“Zenarate is an integral piece of our training program, allowing our team members the opportunity to hone their skills through AI.”
- Shantel McQuaid, VP of Talent Development
ERC (Enhanced Resource Centers) is one of the top international BPO providers of customer experience solutions. ERC offers a full service, end-to-end contact center solution across every aspect of the customer journey. ERC focuses on investing in technology that enables their talented team to provide value added interactions rather than replicating the contact centers of the past.
Industry: Business Process Outsourcing No. of Employees: 7,000
The Challenge
ERC wanted to give their agents the best hands-on training possible to ensure the delivery of superior customer experiences. They were looking for a scalable technology solution that would build employee confidence, improve KPI performance, and infuse best practices into training and coaching moments to drive employee skill development and support their career growth.
Key Results
ERC now coaches its employees to perform their best by leveraging Zenarate AI Coach.
- Immediate lift in dollars collected
- Higher employee satisfaction scores
- Reduced 30-60 day nesting and floor attrition
The Solution
With Zenarate AI Coach, ERC is using AI conversation simulation developing top performing agents right out of training and is closing underperforming tenured agent skill gaps. Customer-facing teams are mastering real scenarios they encounter with customers, and trainers easily track individual and team proficiency.
Similar Companies Experience Proven Outcomes
- +56% faster speed to proficiency
- +22% higher conversion rates
- +33% higher CSAT scores
- -32% lower employee attrition
Zenarate AI Coach quickly became more than a training solution; it turned into an integral part of ERC employee experience and retention. ERC Recovery Services has seen an immediate lift in dollars collected and employee satisfaction. And trainers saw an immediate impact on agent confidence, which transferred to a reduction in both new hire and 30/60-day attrition.
“Our leadership has a significant investment
and belief in strength of learning and
development. Our Zenarate AI Coach
allows us to deliver targeted coaching and
create confident employees. We believe
that confident employees create exceptional
customer experiences and that
reflects in our customer experience
scores.”
Shantel
VP of Talent Development
ERC Delivers Premier Customer and Employee Experiences by Partnering with Zenarate
Digital transformation has customer expectations at an all-time high, and businesses are realizing that every customer conversation is having a greater impact on their bottom line. Agents across industries are struggling to keep pace with these expectations; however, ERC is the exception.
For most businesses, new hire onboarding can be a long resource-intense process. Especially in the case of agents getting fully ramped up before taking their first call. For their first call, new hires have anxiety feeling unprepared to handle new complex customer scenarios. And tenured agents have core and new requirement skill gaps. With a lack of confidence and an increase in anxiety, agents are unable to perform their best, leaving companies to deal with low employee satisfaction, high attrition rates, and ultimately a worse customer experience.
ERC was completely aware of these business challenges, and they were determined to meet them head-on through technology investment creating top performing agents consistently delivering value-added interactions.
Shantel McQuaid VP Talent Development at ERC puts it perfectly, “If you're technology forward and you're on the wave of digital transformation, you have to apply AI across the company. If you do that, you find success. That’s where Zenarate stood out using AI to solve our top employee and customer experience challenges.”
That’s why ERC partnered with Zenarate to implement AI Coach. AI Coach is not your normal out-of-the-box AI solution that only focuses on monitoring calls and analyzing interactions. Rather, Zenarate AI Coach takes a human-centered approach to solving high-value business problems. ERC’s AI Coach is patient and unbiased, working 24/7 creating top performing agents through intelligent conversation simulation. ERC develops top performing agents in three simple steps:
Engage
Agents engage with their personal unbiased Zenarate AI Coach on high-impact voice, screen, and chat scenarios they will face with live customers and prospects.
Master
Agents master your tone, soft skills, and best & required practices by role-playing with their personal unbiased Zenarate AI Coach from home or office.
Perform
Your Zenarate AI Coach provides a Simulation Scorecard certifying agents who have mastered your best methods. Now your agents are ready to engage with live customers & prospects as confident top performers.
AI Coach Helps ERC Develop Top Performers
When ERC’s recovery teams go through their first training, they are introduced to AI Coach as a vital part of ERC’s skill mastery program. ERC investigated other solutions, but none met their needs like Zenarate.
Zenarate provided ERC human centered AI, contact center expertise, and a light-lift fast stand-up model allowing trainers and managers to focus on creating top performing agents. Trainers quickly design high-impact call scenarios, agents master call scenario best & required practices enjoying their AI Coach conversation simulation experience, and managers easily identify agent readiness through their Simulation Scorecard and immersion call listening.
Trainers were quickly adopting AI Coach because it, “challenged their classes and made their agents more efficient on the phones. It really allows the new hire agent to get their call flow down, to get their verbiage down, and to understand the best practice call model,” says Shantel McQuaid VP of Talent Development. ERC saw a material performance lift after their first pilot.
Zenarate AI Coach quickly became more that a training solution; it turned into an integral part to the ERC employee experience and retention. The recovery teams at ERC have seen an immediate lift in dollars collected and employee satisfaction. And trainers saw an immediate impact on agent confidence, which transferred to a reduction in both new hire and 30/60-day attrition.
“Our CEO, Marty, started as an agent so he completely understands the power of coaching and the impact it has on our business. Zenarate AI Coach allows us to do targeted coaching early on and through the floor, making a huge difference.”
Shantel
VP of Talent Development
Just Getting Started – ERC is Expanding AI Coach Across Verticals
ERC is expanding their AI Coach to other verticals and seeing similar outcomes. “We have seen such a lift on our recovery side that we’re implementing Zenarate with other key client use cases. One of them is in the Telecom space. Some of those interactions can be difficult calls, like if my cable or my cell phone has been disconnected,” says Shantel. Zenarate is industry and use case agnostic, creating top performing new hires before their first call, and closing tenured agent skill gaps. And AI Coach helps tenured agents successfully transition to new roles, implement new compliance requirements, and learn how to support new products and services.
Zenarate AI Coach Selling Point
Zenarate is now a leading selling point for ERC when they pitch new clients. Incorporating artificial intelligence into agent learning is a huge win in their prospective clients’ eyes. “They look at us and say, wow this company can quickly produce quality agents for us,” says Shantel.
“I will tell you that in my years of call center experience, I haven't had a company invest in human centered AI, so I would say that it is unique. I think Zenarate’s AI Coach is something that more BPOs will start to turn to, in order to enhance their own training and improve their metrics.”
Shantel
VP of Talent Development
