NRTC decreases attrition by 32% with Capacity

NRTC is a member-owned cooperative serving rural electric and telecommunications providers across the U.S. They provide a wide range of solutions, including white-labeled contact center services for over 320 organizations.

Supporting hundreds of members—and their approximately 2.5 million customers—means NRTC’s contact center agents must be able to efficiently navigate a wide range of troubleshooting processes and technologies.

NRTC knew they needed a scalable solution to help agents quickly find the information they needed during customer conversations, which led them to Capacity.

Problem

As a contact center service provider for utilities and telecom companies, NRTC needs agents who can troubleshoot technical issues and handle volume volatility caused by unpredictable weather events. Before 2020, they required applicants to have previous contact center experience even to be considered. But post-pandemic, shifts in the labor market mean there is a smaller pool of experienced agents applying for contact center jobs.

“Those previous experience requirements are no longer applicable,” says Rich King, Chief Operating Officer of NRTC Managed Services. “Today, we’re the first contact center job for many of our agents.”

Starting in 2022, NRTC kicked off several initiatives to help both entry-level and experienced agents deliver for their members. One of their major projects involved implementing Capacity Agent Workflow to access their new knowledge base.

“Before Capacity, we were using Google Docs,” says Olivia Grimstead, Programs Manager at NRTC Managed Services. “It worked up to a point, but there was a lot of information thrown in there, and we regularly had to go through multiple pages of information to make sure everything lined up.”

NRTC wanted to equip all agents with the resources to solve complex customer issues and deliver consistently high-quality service for hundreds of member organizations—and do it as efficiently as possible.

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Solution

NRTC chose Capacity due to the software’s ability to meet their complex requirements—including the ability to build out over 500 workflows—and deliver easy-to-follow guidance to their agents.

“We wanted it to be like the experience of using tax software,” King says. “If you sit down with a federal or state form, it feels like a foreign language. But if you use software, you’re just answering questions to walk through the process. We wanted similar dynamic logic behind the scenes to pop up the next set of questions based on the previous answers.”    

Today, all agents use Capacity for real-time guidance, and NRTC’s training managers introduce the platform to new agents during their initial training. 

NRTC also uses Capacity Conversation Intelligence to automate their quality assurance (AQA) process, allowing them to provide targeted coaching to their agents. The software analyzes what agents and customers say and evaluates every call against NRTC’s 11-point QA checklist.

NRTC’s supervisors can look at the data by agent, member organization, or checklist item, allowing them to quickly spot the biggest opportunities for improvement.

NRTC has developed training modules for every checklist item, so when a supervisor sees an agent struggling in a particular area, they can direct them to the relevant module. King likens it to giving agents the answer to the test.

Results

Capacity’s real-time agent guidance and conversation intelligence solutions have played a big role in NRTC’s efforts to support their agents and deliver consistently high-quality customer service for their members. King notes that Capacity has contributed to some notable improvements to key performance metrics, including a:

• 42 second reduction in average handle time (AHT)
• 32% decrease in agent attrition
• 12% increase in average QA score

The reduction in AHT alone has contributed to significant cost savings, with every 15 seconds of AHT reduction equaling 3-4 full-time equivalents. The savings have covered the investment in Capacity and helped NRTC Managed Services come in well under their annual budget.

Looking ahead

NRTC continues to look for ways to expand their use of Capacity and help their agents work even more efficiently. According to Grimstead, the next initiative involves incorporating more APIs and integrations to improve real-time workflows. “We’re automating our troubleshooting now so we can ask our agents fewer questions and still direct them down the path they need to be on,” she says.

King is also looking at opportunities to combine Capacity’s post-conversation intelligence and real-time guidance to eliminate errors. “If the agent is going down the wrong path in the knowledge base, we want to get to the point where we can use real-time call data to identify that and redirect the agent immediately,” he says.

By continuously optimizing their processes with Capacity, NRTC is overcoming the challenges posed by a tight labor market, complex customer interactions, and call volume volatility. This allows them to successfully serve as an extension of their members’ support teams, delivering valuable assistance to their customers whenever they need it.

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