Self-Service is ‘Golden’ at Canon Financial Services

Contact Center Doubles Its Golden Metric— Inquiries Fully Served

Every day, Canon Financial Services (CFS) fields hundreds of inquiries from customers and dealers related to leasing its copiers, printers, high-end cameras and medical equipment. For many, it’s their primary impression of CFS.

“Our agents are the face of the business,” explained Don Bryson, Sr. Director, IT. “More than anyone, they deal directly with our customers. Optimizing that experience is critical.”

That’s why Bryson and his team relentlessly pursue an ever-better experience for customers and agents.

Avaya IX: An ‘Overwhelming Success’

For nearly a decade, CFS has relied on Avaya to keep its contact center moving forward. However, the most recent upgrade to Avaya IX™ Contact Center took its productivity to another level. Additions such as Avaya Experience Portal—an interactive voice response (IVR) system—and workforce optimization substantially elevated both agent efficiency and customer convenience.

“Our goal was to provide a self-service option for customers, allowing our agents to focus on higher-value inquiries,” said Michael Leroi Kea, Sr. Manager, IT Support. “Avaya helped us tie into our data and configure an easy-to-navigate interactive voice response (IVR) menu for customers.”

Day or night, customers can take care of needs such as balance inquiries, time remaining on a lease, or payments without ever having to speak to an agent.

“Customers can pay at midnight or whenever they want to—and they do!” Kea said. “That alleviates the call center rushes we used to get after invoicing runs. Because of our Nuance speech-enabled Avaya Experience Portal, we’ve seen a marked and measurable impact in the demand on agents over the past year. It’s been an overwhelming success.”

Year-over-year, the contact center has seen a doubling in its “golden metric,” or the percentage of fully self-serviced inquiries. In that time, the self-service payment function has been heavily utilized by customers.

“Every one of those payments would have required several minutes of an agent’s and customer’s time,” Kea said. “That frees them to focus their attention on more sophisticated and complex customer needs.”

If a caller needs an agent, they can easily transfer to one, and the screen populates all the information the agent needs to understand where the customer is coming from.

Saving Time with More Intuitive Use

Easier call recording now enables CFS to capture every call center interaction automatically, without agent intervention or attention.

Managers can play back recordings for training and performance reviews. And agents can even log in and listen to their calls to evaluate their own performance. Such trouble-free recording and playback frees up time in the IT team’s schedule.

"The stability and low-maintenance profile of the Avaya system make the IT care and maintenance costs very low, which was a key requirement," said Kea.

Kea also appreciates insight into system performance with a view into the status of redundant systems and SIP trunking.

Kea and the team aren’t the only ones who find the solutions intuitive. “From the highest to lowest levels, we’re getting kudos from our business partners that Avaya is easy to use,” Kea said.

Serving Customers—on Their Terms

The upgrade included Avaya IX™ Workforce Engagement, which unlocked capabilities such as more granular, web-based reporting. Supervisors see all their key metrics in one place, including call volumes, average hold times, abandonment rates and more, empowering them to identify training and staffing opportunities.

With reporting, they have watched their key performance indicators steadily improve:

• Average hold time

• Abandonment rates

• CSAT

Looking ahead, Kea anticipates tackling more opportunities and challenges with Avaya’s help.

“We have already started planning our next wave of contact center improvements in the area of personalization, omnichannel, and AI to continue to enhance our customers and agent experiences,” Kea added. “Avaya has demonstrated they have the products and the expertise to get us to the next level.