already gathered about our employees.
2. What are we missing?
After conducting an inventory of existing data, we could identify data gaps. Gaps often include unstructured data, which is more difficult to gather and too subjective to easily evaluate, such as employee feedback.
3. What can we create?
Identification of data gaps can then drive strategies for gathering that data. For example, annual surveys for employee feedback are an option, but that doesn’t provide enough data for accurate analytics. Filling in this gap requires a high-frequency method of employee surveying for gathering reliable and timely feedback regarding their outlook on the job.
The answers to these questions create a broader data pool of structured and unstructured data to begin identifying which data points correlate to attrition risks.
Transforming Raw Data Into Usable Variables
Data is just raw material; it needs to be refined to be useful, as described by Gartner’s Four Phase Data Maturity Model. iQor’s data scientists had to decide how to categorize the data into variables that could be computed by their algorithms. They then validated each data feature using a process called variable importance testing to determine what to include and exclude from the production model. This process assesses how much influence a particular variable or feature has historically impacted our attrition. Those that rank high are selected while those that rank low are rejected.
Using these variables and a combination of five main algorithms, our data scientists deployed a five-fold cross-validated Stacked Ensemble Meta learner with auto-tuned hyperparameters—or, in layman’s terms, they created a customized employee retention model that could assess the probability of employee attrition within the next 60 days.
From Data Science to Pragmatic Action: The Plan for Proactive Frontline Employee Retention
At iQor, we place a high value on providing exceptional employee experiences. As our data scientists and operations teams collaborated to develop a practical, specific, repeatable process for proactive retention, they kept the employee experience top of mind. The process needed to be simple for employees and managers in terms of time and effort expended; it needed to be standardized yet flexible; and it needed to be embeddable into our feedback culture. The result was a Measurable Skip-Level Meeting, also known as “The Touch Base.”
“The Touch Base” Strategy for Employee Retention
Every week, iQor runs our machine learning model for all 40,000 employees company-wide. We analyze each individual’s probability of attrition between 0% and 100%. At-risk employees are identified at a threshold of 65%. Employees who meet or exceed this threshold for attrition risks will automatically engage the company’s proactive retention strategy enacted by the operations teams.
As a result of these analytics, our operations teams are informed of at-risk employees every week. They receive the employees’ names, the names of their direct supervisors, and the skip-level managers responsible for scheduling the Touch Base. These managers have a structured guide with clear, consistent guidelines, a system of record, and a method for feeding results back into the analytics model.
The Touch Base is standardized enough to provide data points that can guide improvements to the machine learning model but also conversational and customized to each employee’s needs.
It’s important to note that the Touch Base is not focused on the employee’s performance. Rather, it is about encouraging open communication to identify and support the employee’s needs. The anatomy of the Touch Base is as follows:
Before the Touch Base
The manager reviews the employee’s information to approach the conversation with an informed and empathetic mindset.
The manager schedules the 30-minute session with the employee through our workforce management system.
During the Touch Base
The manager asks open-ended questions in an effort to identify what the employee may be experiencing that makes them at risk.
The manager lets the employee guide the conversation to help the employee feel listened to, valued, and supported.
The manager thanks the employee for their time and willingness to share.
After the Touch Base
We use the same module that guides our coaching to measure the effectiveness of each Touch Base. The Touch Base checklist includes a summary with the following priorities:
Clarify timelines, deliverables, and expected outcomes.
Agree on next steps.
Schedule a follow-up meeting with the employee.
Escalate to the next level of management, if needed.
Lastly, the manager documents the meeting in the system with as many details as possible.
The manager also rates the Touch Base for their impression of the employee’s overall state of being. In some cases, just having the conversation with the manager can make the employee feel valued and clear up the risk of attrition. In other cases, the situation is not something the manager can easily address, and escalation may be necessary.
Combining Clinical Trial Methodology and Human Storytelling to Gauge the Effectiveness of the Touch Base Process and Guide Next Steps
For iQor’s machine learning model to be effective, it has to be able to measure the effectiveness of our interventions and the results of these Touch Base meetings. We performed a controlled study, much like a clinical trial, to go beyond the manager ratings to use a scientific approach to our evaluations.
Comparing Retention Outcomes Between Control and Experimental Groups Showed a 2.6x Increase in Retention for Touch Base Employees
Out of 100 at-risk agents, we withheld a small sample of at-risk agents to serve as a control group. They received no Touch Base interventions. The other 95% served as the experimental group and proceeded through our Touch Base intervention process. The results were clear. After 60 days, the control group experienced 18.3% attrition while the experimental group experienced 7% attrition.
This led to two main findings:
The model appropriately identifies employees at risk of attrition.
The intervention is meaningful.
At-risk employees who go through the Touch Base process are 2.6 times more likely to stay with the company than employees who do not receive proactive retention strategies. We refer to this as our Attrition Mitigation Factor. The takeaway? Our Touch Base strategy worked to effectively retain at-risk employees and embody our commitment to providing an outstanding employee experience.
Stories Shared by Agents and Managers Through a Culture of Feedback Relate Positive Outcomes Beyond the Science
What steps actually work to retain at-risk employees? The answer to this can help us implement a repeatable process and create a culture of feedback. Feedback and storylines from our operations teams about their experiences with the Touch Base process guides continuous improvement to the model.
Using the Touch Base process, managers now get to talk directly to frontline employees instead of just hearing from their direct managers. This makes it much easier to find resolutions and improve relationships to encourage retention. When managers listen, they can facilitate adjustments that lead to employee retention. Sometimes, preventing employee attrition is as simple as adjusting schedules.
Putting the “Active” in “Proactive:” How the Machine Learning Model Constantly Self-Improves
iQor’s machine learning model is dynamic. Future improvements are guided by the data science team, the operations team, and stakeholders, who have the opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions during quarterly reviews. The key is data. Each time the machine learning model processes new information, it improves its own ability to fulfill its intended purpose.
Best Practices for a Machine Learning Approach to a Proactive Retention Strategy
iQor’s machine learning model is successful because our data science, operations, and frontline teams collaborated to define, implement, and improve the process. Embodying our iQorian Value of open communication helped our teams develop an effective machine learning model that kept the human experience at the forefront of the process.
Here are some best practices our teams followed:
Define the problem in as much detail as possible through collaboration, data discovery, and analysis.
Acquire high-quality data by asking three main questions: what data do we have, what data can we create, and what data can we enrich by joining it to another data source?
Name the project to give it its own brand. Our Touch Base system makes the project memorable to stakeholders and builds value.
Create a control group like a clinical trial to evaluate results for an accurate indication of effectiveness.
List all KPIs to specifically define the model’s parameters.
Start with a quick win to motivate involvement and maximize collaboration potential.
Fail small and fast to allow the data science methodology to break the project into bite-sized pieces that are not overwhelming.
Communicate between teams so they can seek support across the organization. Establishing a regular cadence for communication keeps channels open that we can use as potential input sources for continually improving the model.
Investing in Employees to Retain Tenured, High-Performing Teams
Employee attrition can be a significant issue for any company. Our proactive retention strategies help us stay ahead of the curve through processes that incentivize valuable employees to stay on board. iQor’s machine learning model successfully predicts attrition and guides effective intervention strategies, empowering us to transform at-risk employees into tenured career professionals that provide irresistible customer service.
Experience the Best in CX
iQor offers analytics as a service to enhance employee, customer, and client outcomes. Our proprietary speech analytics platform, cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data analysis enable us to provide effective workforce management solutions, flexible work environments, and improved coaching processes. We prioritize our employee experience and aim to cultivate a culture of success that fosters loyalty and high performance.
As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.
Our award-winning CX services include:
A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.
iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.
Joe Przybylowski is senior vice president of IT at iQor. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Andrew Reilly is a data scientist at iQor. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Terri Robertson is vice president of operations at iQor. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Delivering Effective Coaching That Strengthens Performance in an Increasingly Complex CX Ecosystem
5 Steps to Improve Coaching Effectiveness for Frontline Supervisors is a free webinar available on demand, presented by iQor and AmplifAI. David Arellano, head of product at AmplifAI, joined the authors of this blog post: Saurabh Bhaskar, iQor’s senior vice president of operations, and Anthony Paige, director of training and quality for iQor. Here’s an overview of what they discussed.
Measuring and Improving Frontline Coaching Effectiveness Is Critical
Eighty percent of agents who leave contact centers do so because of their frontline supervisor. And the biggest challenge these supervisors face is usually their own interpersonal coaching skills. Effective frontline coaching is the best way to sustain and improve agent performance. This means measuring and improving frontline coaching effectiveness is critical to achieving desired outcomes.
iQor invests heavily in recruiting, training, and coaching frontline employees. We want everyone we hire to enjoy a long and successful career with us. That’s why we provide professional learning opportunities and pathways to advancement. Coaching has always been a priority.
Automation Has Changed Agents’ Roles
In recent years, automation has taken on many of the more mundane tasks that agents used to perform, leaving them to handle more high-skill and high-value tasks.
The growth of multi-channel and omnichannel customer experience—and all the digital CX technologies that make them possible—has enabled that complexity. Every CX interaction is recorded. Proprietary data analytics technologies scour recordings in search of opportunities for improvement through coaching and examples of best practices in action.
Contact Center Complexity and Data Overload Create New Coaching Challenges
Several years ago, the increasing complexity of the agent ecosystem began to leave supervisors wondering what their next coaching step should be. There was so much data and no efficient, effective, and accurate way to make sure coaching aligned with business priorities or measured coaching effectiveness.
Fifty-six percent of contact center employees say job complexity is a top challenge.
One Solution to Reduce Complexity, Identify Business-Critical Coaching Opportunities, and Measure Coaching Effectiveness
We wanted to allow our supervisors to spend less time with data and more time coaching, so we researched numerous potential solutions.
Facilitates coaching events by surfacing the most impactful coaching opportunities.
Reduces complexity by telling supervisors what they need to do next (based on specific coaching goals).
Reports on agent performance in key areas.
Identifies the type of coaching that agents and coaches need.
Measures coaching effectiveness.
How Webinar Attendees Rate Their Coaching Effectiveness of Frontline Employees
14%
43%
14%
4%
25%
Excellent
Good
Fair
Poor
Not Measuring
Three years later, results from our strong partnership with AmplifAI—and the solution’s sophisticated AI and machine learning—have proved that investing in AmplifAI was the right decision.
iQor employs AmplifAI to help coaches coach and measure coaching effectiveness. The five steps to improve coaching effectiveness show you how we work together.
1. Create and Communicate Your Coaching System
Your coaching system—the technology that facilitates the coaching process and measures coaching effectiveness—can only be as good as the coaching itself.
iQor and AmplifAI align on what good coaching looks like:
Proactive coaching with a specific goal in mind that enables the agent to perform their job better.
Frontline leaders customize coaching to the individual agent’s learning style, whether that’s visual, audio, kinetic, or digital.
Even in flexible work environments where agents can work at home or on premise, all agents are trained equally well.
Supervisors need to be able to focus on their team, not the data, and provide specific actions the agent can deliver.
Quick onboarding, consistent training, and effective coaching contribute to improved retention.
Better employee experience translates to improved customer experience.
To create your coaching system, you’ll also need clear expectations about:
For iQor, the system provides easy-to-review performance data that show where everyone stands in relation to their goals, their team, and their program.
2. Train Coaches How to Communicate and Develop Others
In contact centers, supervisors are often former agents who were promoted from within.
All agents need to be able to communicate effectively. Those who become supervisors (and coach others) also need to have the right underlying skillset, which includes the ability to help others change their behavior.
At iQor, developing a new leader includes providing best practices for follow-through and leadership skills training. Plus, new leaders are trained to leverage technology that will help them be effective coaches.
3. Provide Visibility Into Performance and Testing
With AmplifAI, the system’s AI can be trained to identify coaching opportunities with the greatest potential impact and direct coaching activities to the right metrics, individuals, and tactics to add the greatest lift to performance.
The AI cuts right through the complexity to show supervisors what they need to do next, offering coaching suggestions unique to each agent’s individual needs. This enables supervisors to save time they once spent determining which potential coaching opportunities to pursue—up to 40% of their time—and devote that time to coaching.
The AI cuts right through the complexity to show supervisors what they need to do next, offering coaching suggestions unique to each agent’s individual needs. This enables supervisors to save time they once spent determining which potential coaching opportunities to pursue—up to 40% of their time—and devote that time to coaching.
Should KPIs change—along with the behaviors required to achieve success with those KPIs—the system can be tuned to reflect which coaching opportunities are important. iQor’s close working relationship with AmplifAI makes those kinds of changes easy to make.
4. Measure Coaching Effectiveness
Measuring coaching effectiveness is critical to understanding which coaches are doing exceptionally well and deserve recognition, and those who could benefit from coaching.
5. Learn From Successful Coaches
Many coaches are good at walking their agents through processes and expectations. Some are good at helping agents buy into and become a part of the learning and development process. Others are great at helping the agent understand how this change will benefit them.
By measuring coaching effectiveness, you can identify where individual coaches could benefit most from coaching.
AmplifAI points to the most successful coaching lessons in a given area. That enables other coaches to learn how to modify their own behavior based on how the most successful coaches teach those lessons. Also, coaches can use those lessons when coaching agents.
The best coaching helps improve outcomes for agents, keeps agents more engaged, and contributes to their long-term success.
The Proof Is in the Results
When a telecom client asked iQor to shift their KPI emphasis from customer satisfaction (CSAT) to net promoter score (NPS), we turned to AmplfAI to identify opportunities to coach the behaviors needed to improve NPS. By focusing on the metrics that matter most, AmplifAI reduced the number of dashboards and reports that coaches were required to review.
With a significant increase in coaching and more time spent on effective agent development, we produced these results for the client:
6x improvement in customer resolution time.
An increase in NPS ranging from 2.5% at the beginning of the test period to an increase of 13% at the end of the test period.
40% more coaching sessions with tracking and accountability.
Your Next Step
For the complete case study details, plus charts, graphs, more in-depth discussion of the points referenced here, and an easy-to-understand look at how AmplifAI works, watch the webinar. It’s free and available on demand.
Experience the Best in CX
We partner with clients to design the optimal mix of CX automation and people. iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.
Our award-winning CX services include:
A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.
iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.
Saurabh Bhaskar is senior vice president of operations at iQor.
Anthony Paige is director of training and quality at iQor.
This client is a U.S. wireless provider. They offer an array of mobile communications products and services to millions of subscribers. These include smartphones, accessories, monthly plans, music, video, ringtones, directory assistance, and mobile applications. They were one of the earliest companies to offer unlimited data plans to customers.
The Challenge
The mobile products and services that consumers purchase today are more technologically advanced than ever before. As a result, the frequency of consumers needing technical customer support has increased substantially, sometimes producing longer customer resolution times (CRT) in order to provide complete solutions to customer inquiries. Committed to addressing customer service needs with accuracy and speed, the telecom client partnered with iQor to develop strategies to improve performance metrics throughout the customer experience.
The primary means of achieving consistent customer support metrics is through an engaged and supported frontline workforce. Developing employees from within and supporting their growth and development has always been a priority for iQor. In fact, it’s essential for generating meaningful employee and customer experiences. With a hybrid mix of work-in-office and work-at-home contact center agents and various metrics to evaluate, supervisors sought ways to continually optimize efficiency for the coaching and support they provided to agents under their leadership. They explored opportunities to further increase insights into employee performance and target improvements unique to each employee.
iQor was looking to invest in an AI-powered performance enablement process that could scale and simplify supervisors’ access to information to enhance personalized coaching based on each individual agent’s behaviors. In a high-volume contact center environment, both supervisors and agents want to be accountable for performance and for growth in career development.
Additionally, supervisors wanted to leverage a tracking tool to assess agent improvements and guide relevant follow-up. This would increase efficiency and help further strengthen supervisors’ connections with their agents, resulting in improved employee engagement and customer experience, while also having the additional benefit of reducing the cost to serve.
The Solution
In late 2020, iQor partnered with the telecom client to pilot AmplifAI, a software as a service (SaaS) performance enablement platform to reach these goals across six contact center sites (four in the Philippines and two in the U.S.). After achieving positive results, iQor has decided to continue using the platform.
Harnessing AI-powered data to differentiate their interventions, frontline leaders provide timely, targeted, and efficient employee development and engagement across their teams. They access performance data and AI-driven recommendations through one system that prioritizes actions, key behaviors, and performance indicators scorecard metrics for the client program, empowering supervisors to help more frontline employees strengthen specific skills in less time.
For more powerful analytics, iQor pairs its proprietary speech analytics platform (VALDI) with AmplifAI’s SaaS performance enablement platform. VALDI identifies empathy, dead air, and other indicators of conversation effectiveness. So, at the click of a button supervisors can see specific reasons why an agent might need coaching in a particular area.
The platform supports frontline associates, with their leader’s guidance, by identifying a specific and measurable goal with a target date to reach it. All workflows within the platform align to that goal so coaches know what to coach, how to coach it, when to follow up, and what that follow-up action should be. Further, coaches also use employee development micro-learnings on specific topics to reinforce their coaching sessions and provide agents additional guidance.
The impact of these coaching sessions is strengthened through accountability, follow-up, and recognition. AmplifAI’s system notes the customer satisfaction score (CSAT) the day of coaching and automatically compares it three days later to check for improvement. Supervisors can see metrics alongside goals to quickly identify who meets which targets in order to inform their coaching. If the agent meets their goal, the supervisor can recognize their accomplishments; likewise, if they need more support the supervisor can offer that as well. Using AI in this way enables supervisors to coach more agents, more frequently, in less time, with more targeted development. No agent is left behind.
The performance enablement platform also has a proprietary coaching effectiveness index model that helps the organization determine where supervisors have opportunities to enhance their coaching. This effectiveness index is key to help managers determine how to develop better coaches that have the specific skills necessary to improve their agent’s performance.
Moreover, coaching sessions are recorded and automatically linked to the behavior and growth measure so supervisors can reference them, managers can use them to inform coach-the-coach sessions, and peers can access them as a resource for their own development. Built-in accountability ensures agents and supervisors receive the support they need to thrive.
The Results
Agents enjoy more frequent and precise coaching and support while the supervisors benefit from an easily accessible format that improves efficiency and yields more time for coaching. The end result is higher employee engagement and satisfaction and an excellent customer service experience.
6x Improvement in Customer Resolution Time
Customer resolution time has improved by a factor of 6 for agents coached using AmplifAI.
Net Promoter Scores Soar
Net Promoter Score increases range by 2.5% to 13% since program launch, reflecting higher levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction.
40% More Coaching Sessions
With better coaching efficiency, leaders have more time to work with more agents to improve CX.
More effective coaching builds deeper relationships with agents, elevating the employee experience and inspiring them to perform at their optimum potential. Seeing NPS performance improvements as a result of AI-enhanced coaching capabilities, the telecom client has agreed to expand the AmplifAI dataset to include first call resolution and credit and adjustment metrics.
When BPOs invest in leadership development, they inspire improvement across the organization. From frontline call center agents to operations directors, clear and effective leadership can motivate, energize, and inspire employees at every level.
Return on investment was nearly six times the program cost.
Workplace relationships improved by 77 percent.
Teamwork improved by 67 percent.
Fifty-one percent of employees reported greater job satisfaction.
Overall quality improved by 48 percent.
The takeaway? Effective leadership bolsters employee job performance, and leadership training is a highly successful way to ensure leaders at all levels can bring out the best in their teams.
Leadership Development Drives Retention, Engagement, and Employee Satisfaction
Starting off on the right foot is critical to new leaders and their teams. When leadership training only occurs post promotion, it can be difficult for new leaders to transition into management. And without the proper knowledge of how to coach, support, and engage with team members in a way that’s aligned with company culture and values, leaders can veer off course and develop habits that can lead to unsatisfied employees.
At iQor, we have challenged ourselves by revolutionizing professional development throughout our global footprint via our award-winning sQholar program. This 6-month program provides future leaders with the training needed to successfully execute and perform at a level that allows their team to meet or exceed performance expectations from the minute they hit the floor. Every quarter, the Corporate Training Team progresses a batch of leader-ready employees and, in turn, accepts new applicants into the program.
We train sQholars to be supportive and how to build trust and provide constructive feedback. As employees pick up on these skills, there is less turnover and more engaged agents who are equipped to handle customer service issues.
What is iQor’s Leadership Development Program, sQholar?
The sQholar program is for high-potential employees with exceptional leadership skills who are team-oriented and want to progress in their careers. The program consists of nine to eleven hours of eLearning and team-building activities that align with the organization’s leadership competency model.
The program includes our four-day workshop — PeaQ Performance Qoaching –that teaches agents to identify and document behaviors that lead to strong performance and how best to coach team members based on their individual needs.
Then, employees start the sQholar curriculum, which includes a 2-day orientation, shadowing call center management, and completing a research paper before graduation that details their plan to improve retention and increase employee engagement.
Employees Love Leadership Training and Development
More than 2,400 of our current supervisors have completed one if not all of the learning modules and courses within the sQholar program. Additionally, employees are exposed to iQor’s management culture, and real-time challenges that managers face every day, giving them a new appreciation for those who lead and develop their own personal leadership style.
Since its launch in 2017, more than 700 iQor employees have finished the sQholar training, and nearly 300 have been promoted. On average, 41 percent of sQholar participants are promoted to a supervisor role within their first year of completing the program. Our program has grown to well over 465 active sQholars working their way towards a leadership position.
The sQholar program is now a mandatory prerequisite for all internal promotions, with hundreds of applicants applying every quarter. External hires must now complete the courses and curriculum as well.
The sQholar program has been recognized by HR.com as a LEAD award winner in several categories placing 2nd as Best Global Leadership Program in 2020, and also won the 2019 Bronze Stevie Award for Sales & Customer Service.
In total, iQor has received 30 awards from Hr.com’s LEAD Awards over the last seven years, and 39 training awards in total for our unique and innovative career development offerings for CX leadership in our global call centers and work-at-home environment.
Leadership Development is Good for Business Too
We hire approximately 30 new call center supervisors every month. New supervisors take time to understand iQor’s unique culture, performance drivers, and supervisory challenges. Additionally, our exit survey data and company surveys indicate that career growth paths are an important factor in employee retention.
The courses and curriculum a sQholar completes during their training period are proven performance accelerators. Employees who have this knowledge have less of a learning curve and are more likely to succeed than employees hired from outside.
A sQholar is selected by their work history, personal initiative, and the recommendations of their peers. They are expected to maintain their current performance levels. For that reason, sQholar graduates typically have significant leverage over their externally hired counterparts, thus lowering agent attrition and improving retention and employee engagement.
sQholar supervisors who are well trained and highly engaged have the most significant impact on lowering agent attrition. For every 1% reduction in yearly agent attrition, our company saves about $500,000 a year.
What Lies Ahead for iQor’s Leadership Training Programs?
iQor believes the sQholar program offers a groundbreaking opportunity that benefits both its company and its employees. We are continuously improving the program to provide more career choices along the supervisor and manager development paths.
Discover iQor career opportunities at jobs.iqor.com.
According to Gallup’s “State of the Global Workplace,” over two-thirds of US employees are not actively engaged in their jobs.
That’s bad news for the bottom line as well as 60 million unhappy workers. Disengaged employees drag down production levels and can erode morale with negativity. By contrast, employees who are actively involved with their jobs are more motivated, which makes them more productive.
To boost engagement levels, businesses are continually experimenting with different strategies. One innovative approach is gamification, aka digital motivation. Gamification mixes work with play by applying game elements and techniques to non-game situations. It has proven effective in education and as a customer retention tactic. Now the enterprise has gotten in the game.
However, as with most technology, the success of your gamification efforts will depend on your people, processes, and the objectives you want to achieve. Through trial and error, we’ve learned some rules of what works and doesn’t to engage your players and keep them competing to win on the metrics that matter.
Gamification Innovation at iQor
Many of our gamification efforts have been developed in iQor’s Experience Innovation Lab and led by Ada Smith, an iQor IT professional. To build their successful program, Ada and her team created and played by clear-cut rules from the start. Use them or make up new ones to turn your own company into a power player.
1. Have a Clear Objective
Early on, you need to nail down the top goals for the program. “We wanted to focus on changing behaviors and driving outcomes,” Ada explains. “All our content addresses three major contact center Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs—Average Handle Time, NPS Score and Quality Assurance. At iQor’s huge volumes, even a slight improvement in any of these areas makes a tremendous impact, especially in mid- or low-level performers.”
2. Choose the Right Technology
There are a number of game mechanics apps out there. Choose the one that best fits your objective and integrates easily with your existing software. Look for scalability and simplicity of use, and make sure you’ll be able to add features and customize later. iQor’s team picked Centrical as the basis for their colorful, dashboard-driven program.
3. Bite-Size the Content
Chunk the content so agents can fit in a “game” whenever they have a few minutes. “Agents can play games, read articles, and take quizzes between calls or on breaks,” says Ada. “We have a mobile app so they can play on their own time.” iQor’s program uses Jeopardy-style trivia matches, contests, challenges, missions, quizzes, and other short, engaging activities.
4. Make Progress Trackable
Color-coded graphic devices measure and define performance so participants can see their progress and track it over time. “Measurement influences behavior,” Ada comments.
5. Build in Rewards. Lots of Rewards.
As anyone who has run a customer loyalty program knows, people love free stuff. iQor’s incentive program works on a scoring system where solo agents and teams earn points for wins. The software collects and calculates the points automatically, and players can redeem them for gift cards or “iQor bucks” to spend at the company’s virtual store. Free lunches are also a popular prize.
6. Ditto for Recognition
Badges, employee-of-the-month honors, pop-up tokens of encouragement, birthday and anniversary shout-outs: It’s crucial to give people plenty of moments to shine. Research shows that workers who feel ignored and unimportant have little motivation to excel.
7. Keep It Competitive . . .
“Like rewards and recognition, competition motivates people,” says Ada. “It builds excitement and encourages them to participate.” A leader board shows participants where they rank relative to each other on various activities, providing an incentive to climb higher—along with positive feedback and recognition when they do.
8. . . . While Building Community
“We keep our program competitive, but we also want to encourage team spirit and community-building,” Ada explains. She recommends a Community page to share information, congratulate special achievers, or just reach out and connect—a kind of virtual bulletin board.
9. Don’t Forget the Human “App”
The best technology is only a tool. It takes a skilled human application to be of real use. “Our management dashboard shows supervisors agent by agent and team by team exactly how everyone is performing,” says Ada Smith. “Our leaders can quickly identify opportunities and generate content and challenges to address and improve metrics and behaviors.”
10. Change the Rules When You Need to
See what works and don’t be afraid to ditch what doesn’t. Every tweak could be a game-changer.
Human resources experts say one defining quality is the desire to learn and to keep learning. At iQor, we foster a culture of excellence by giving all employees continuous opportunities to learn, grow and enrich their skills and knowledge. Our training and leadership development programs regularly win top honors from leading HR organizations.
“Our customer care agents currently support eight million customer conversations a year across digital channels.”
Our newest training program prepares agents to deliver an exceptional digital experience (DX) with content focused on chat, social media, messaging apps, email, text, web, and self-service forums. We created it because the need for digital customer care training is acute.
“Our customer care agents currently support eight million customer conversations a year across digital channels,” says iQor VP of Global Learning, Mark Monaghan. “In some programs, 80 to 90 percent of all customer interactions are digital. Even the most tech-savvy agents need specialized digital training that keeps pace with rapidly evolving technologies and trends so they can deliver a consistently excellent customer experience.”
Digital Tones and the Human Touch
iQor has a long history of digital leadership. We were one of the first major service providers to launch an all-digital technology platform, and currently, almost 2,000 agents in four countries support eight million customer interactions a year across digital, non-voice channels. Over 90 percent of our digital programs are ranked #1.
By now we know how digital customer behaviors and expectations differ from traditional voice interactions—and how they’re sometimes the same. For instance, customers expect speedier service and solutions when they use digital tools, but they still want to talk to a human when an issue becomes complicated. They expect agents to figure out how they’re feeling and empathize with them from what they write in chats, texts, or emails, with no spoken words to provide emotional clues. That can be tricky.
“One of our modules is called Digital Tones,” says Mark. “It deals with the special challenges of digital communication. One section gives agents exercises in critical reading to draw out deeper meaning or emotions hidden in the words. Another uses simulation software to create mock chats so agents can practice de-escalation techniques.”
The First Digital Training Certificate Ever
The simulation app, nicknamed Qori, can also simulate multiple queries, so supervisors can determine how many digital interactions agents can handle at any one time and monitor the response rate. Opportunities to monitor and coach are special features of the supervisor curriculum.
The instructor course, limited to existing Level III trainers, concentrates on higher-level training topics such as omnichannel strategy, curriculum development, and platforms. Participants are required to develop a digital training component for course completion—and certification.
“iQor introduced our Train the Trainer program four years ago, and now a great many corporate HR programs have similar programs,” adds Mark. “We’re excited now to introduce one of the first digital training certification programs in the world and see where it leads.”
Digital Skills for Digital Careers
Recent research shows that more than eight in ten middle-skill jobs today require adept digital skills, which leads to higher earnings and greater career opportunities. With DX aQademy, iQor aims to help close the digital skills gap and open up new career advantages for our workforce, while delivering a new level of customer experience for our clients.
The content for DX aQademy was developed by Tarisse Grant-Shelton, Global Learning & Corporate Trainer, along with Mark Monaghan. When the program rolls out, about 1,000 agents in various iQor locations around the world are expected to participate.
You can read about our other training programs and our award-winning iQor University here.
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