The Cloud Is Where Radial Wants to Be

Radial offers e-commerce fulfillment solutions, including software and services for advanced order management, payment, fraud management, supply chain, and customer care. It operates 33 fulfillment centers in North America and Europe and three customer care centers.

The company, which was formerly known as eBay enterprise, was acquired by Belgian Post Group (bpost) in 2017 for $820 million.

From its U.S. headquarters in King of Prussia, Pa., Radial had reached an inflection point with its legacy on-premises workforce management and quality assurance solutions. Those solutions, which were provided by Verint, were working well for the company but needed to be upgraded, according to Robin Gomez, its director of customer care innovation.

Initially, Radial executives leaned toward upgrading the on-premises solutions, but there was also the option to move those solutions to the cloud. While migrating to the cloud with Verint would mean some challenges, it also presented many opportunities.

For one, upgrading the legacy solutions would have taken much longer and been more cumbersome. And by migrating to the cloud, future updates would be automatic, could be installed quickly, and wouldn’t require additional spending, and Radial would be able to add new users, when necessary, with much less hassle.

So, not surprisingly, Radial executives made the decision to move their operations to the cloud. Last fall, the company implemented the cloud versions of Verint Workforce Management with Performance Workflows. All Radial’s domestic agents work remotely, and the company also operates two customer care locations outside of the United States. All agents are on the Verint system.

The ability to add new staff was particularly critical, according to Gomez, because the conversion was occurring just before last year’s busy holiday shopping season, an essential time for any organization in the fulfillment business.

The move to the cloud with Verint was a resounding success, according to Gomez and Ben Stoltzman, Radial’s director of workforce management.

Quality assurance, which used to be done via manual call sampling two times a week, now involves 100 percent of calls, giving managers a much larger flow of information upon which to base their coaching and training decisions.

Verint’s algorithm uses forecast demand, staffing levels, and customer targets to balance employee flexibility with the needs of the business.

Contact center agents have also benefitted directly, according to Stoltzman. The new cloud-based technology has given agents improved visibility and empowerment. Agents now know where they stand and how they compare to peers through reporting that provides agent rankings over the past eight weeks, as well as talk time, call time, post-call work, and other information.

Agents can also self-manage their schedules, swap shifts, and bid for available shifts more easily now. Agents can adjust their shifts in real time without lengthy and restrictive approval processes.

At Radial, shift bidding has become 80 percent easier now that this is accomplished via the cloud, according to Gomez and Stoltzman. With the Verint mobile app, agents can also now do schedule swaps from home.

In general, so far, because of the changes, agent schedule adherence has improved 5 percent.

High agent turnover, one of the most significant costs to any contact center; impacts recruitment, training, team leader attention, and customers who have to rely on agents that are still coming up to speed. But offering shift flexibility through Verint’s platform has been shown to reduce attrition by as much as 30 percent for most operations.

The more agents self-manage, the less supervisors need to spend time doing so and can instead devote time to newer agents or those who need more coaching.

Agents could also avail themselves of the continual learning available through training in a virtual environment, which is particularly important for those in the remote work environment. 

The Payoff

Since implementing Verint's cloud-based Workforce Management with Performance Workflows, Radial has seen the following results:

• average call handling time has improved by 9 percent;
• the shift bidding process has improved by 80 percent; and
• schedule adherence has improved by 5 percent.