CUSTOMER PROFILE
Travel + Leisure Co. puts the world on vacation, providing travel and vacation experiences to millions of owners, members, and subscribers worldwide on behalf of several brands. Its contact center serves a wide variety of inquiries, including vacation booking, consumer finance, timeshare ownership, and tour package planning.
01 THE BEFORE
A false start at upgrading aging self-service features
For several years, Travel + Leisure Co. optimized the scheduling and allocation of 1,000 agents using NICE Workforce Management. However, the agent-facing self-service capabilities had not been updated for quite some time. The company wanted to make it easier for agents to request time off, execute schedule trades, or accept overtime while not actively logged in and working. A modernization effort began in 2019, but the deep impact of the pandemic response on the travel and hospitality industry shelved those plans.
02 DESIRE TO CHANGE
Post-pandemic, a reorganized workforce needs a new approach
As tourism industries recovered, Travel + Leisure Co. renewed its modernization efforts. Having evolved to a permanent model with a predominantly remote workforce, the company wanted a comprehensive approach to contact center operations, which supported a distributed agent pool. Empowering agents to take action on their schedules, including accepting overtime and voluntary time off (VTO) offers from anywhere at any time.
The company wanted a self-service solution that would be both powerful and easy to use, so a substantial majority of agents would buy in for time off, extra hours, and self-service shift adjustments. “With a workforce that’s 98% remote, we needed a better way to engage with our front-line employees to make it easier for them to manage their schedules,” said Todd Wagoner, director of workforce optimization at Travel + Leisure Co. “That was especially true as our leadership returned to the office, but our agents remained at home.”
03 THE SOLUTION
A modern contact center platform with leading-edge employee self-service
As part of an overall modernization program, Travel + Leisure Co. migrated to the NICE CXone platform to replace its previous contact center platform and, in parallel, implemented Employee Engagement Manager (EEM) for agent self-service. EEM optimally aligns agent resources with customer demand by identifying solutions to address staffing gaps, proactively managing agent communication, and automatically adjusting schedules in WFM. With EEM, agents can use their mobile devices to request overtime, voluntary time off, shift swaps and trades, or time off across multiple scheduled weeks. The system has prebuilt rules for pre-approvals; supervisors can quickly review and approve or deny all agent scheduling requests.
Unlike the previous self-service portal, agents can obtain instant rulings on schedule change requests without delays for review by the workforce team. “It feels like a whole new program because so many of these options were available to our agents, but not necessarily easy,” Wagoner said. “Instead of placing a request or sending an email and having to wait and see, you can see right now with color coding whether the time is available and whether your request has been accepted.”
Travel + Leisure Co. customized the solution according to its work rules. EEM supports the schedule flexibility Travel + Leisure Co. extends to agents, including 4x10 weekly scheduling and variability in lunch and break lengths. Schedule swap rules (for example, full-day only vs. partialday swaps) can also be tailored for agents based on rules like location and team membership.
The company started with a pilot rollout to 50 agents to experiment and adjust. “We had focus meetings with that group, and once we were all happy with it, we rolled out to one group at a time instead of trying to add another 800 agents all at once,” Wagoner said. “And the pilot helped with broader adoption because other agents had heard about the new capabilities and wanted to see for themselves.”
04 THE RESULTS
Strong self-service uptake beats leadership targets
With rollout complete to nearly all the company’s agents, the participation rate in EEM is 83% of the installed base, ahead of the company’s 80% target. Daily participation of 25% is at goal, and daily self-service utilization is double the company’s target. With insights in many cases up from a single week to a three-week window, the company’s workforce analysts are better positioned to make more strategic, long-term planning decisions.
Some in the organization were initially concerned that ease-of-use of schedule change features might lead to inconsistency or service level disruptions, but early results have shown no difference in key contact center performance or customer satisfaction metrics. “We’ve seen very little difference in operations other than the fact that no one needs to listen to 30 daily voicemails about schedule changes!” Wagoner said. “And there are lots of advantages for us. The Employee Engagement Manager is a great way for us to stay in contact with our agents.”
The new workforce flexibility features have helped Travel + Leisure Co. maintain a stable agent attrition rate despite prolonged low unemployment rates and heavy competition for talent. “That so many of these features are available for same-day use has made life a lot easier for our agents,” said Liz Gonzalez, real-time division manager, Travel + Leisure Co.
05 THE FUTURE
Deeper integration with enterprise solutions for greater flexibility
The organization plans to roll out NICE EEM to the remaining portions of the agent pool which can take advantage of its self-service flexibility. Rules-based VTO and overtime offers will help target those offers to the agents best suited to address the short-term need for more (or fewer agents). Planned integrations with payroll and human resources systems will expand the range of paid time-off and vacation requests which can be settled in realtime.
