See how partnering with Balto allowed a third-party billing provider to save time and resources while simultaneously creating more confident agents.

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The Challenge

The importance of minimizing manual processes in effectively coaching agents

Like many companies in account management, UGA Finance (UGA), a third-party billing service provider responsible for generating and servicing contracts on behalf of retail sellers, was handling the coaching of its agents through a myriad of manual processes. The all-important search for coachable moments was a tedious process of analyzing a small sample of an agent’s calls and trying to identify trends in customer reactions. Listening and reviewing calls fifteen minutes here and there over the course of a day, then sharing feedback with agents, quickly added up to almost a half-day’s work.

While these manual processes were working well enough to make UGA a frontrunner in the industry, the company knew that there had to be better and more efficient ways to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of its agents.

The Solution

A partnership with Balto’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform proves fruitful

Luckily for UGA, the company had an existing partnership with a provider that had an ideal solution to meet these specific needs. Sean Wheaton, Contact Center Supervisor at UGA, reached out to Balto, an artificial intelligence-driven company already providing its real-time guidance services to UGA. After Sean shared his needs to bring greater efficiency and effectiveness to the call center coaching process, the team at Balto was happy to share with him the ideal solution — Real-Time Coaching.

With Real-Time Coaching, Sean and his team no longer had to wait months for trends to develop to be able to coach their agents to success.

“Real-Time Coaching — it just gives it to you immediately. You don’t have to wait for situations to happen or a consumer to call in and then you find out about something that you didn’t even know had been happening.”‍

Sean Wheaton, Contact Center Supervisor at UGA

Real-Time Coaching uses AI technology to monitor 100% of calls in real-time. The solution allows floor managers to program in “triggers” to alert management in real-time when certain events occur on a call. Once the alert is received, the manager can begin listening to the call and offer real-time suggestions, or at a minimum, be much more up to speed on the details of the situation if the call is escalated.

This not only allows the manager to provide coaching in real-time to help the agent grow, but it also allows the team to work collaboratively to solve the customer’s needs in real-time. This can mean the difference between winning or losing a customer or achieving or missing the required favorable outcome of the call.

Key Results

UGA sees extensive measurable improvements across the board

The results UGA experienced by implementing the solution were immediate, impactful, and a lot more expansive than expected. Some of the benefits the company saw include:

  • Supervisor requests dropped from 50% to 20%
  • 3 hour reduction in call listening per day
  • 50% reduction in ramp time from one month to just two weeks
  • An increase in close rate
  • More opportunity to praise exceptional agents who are outperforming

“Balto has freed up a lot of time for me personally to do certain other reporting tasks and things I need to do regarding our client monitoring, which was very difficult to even just pull off prior because so much time was allocated to just trying to listen to calls and train agents.”

Sean Wheaton, Contact Center Supervisor at UGA

Not only was Sean ecstatic about the newly found free time he could dedicate to other areas of the business, but the real-time and immediateness of Balto proved to be a game changer for agents and company culture as well.

“Balto eliminated the negative association that coaching had with our agents. Now they come into coaching sessions and they have a list of things they want to have a conversation about for improvement versus ‘What did I do wrong now?’”

Sean Wheaton, Contact Center Supervisor at UGA

The Next Step

If you’re interested in seeing how Balto’s Real-Time Coaching may be able to help you better train your team and drive more meaningful results and favorable outcomes, book a demo today.