Cutting costs and boosting customer service through TCN

The client

With three daily newspapers in Southeast Louisiana in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette – The Times-Picayune, The Advocate and the Acadiana Advocate, respectively, have been informing and entertaining readers for more than 180 years. Winners of five Pulitzer Prizes, their team of nearly 400 employees covers the entire state of Louisiana.

The challenge

The Advocate’s team was facing significant challenges due to relying on an outside provider for internal calls and lacking significant contact center capabilities like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and outbound dialing. This setup led to a high number of dropped calls and a poor subscriber experience that stemmed from the absence of a callback feature in their queue and technological errors during transfer. 

Ultimately, these issues led to numerous customer service complaints, and without adequate vendor support, The Advocate’s internal team’s efficiency and the number of calls they could effectively handle were severely impacted.

The solution

The Advocate was in need of a full-fledged contact center software platform that would assist them in improving their customer service. Their vision included a more user-friendly customer experience by offering features like queued callback and self-serve options. Beyond this, they hoped to be able to handle high call volumes and reduce hold times internally, freeing them from outsourcing. Central to their objectives was also enhancing agent efficiency, ensuring every minute translated into productive work. In their search, they discovered that TCN was the perfect solution.

The results

• Call containment soared from a 45% average to a 70% average because of the success of TCN’s IVR.
• Previously, The Advocate could only take around 100 calls per day with a full staff. Now, internal agents have doubled the number of calls they effectively handle each week.
• The company now experiences virtually no dropped calls, resulting in better customer service and reduced subscriber complaints. In fact, before TCN, The Advocate received at least one subscriber complaint per day and several monthly from the Better Business Bureau – all of those have stopped!

Reducing wait times and lowering costs

TCN’s queued callback feature has been a game-changer for The Advocate, significantly improving their customer experience and operational efficiency. By enforcing a callback option after three minutes of being on hold, it has drastically reduced wait times, lowered cost per call and contributed to an improved containment rate by effectively scaling call volumes – an extreme shift from what they were experiencing with their previous provider.

Improving efficiency one delivery at a time

The Advocate’s positive transformation since switching to TCN continued with delivery management and overall efficiency. Previously, delivery issues were the primary reason a customer called, causing frequent setbacks. Now, with the implementation of automation, these delays are no longer a problem thanks to an optimized IVR flow and improved call containment rates. This adjustment not only streamlined directing and addressing their customers’ most common issues with self-serve features but also allowed The Advocate’s team to make more calls internally, reducing the need to outsource the calls and cutting costs.

These solutions have also dramatically boosted agent efficiency. Rather than routing calls to all available agents, the IVR now intelligently assigns calls only when human intervention is genuinely needed. This ensures agents focus on complex issues IVR can’t resolve, preventing wasted time.

Plus, earlier this year, a snowstorm in Louisiana halted delivery for two days. Thanks to TCN’s dedicated account managers, the stressful situation was handled in a matter of minutes. In fact, despite the high call volumes, The Advocate’s team maintained an 80-90% call containment thanks to TCN’s messaging and notification automation capabilities.

Analytics that save you money

TCN’s Business Intelligence tool helped provide The Adovcate with insight into their contact center operations that they didn’t have before. Previously, agent inefficiencies were costing the company money but went unnoticed. Now, these tools offer a comprehensive, real-time view of key metrics, including incoming call volumes, agent activity and queue management.

These real-time daily reports provided additional insight into staffing levels and how many calls their team could handle. Now, The Advocate can make more data-driven decisions and address inefficiencies before they start costing the company money!