Toyota Financial Services (TFS) had outgrown and outpaced the legacy Genesys ACD and Avaya PBX-based systems it was using at its contact centers. The company needed more agility and flexibility to deliver its customers a consistent and seamless omnichannel experience.
With its focus on customer experience, TFS also wanted to expand its capability to collect and make use of feedback. The company, therefore, sought to centralize customer experience data and share it with its representatives in real-time.
01 THE BEFORE
Deciding on the cloud
TFS had outgrown and outpaced the legacy Genesys ACD and Avaya PBX-based systems it was using at its contact centers. The company needed more agility and flexibility to deliver its customers a consistent and seamless omnichannel experience.
To focus on customer experience, TFS also wanted to expand the collection and use of feedback. They aimed to centralize customer experience data and share it with representatives in real-time. To be effective, the solution would need to handle very complex business processes, more than 40 toll- free numbers, and over 500 IVR menu options. Call recording and retention, especially for regulatory compliance, are also critical for TFS as an enterprise financial organization. Ultimately, TFS chose to move the cloud as a part of creating a fully integrated environment for easy evolution to meet changing customer expectations.
02 DESIRE TO CHANGE
Rapid transition is not only needed but required
The original NICE CXone deployment was scheduled to take several months to avoid disruptions to customer experience. An accelerated switch to work-from-home operations demanded the opposite approach.
An implementation of up to four months was squeezed into less than a week and it was a process of continuous improvement. Employees simultaneously learned their way around new hardware, software, workflows, and work-from-home protocols. One of the most important technologies was a new softphone, embedded in the Salesforce environment with NICE CXone integration capabilities. CXone Personal Connection, a predictive dialer, made it possible for TFS to continue its operations as before in a work- from-home environment.
The number of incoming calls expected during and immediately after the original rollout timeline was estimated based on past experiences. In practice, however, the call volume during the shift to work-from- home was at an intense 200%.
03 THE SOLUTION
Agility with functionality
TFS carried out a review of available options on the market and noted that NICE CXone is the leading cloud- based customer experience platform and has a proven track record of successful migrations. Migration success was especially important given the scale of the planned transition. Among several key deciding factors was the maturity of the NICE CXone/Salesforce integration. Another factor was NICE CXone Feedback Management’s analytics capabilities, using the world’s largest set of CX performance data. TFS began with a pilot deployment in a single business unit and quickly adopted the entire NICE CXone call center ecosystem, from call routing to voice and survey analytics to quality and workforce management. While there was a concern with rolling out new solutions to 16 business units and six contact centers too quickly, the company developed an innovative technical solution to keep customer history and call context intact during the migration to the new platform to avoid a negative impact to the customer experience.
04 THE RESULTS
Full support leads to a quick turnaround
Throughout the lightning-speed transitions, TFS successfully delivered the NICE CXone platform to 3,000 agents in less than a week. “Timing of our transition was critical in transitioning our team members to work from home,” said Maria Brink, General Manager of TFS Customer Service Center. “The leadership team appreciates that the transition went smoothly and we were able to quickly get our team members home and working very quickly.” TFS leadership credited three factors in their success.
The support: From the initial, pre-COVID planning to the unexpectedly concentrated deployment to the managed support afterward, “the partnership between the NICE CXone and TFS IT teams was excellent,” according to TFS Business Information Officer Gordon McGrath.
The technology: TFS representatives can log in from anywhere and use the headset to take or make calls with the same ease as in the office.
The agents: “It wouldn’t have been possible without their support and ability to adjust,” said Jyoti Swain, TFS Domain Information Officer, who managed and led this Contact Center deployment from IT. As he put it, the TFS contact center teams had to go through all the stages of change management within 48 hours.
“Overall, the feeling is that this has been a good move for us and has given the business more control over administrative-type changes that we can now do on the fly,” Brink added.
05 THE FUTURE
Increasing analytics and automation
Having seen the capabilities of NICE CXone in the most challenging circumstances, TFS is considering adding more analytics and automation, as well as a chatbot and other self-service options. The company is also investigating how NICE CXone can assist in expanding to support customers in new channels
and with greater personalization. “With NICE CXone, you can continuously improve both your customer experience and your agent experience, even in the most challenging of times,” McGrath added.
“I’m very proud of the team and NICE partnership that not just implemented a quality Cloud Contact Center at lightning speed but at a time when TFS agents and customers needed it the most. Because of their effort, 3000+ CSRs were able to work from home and stay safe and healthy while giving customers the best servicing experience during the transition.”
NATIONAL MANAGER, TOYOTA FINANCIAL SERVICES INFORMATION AND DIGITAL SOLUTIONS
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Toyota Financial Services (TFS) is one of the largest auto finance providers in the world for flexible auto sales financing and leasing, comprehensive vehicle and payment protection plans, and well- rounded insurance offerings to Toyota customers worldwide. TFS also provides other financial services to authorized Toyota and Lexus dealers, affiliates, and their customers in most of the United States. TFS contact centers employ more than 3,000+ CSRs in 16 business units and handle 1.4M+ call volumes per month.
