Improving call center performance with Tethr

A leading automotive dealership management software (DMS) company used Tethr to improve agent performance, reduce average handle time (AHT), and realize operational cost savings.

Initially, this customer came to Tethr with the goal of automating their existing quality assurance (QA) processes. When they put their call data into Tethr and saw their data mapped against industry benchmarks, however, they identified additional areas of opportunity that weren’t on their QA scorecards at all. Before beginning an automation process, leaders at this company elected to use Tethr’s insights to guide focused sprints, in order to bring certain lagging areas of the call center up to speed.

The solution: Utilize Tethr data to focus on key problem areas

This customer saw great success with focal point sprints, based on the data received through Tethr’s benchmarking feature. Leaders were able to identify areas of opportunity within the call center—like a need for fewer instances of Powerless-to-Help language and a need for increasing Advocacy language—and focus on each of these areas for a month in order to improve call center performance.

Results: Immediate & highly trackable performance improvement

After implementation, the results were near-immediate. In just the first 90 days and the first three month-long sprints, call center performance improved drastically. Each area of focus saw often a 100% increase or more in just the 30-day sprint, and that improvement didn’t drop off after the sprint was over. In fact, leadership observed such striking changes that they began to utilize Tethr-based benchmarking and dashboarding in additional ways.

Final ROI

$23,000 saved in the first five months

High-effort calls have longer handle times, and longer handle times cost more money than shorter handle times. By utilizing Tethr’s recommendations for reducing customer effort and increasing the right agent behaviors, this customer was able to reduce handle time—via reduced customer effort—and save money. In their first five months with Tethr, overall handle time on difficult calls was reduced by 5.8% or roughly 32 seconds per call; resulting in an average of $0.54 dollars saved per call.