Envision Customer Success Story
Alaska Airlines Takes Quality Customer Service
Home with Envision Click2Coach
With 75 years in operations, Alaska Airlines has always been guided by its commitment to integrity, caring, resourcefulness, professionalism and spirit. Key to the success of the award-winning airline is its focus on a superior level of customer service, powered by a strong employee culture of high service standards towards customers and employees. It is this dedication to excellence that has made Alaska rank the highest in customer satisfaction in J.D.Power and Associates annual airline satisfaction survey for four years in a row.
The flawless customer service of Alaska Airlines and its partner, Horizon Air, is powered by six call centers and more than 800 agents. As the company added
new domestic and international routes to its itinerary, it needed to grow its contact center personnel, while:
> Maintaining low operational costs and realizing real estate savings that could be passed on to consumers
> Continuing to deliver high quality of service even in unforeseen circumstances like natural disasters,
> Developing a reliable system to enable its agents to work from home in
response to their growing demand for telecommuting. Enabling telecommuting would also support the company’s commitment to maintaining a healthy work- life balance for its employees and would increase Alaska’s ability to hire talented and motivated call center agents.
Problem / Solution
While telecommuting proved to be an excellent business solution, there were several serious considerations that needed to be taken into account. Alaska wanted to make sure that agents have the environment to deliver consistent performance. That meant that the solution Alaska chose had to support multiple software and hardware configurations and deliver the quality monitoring and training agents rely on. Above all, Alaska wanted to ensure that its agents have the framework and tools to continue to deliver excellent customer service in the comfort of their own home office. Only then it would be possible to maintain the culture of excellence Alaska strives to maintain.
Deployment
A long-term Envision customer, Alaska Airlines and its partner, Horizon Airlines, use Envision’s award winning Click2Coach training and quality monitoring solution to deliver targeted, customized coaching exactly when and where it is needed. With Click2Coach, Alaska’s Quality Assurance team reviews recorded customer interactions on a weekly basis, conducts easy spot checks and develops training materials for existing and new contact center agents.
The solution’s easy recording and monitoring features and training modules enable Alaska to easily communicate proactive training as well as handle reactive support calls effectively and efficiently. In addition, the company is able to identify skill areas that need to be developed in order
to maintain the level of excellence travellers have learned to expect from Alaska.
True to its culture of employee empowerment, Alaska
uses call scores to reinforce best practices and continually develop new training and developing materials for agents, while On Demand call monitoring and recording facilitates improved first call resolution and provides valuable immediate support.
Results
Alaska’s deployment of Envision Click2Coach helped achieve and exceed the objectives the company had set at the beginning of the project.
> Improved call handling time – As agents’ ability to handle challenging calls increases due to methodical and proactive training, at home agents were able reduce call times by 3.5%.
> Improved call center efficiency – The increase in productivity and call resolution times, as well as the proactive process and technology training, allowed Alaska to report an increase in handled calls per day
36.9 to 44 and an increase of 4.9% in hard time (time dedicated to active call handling and resolution).
> Improved job satisfaction and retention – Virtually all at home agents agreed that the ability to work from home has improved their work life balance, reduced their commuting cost and allowed them to continue to excel at their responsibilities.
> Reduced real estate footprint and cost – By enabling telecommuting, Alaska Airlines reduced its estate footprint by more than 30%, realizing
not only significant cost savings but minimizing its
environmental impact.
The success of its initial at-home agent program has inspired Alaska to grow its base of telecommuting agents. The company’s goal is to have 80% of its agents work from home by the end of 2012. The airline, which since its inception has been known for innovation, continues to push the boundaries with one goal in mind: Travel better, work better, live better.
About Envision
Envision is a pioneer in delivering innovative team coaching and performance improvement products and services to the contact center. Envision’s landmark and industry-renowned Click2Coach® fully integrates the value of quality monitoring and management, e-learning, automated coaching and robust analytics and performance management capabilities.
Envision marries the power of Click2Coach and Envision Workforce Management™ together on the award-winning Envision Centricity® Web-based workforce optimization (WFO) technology platform to deliver a full spectrum of ROI-driven efficiency and effectiveness gains that meet the most specific and unique objectives of customer-focused organizations worldwide.
A commitment to unparalleled customer-centricity is at the center of the company’s mission and is what makes Envision the authority on delivering an uncompromising customer experience. Visit www.envisioninc.com, email info@envisioninc.com or call 206.225.0800 ext. 500 for more information.
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