CX Case Study in Focus: Avaya and Canon Financial Services

Canon Financial Services harnesses Avaya technology to enhance CX

4
CX Case Study in Focus Avaya and Canon Financial Services
Contact CentreNews Analysis

Published: January 25, 2022

Rebekah Carter

Implementing the right CX solution in today’s complex landscape is essential to ensuring ongoing success. Today’s customers make decisions on who to work with based on the customer experience they can provide. In the financial services landscape especially, clients need to know they can trust a company to offer simple, effective, and reliable service.

Canon Financial Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canon USA brand, offers lease financing on high-quality Canon products. The mission of the company is to assist all kinds of businesses in accessing the exceptional technology they need through access to convenient financing options. According to Canon Financial Services, amazing customer service is the key to success for their brand.

To continue delivering a memorable experience for modern customers, Canon felt it was important to leverage new technology for clients, including self-service solutions. To achieve this goal, the brand partnered with Avaya, building a powerful tool for IT troubleshooting, self-service and empowered managers.

Implementing New Solutions for Self Service

Every day, the CFS (Canon Financial Services) group handles hundreds of inquiries and calls from dealers and customers related to the leasing of various high-end cameras, copiers, and printers, as well as leading medical equipment. This group stands as a crucial part of the customer-facing community for the Canon brand, responsible for helping to define the business.

According to Senior Director of IT for Canon, Don Bryson, the agents dealing with customer questions and partners on a daily basis deal more directly with customers than any other group. Empowering these professionals to provide an optimized experience is crucial to the organisation’s success. This is why Bryson and his team constantly pursue better experiences for agents and customers alike.

For over a decade, CFS relied on the Avaya team to keep its contact centre on track and compete with the latest tools on the market. The upgrade to the Avaya IX Contact Centre implemented in the wake of the Avaya Experience Portal was particularly crucial for the company. The inclusion of a new interactive voice response system and workforce optimisation tools helped to elevate agent efficiency and customer satisfaction almost immediately.

When this new upgrade appeared, the Canon Financial Services group decided to leverage a new self-service option for customers, so agents had more time to focus on high-value and complex enquiries. To achieve this goal, the team worked with the Avaya Professional Services team to tie crucial data into a new self-service solution and configure an easy-to-navigate interface for customers.

Upgrading Customer Experience for the Digital Age

As the world became increasingly digitized, Canon noticed just how valuable self-service solutions could be. Not only would these offerings provide customers with more of the experiences they were looking for, but it would save agents hundreds of essential manhours too.

Implementing a combination of Avaya IX contact centre technology, Avaya IX Workforce engagement, and Nuance automatic speech recognition tools allowed Canon Financial Services to significantly improve their day-to-day operations. Day or night, customers could now take care of all kinds of needs, from balance inquiries to insights into the time remaining on their lease, and more. CFS even allowed users to make payments without speaking to an agent.

According to Leori Kea, the Senior Manager of IT Support, Avaya helped the CFS team to make the most of their existing technology while creating new solutions. Customers could suddenly make payments and access help however they liked.

The Nuance speech-enabled Avaya Experience Portal significantly reduced the pressure on agents after implementation too. CFS said year-over-year, the contact centre saw doubling in its “golden metric”, or the percentage of fully self-serviced inquiries managed by the team.

Kea noted every one of the pages now handled through self-service solutions would have demanded several minutes of both customer and agent time. This frees professionals to focus their attention on more complex and sophisticated customer needs. If a caller needs an agent, they can also easily request a transfer to a human support provider.

When a customer requests to be transferred to an agent, the professional will receive all the contextual information they need to understand what has happened for the customer until that moment.

Saving Time and Impressing Customers

Easier call recording solutions now allow CFS to capture more call centre interactions automatically, without the need for human intervention or attention. Managers can play recordings back for performance and training reviews, and agents can log in and listen to calls to evaluate their performance when they want to improve on their own.

Trouble-free recording and playback opportunities also lessen the day-t-day worries of the IT team. According to Kea, the low-maintenance nature and stability of the Avaya system make the IT care and maintenance costs as low as possible, which was essential when the company was choosing the right system to implement.

Kea also highlights the value of having insights into system performance, thanks to a dashboard that demonstrates the status of SIP trunking and redundant systems. Kea and the team aren’t the only people who find the solutions intuitive either. The business partners surrounding Canon Financial Services also consider the Avaya technology to be a great investment.

The upgraded CX solution included the implementation of Avaya IX for Workforce Management and Engagement, which paved the way for web-based reporting, and improved managerial opportunities. Supervisors were able to see all key metrics in one place, including call volume, average hold times, abandonment rates and more. With the extensive reporting technology, CFS has watched its performance indicators improve steadily over time, from average hold time to abandonment rates.

What’s Next for CFS?

Kea anticipates tackling a wider range of opportunities and challenges with the help of Avaya going forward. The company has already started planning a new wave of contact centre improvements in the area of omnichannel, personalisation and AI initiatives to continue enhancing customer and agent experiences on a significant level.

Avaya, according to CFS, has demonstrated they have the expertise, specialist services, and products required to help the company reach its CX goals.

 

 

Digital TransformationFinanceFinancial Services
Featured

Share This Post