Reducing training time from 21 days to 9 | Phil Bennett (Call Center Technology Director at Empire Today)

In The Future of Voice AI series of interviews, I ask three questions to my guests:

- What problems do you currently see in Enterprise Voice AI?
- How does your company solve these problems?
- What solutions do you envision in the next 5 years?

This episode’s guest is Phil Bennett of Empire Today.

Passionate about service, Philip Bennett has built on that throughout his career. Beginning in wholesale sales, he used service to distinguish himself from the competition, successfully handling a sales route in the New England area for 10 years.

In 2002, he became Executive Vice President of Customer Service at optionsXpress, a boutique online brokerage firm specializing in derivative trading, where he was an early adopter and pioneer of Chat technology. Named the Best Online Broker 4 years in a row by Barron’s magazine, optionsXpress was sold to Charles Schwab in 2011.

In early 2015 Phil joined Insureon as VP of Customer Experience to take over an overwhelmed phone team. Over 16 months, he transitioned the firm to the cloud, added an entirely new business unit, lowered call abandon rates from 17% to below 2% and reduced the FTE cost by 16%.

In May of 2016 he joined Empire-Today with a focus on finding new hardware, software and partners for the firm which will improve the experience of their customers, both internal and external.

Empire Today, also known as Empire Carpet and for its famous 800-588-2300® jingle, has been a leading provider of installed home improvements and home furnishings for 60 years. Empire serves residential and business customers with a wide selection of products for homes, small businesses, organizations, and commercial applications. Empire offers quality name-brand products including carpet, hardwood flooring, laminate flooring, tile, and vinyl flooring. Empire’s customers enjoy shop-at-home convenience or on-site consultations, next-day professional installation on many products, quality products at great prices, and world-class service in about 75 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. With more than 3 million satisfied customers, Empire Today is dedicated to customer satisfaction.

Recap Video

Takeaways

• There is a noticeable shift from phone calls to digital interactions, although phone calls are expected to remain significant.

• The future of call centers involves integrating AI agent assist and bots to handle different aspects of customer service, balancing between automation and human agents.

• AI handles simple tasks, freeing up human agents to manage more complex calls, enhancing their productivity and reducing burnout.

• Early adoption of AI has significantly improved agent consistency, reduced training times, and lowered the competency gap for new agents.

• EmpireToday was an early adopter of Agent Assist technology and they were able to reduce training time from 21 days to 9 for new agents

• It is crucial to ensure a smooth escalation path from AI to human agents to maintain a strong customer experience, especially for complex issues.

• The deployment of AI should focus on providing a seamless and customer-centric experience, ensuring that their issues are resolved by human agents as soon as they’re needed.

• There is a need to balance the deployment of AI and human agents in a way that complements each other and enhances overall service efficiency and effectiveness.