Kaybus Puts Knowledge at PlusOne's Fingertips

Effective call centers require customer service agents to know the brand, products, and language of the company inside out to properly serve customers. With product cycles moving faster than ever, though, agents today can often struggle to stay on top of the most up-to-date company policies and product info, leading to slower resolutions and, potentially, unhappy customers.

To avoid these outcomes, PlusOne Communications, a contact center operator, tapped Kaybus's Knowledge Automation Platform to assemble all the content the company keeps for its clients in one repository, turn it into usable and useful knowledge, and then bring up only the most relevant and up-to-date information to each employee. Now employees are sure they're accessing the right content and don't need to double-check.

This efficient and streamlined knowledge sharing allowed PlusOne to reduce average call times by 25 percent and increase first-call resolutions by 12 percent for the estimated 80,000 to 100,000 calls it fields for clients every day.

PlusOne, based in Akron, Ohio, has saved an estimated $2 million in business expenses since implementing Kaybus about three years ago. "We're able to do a lot more now with fewer people," says Bob Madden, CEO of PlusOne.

"Kaybus has increased our efficiency and lowered the time it takes to resolve customer issues," Madden says. "We're getting people off the phone with the right answers quicker."

Added benefits include a 25 percent improvement in agent productivity. The number of repeat calls by customers is down, and customer satisfaction is constantly improving. "Our goal is to make it so that people don't need to make that phone call, and Kaybus is helping us do that," Madden says.

Prior to deploying Kaybus, PlusOne relied on a manual paper-based, time-consuming process for gathering and delivering information to agents. "Agents had notebooks full of information that had to be segmented out for different topics," Madden recalls.

PlusOne chose Kaybus because the application is able to quickly identify and deliver the right information to the right call center representative, exactly when it is needed, and then continuously measure the results. This helps PlusOne identify when a rep or a group of reps is struggling with certain topics and needs extra help.

Whenever a publisher delivers new content that is specific to their roles, skills, and experience levels, agents are automatically notified by Kaybus; agents can then review the material at any time and refer back to it as needed. They are also able to provide feedback on the content, which goes directly back to the content creator, enabling him to publish additional updates to the knowledge base as needed.

"Kaybus has been incredibly helpful in customizing anything we need," Madden says. "Our knowledge bases can be customized for each client, and that ability to customize the information is a big help."

PlusOne also relies heavily on the Analytics module in Kaybus to measure agents' content consumption. PlusOne managers can quickly identify which agents are reviewing material and how it is affecting their overall performance. In this way, management can see which material is considered effective and which publishers are delivering the most positively reviewed content.

Since new material, such as service bulletins, pricing updates, and promotions, is being published continually, out-of-date content has to be immediately purged from the system. With Kaybus, agents see only current information, and they know exactly where to look for the right information when they're interacting with customers.

"A knowledge base can quickly become very large. Luckily, as we add new articles, we can take down the old ones or set them to automatically expire," Madden says. "With so much information, there can be so many distractions, but Kaybus helps us to manage them."

Kaybus is also helping to reduce training time for new hires. "It saves us a tremendous amount of time up front because we always have the latest and greatest training material available," Madden says.

"To use the tool requires a bit of a culture change, but once you get used to the system, it's very quick and easy to pick up," he adds. 

The Payoff

Since implementing knowledge-sharing software from Kaybus, PlusOne Communications has seen the following results:

• agent productivity increased by 25 percent;
• average call handling time reduced by 25 percent;
• first-call resolution increased by 12 percent; and
• $2 million saved in business expenses.