The Challenge
Western Union trainers were having difficulty creating top performing customer facing teams. Trainers knew the importance of active learning to prepare teams for success, however trainers found their human-to-human role play program made it challenging to observe, provide feedback, and administer coaching in large classes.
Key Results
AI Coach quickly became an integral part of Western Union's training experience and a forced multiplier for classroom trainer impact.
- Improved new hire confidence
- Closed tenured agent skill gaps
- Delivered higher customer satisfaction
The Solution
Zenarate AI Coach uses advanced AI to simulate any customer or prospect scenario. Western Union immerses agents in life-like voice & screen simulations with AI Coach providing tone, soft skills, and best & required practice coaching throughout the simulation training.
The results are truly pronounced. Western Union employees who graduate from Zenarate AI Coach report a much higher level of confidence in their ability to perform job duties than those that completed training without AI Coach.
Western Union agents master best and required practices across any customer scenario for new hires and tenured agents.
Western Union is the global leader in cross-border, crosscurrency money movement.
Industry: Financial Services
No. of Employees: 10,000+
"We saw an immediate increase in our teams’ ability to deliver expected communications. And an immediate turn around in skill proficiencies – delivering improved empathy, customer satisfaction, active listening, and all the other actions that we want them practicing for the improved customer experiences”
- Casey Denby, Senior Director, Contact Center Learning
Companies Like WU Experience Proven Outcomes
New Hire Speed to Proficiency Acceleration
Conversion Rate Lift
QA & Compliance Score Improvement
Employee Attrition Reduction
Western Union Partners with Zenarate to Revamp Global Training
Western Union is always looking for ways to improve training experiences, employee skill building, and customer satisfaction. However, improvement in those areas is often a challenge due to their heavily regulated financial services industry, where compliance across their money transfer business is a must. Casey Denby, Senior Director, Contact Center Learning for Western Union points out, “There are specific scenarios where we have to make sure we are acting in 100% compliance with regulator expectations. We were searching for the best way to provide our employees the opportunity to practice delivering service content and information in a completely compliant way while promoting customer care.”
Western Union needed to boost their training improvement goals among global employees. This is why Western Union partnered with Zenarate to implement AI Coach, the only solution delivering advanced conversation simulation focused on helping customer-facing employees perform their best.
Engage
Teammates engage with their personal AI Coach on high impact voice & chat scenarios they will face with live customers.
Master
Teammates master your Best & Required Practices with their personal AI Coach providing real time feedback.
Perfomr
Your AI Coach provides a Simulation Scorecard certifying teammates who have mastered your best methods and are ready to hit the floor as top performers.
“We saw an immediate increase in our teams’ ability to deliver expected communications. And an immediate turn around in skill proficiencies – delivering improved empathy, customer satisfaction, active listening, and all the other actions that we want them practicing for the improved customer experiences.”
- Casey Denby, Senior Director, Contact Center Learning
Active Learning Solution
AI Coach requires no personal or account information and no IT integrations for full-scale roll out, making AI Coach implementation and adoption easy for Western Union. Casey mentioned that Zenarate’s world class customer success team made the process even easier, “One of the things that I’ve really appreciated was the Zenarate team’s willingness to provide us with tutoring and guidance in creating our own customer scenarios…The AI Coach interface is really intuitive, but sometimes we needed additional guidance. The Zenarate team’s guidance and responsiveness was exceptional.”
Post implementation, trainers quickly adopted AI Coach into their workflows, “it’s almost like they can’t get enough,” Casey says. In fact, AI Coach has been implemented globally at Western Union, effectively replacing role plays across global training in Egypt, Greece, Russia, China, Dominican Republic, Philippines, India, and Nicaragua. Western Union’s global AI Coach is delivering important training feedback, skill mastery enforcement, and improvements to overall customer care.
“One of AI Coach’s biggest benefits is the ability to be used as a reinforcement and development tool for existing customer contact people. It gives them the opportunity and the context to practice in a completely safe environment, both building and reinforcing skills that they might need for new or existing duties.”
- Casey Denby, Senior Director, Contact Center Learning
AI Coach Delivers Immediate Improvements to Customer Care
Western Union’s customer facing teams have strict regulations to follow. They meet these regulatory standards by practicing robust customer care.
Casey explained that customer care is about making specific accurate disclosures to customers while simultaneously giving customers the best experience possible. He was very pleased when he saw immediate improvements in customer care post AI Coach implementation. “We saw an immediate increase in our teams’ ability to deliver expected communications. And an immediate turn around in skill proficiencies – delivering improved empathy, customer satisfaction, active listening, and all the other actions that we want them practicing for the improved customer experiences,” says Casey.
Casey explained that customer care is about making specific accurate disclosures to customers while simultaneously giving customers the best experience possible. He was very pleased when he saw immediate improvements in customer care post AI Coach implementation. “We saw an immediate increase in our teams’ ability to deliver expected communications. And an immediate turn around in skill proficiencies – delivering improved empathy, customer satisfaction, active listening, and all the other actions that we want them practicing for the improved customer experiences,” says Casey.
The results are truly pronounced. Western Union employees who graduate from Zenarate AI Coach report a much higher level of confidence in their ability to perform job duties than those that completed training without AI Coach. The higher confidence levels can be attributed to AI Coach’s use of advanced machine learning, which effectively gauges the intent of employee responses. Creating real-life scenario practice.
AI Coach is not based on scripting and mere keyword text/speech analysis. Instead, AI Coach can understand human intention, explanation, and complexity of scenarios delivering real-life experiential training for customer facing teams. Western Union’s AI Coach gets smarter everyday learning from every user interaction, helping Western Union agents master best and required practices across any customer scenario for new hires and tenured agents.
“One of AI Coach’s biggest benefits is the ability to be used as a reinforcement and development tool for existing customer contact people. It gives them the opportunity and the context to practice in a completely safe environment, both building and reinforcing skills that they might need for new or existing duties.”
- Casey Denby, Senior Director, Contact Center Learning
Western Union is Expanding their AI Coach Use Cases
Western Union’s management temas are not the only ones noticing an improvement in skill development for new hires and underperforming tenured agents. The customer-facing teams have voiced their satisfaction with Zenarate AI Coach to their training managers. And according to Casey, “there are plenty of corollary studies linking improvements in employee satisfaction with improvements in customer satisfaction.” Western Union is expanding its AI Coach across more global training offices and use cases, developing confident customer-facing teams that deliver the best customer experience possible.
“There are plenty of corollary studies linking improvements in employee satisfaction with improvements in customer satisfaction. Zenarate is a forced multiplier for trainers and it’s made our life easier.”
- Casey Denby, Senior Director, Contact Center Learning
