Case Study: Contact Center Transformation

Twilio Flex IVR Boosts Self-Service by 80+%

Evolving an on-prem contact center to the cloud enhances options for transit customers

Overview

Millions of people worldwide use this transportation systems company’s payment and transaction processing systems to travel with ease and confidence. After one of their government clients, a U.S. state’s Department of Transportation (DOT), began transitioning legacy systems to support electronic and video tolling, the company partnered with HGS to enhance customer experience.

52MAnnual interactions across all channels

600KCalls handled per month (300K+ handled by IVR)

+80%Increase in self-service by deflecting interaction volume

Client background

In 2015, this transportation systems corporation was awarded a contract by a U.S. state’s DOT to support its tolling system. Later, when an electronic toll collection system was launched, the DOT’s back office and customer service system was transitioned from a legacy operator to this company to operate and maintain. In 2020, the company partnered with HGS to help them digitally transform their on-premises contact centers across various geographies to a cloud-based, omnichannel platform.

Today, bolstered by a Twilio Flex IVR, HGS handles voice, SMS, email, and video transactions for the client’s global customers in multiple languages.

Business Objectives

When the client partnered with HGS, they were looking for a way to move from the limitations of an on-prem contact center to a cloud-based, multi-channel solution. Some of the operational and technology challenges the client faced included:

Thousands of business rules for each customer
A nonexistent agent and customer knowledge base
Difficulty cross-training agents across customers
High early lifecycle attrition of agents leading to significant overhead
Lengthy agent training and ramp-up
Disparate sets of technologies in each customer contact center although use cases were the same or similar
A tedious 8-step customer experience on the existing IVR
Limited availability of self-service deflection tools
Long wait times that led to high abandonment rates and low CSAT

The client realized that by delivering bespoke systems, a mixture of different IT systems with many silos lacked a coherent way to communicate. They knew that building contact centers takes a long time to implement and is very cumbersome to manage, which would limit their ability to grow and scale. They also were aware that in order to be a technology-driven market leader, innovation would be key to driving the company into the future.

It was clear that their customers not only demanded better service but also desired better technology. When we proposed building a scalable product on Twilio’s flexible platform, the client was confident that HGS was the right partner to provide the digital transformation and the flexible contact solution that they envisioned.

Solution strategy

Consolidate and Standardize

HGS observed that the similar use cases across all contact centers could serve as the building blocks for the transformation. We constructed a roadmap that would consolidate the client’s contact centers and help standardize processes, tools, and technologies. The client was willing to invest in and implement technologies to support automation and deflection, which would both gain efficiencies and improve the customer experience.

Invest in the IVR

The key investment: a fully programmable Twilio Flex IVR that would give the DOT’s customers optimal self-service options and the exact, personal experience they wanted. Since HGS developers were already familiar with Twilio Flex and the tools, we could easily modify channels, routing strategies, and integrations on demand, which allowed us to iterate quickly and deliver new features fast and effectively. We can also continuously build and improve the customer experience as well as give the client the ability to add or change anything at any layer of the stack. We also solved the problem of limited channels and integrations using API-based programmability with a single user interface.

Cross-Train Talent

We then templatized the core solution and add-on components, and we started cross-leveraging agents across programs so that they could offer customers new services that would generate additional revenue. Many of the agents were uptrained from program-specific subject matter experts to a more highly skilled “universal agent” status.

Results

With these improvements, we’ve been able to deflect interaction volume to increase self-service to more than 80%, and we’re driving toward a 99%+ self-service environment.

We’ve also conducted an AI-scale analysis of millions of customer interactions across all channels (voice, SMS, email, and video) to better understand customer needs and preferences.

52M Annual interactions across all channels

600K Calls handled per month (300K+ handled by IVR)

+80% Increase in self-service by deflecting interaction volume

We are a gold-level partner with Twilio, and businesses using the combined innovations of HGS Digital and Twilio benefit from an omnichannel platform, implemented by a managed service partner with deep process and domain expertise. The highly programmable Twilio Flex allows us to easily onboard new agents and integrate into the client’s CRM system, and we can add new features and capabilities as the future requires.