Director of Customer Support Bruce Wagner is no stranger to workforce management (WFM) tools. Prior to joining Wyze, where he leads a team of 298 agents across in-house and outsourced teams, he’d worked with tools like Calabrio and NICE IEX.
But knowing the challenges he was facing with managing his internal team and several business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, Bruce knew these tools would fall short in delivering essential information like actual average handle time (AHT) and channel-specific data. He also knew firsthand how difficult they are to set up, and how slow they’d be to provide value.
Initially, Bruce and his team turned to Zendesk WFM. But three months in, it became clear that Zendesk WFM would not be able to provide the granularity required for assessing agent performance and productivity. Phone and chat tickets were lumped together in one view, with no way of parsing by channel and queue.
As such, the search for a WFM tool that offered comprehensive functionality — including agent performance and productivity insights by channel, team, queue, and BPO — resumed. It was shortly after this that the team discovered Assembled.
Quickly won over by Assembled’s intuitive user interface and comprehensive dashboard of metrics, Bruce and his team decided to move forward. After a seamless implementation process and just under 24 hours, Assembled was up and running.
As a result, Wyze has reduced its annual BPO management costs by $1.2 million annually — a 10× ROI from Assembled's contract value.
"Assembled was a life-changer for us. It helped us see who are top-performing agents are, as well as who needed help in-house and across our BPOs. Assembled is a grown-up tool that actually enables us to do contact center management." - Bruce Wagner, Director of Support at Wyze
A lack of visibility hindered effective team management
Prior to implementing Assembled, Bruce was pretty much in the dark when it came to agent productivity. This, along with communication and coordination challenges, made it hard to meet service level agreements and maintain prompt first response times.
It also didn’t help that Wyze's contact platform at the time lacked live reporting, making it difficult to monitor agent activities. The team had no way to track adherence, available time, productive time, and other crucial metrics.
"Before Assembled, managing our team was incredibly cumbersome. Without visibility, you may have only 5 people taking calls when you should have 20. It becomes a cumbersome management process, with a lot of messaging back and forth. We lost a lot of productivity as a result."
Bruce Wagner, Director of Customer Support at Wyze
A fragmented approach to managing multiple BPOs
When Bruce first joined Wyze, BPOs were managed through spreadsheets and various disconnected workforce management (WFM) tools. This fragmented approach resulted in data silos across different BPOs, making it nearly impossible for Bruce and his team to accurately track productivity targets and confidently reconcile billing.
Moreover, assessing BPO performance for specific tasks (such as back-office work or phone support) and optimizing volume allocation proved to be unattainable without a unified data source.
With Assembled, the Wyze team seamlessly onboarded multiple BPOs, saving time and money by eliminating the need to transfer schedules and staffing requirements between platforms. Vendor managers at each BPO can now focus on higher-value activities instead of exporting and mapping schedules. Assembled's real-time dashboard has become a vital tool for all agents, enabling data-driven decisions in their daily routines.
"We put Assembled's realtime dashboard on every TV screen across our BPO call centers and our in-house support team. When there are a lot of calls in the queue, agents have the visibility to know when times are busiest. Agents also know the best time to take a lunch break."
Bruce Wagner, Director of Support at Wyze
Initially budgeted $8.2M for BPO fees, Bruce's team utilized Assembled's visibility and performance management to determine the exact number of agents needed at each BPO site. As previously stated, this has resulted in $1.2 million in annual cost savings.
Furthermore, Assembled's vendor management feature offers a clear view of each BPO's performance, enabling the Wyze team to allocate volume intelligently based on each BPO's strengths.
Assembled also allows Wyze to pay for productive time only, giving Bruce the confidence and accountability to reconcile billing with their BPOs based on productive hours. Weekly reports provide insight into actual productive hours delivered per BPO site. Bruce and his BPO managers can even analyze how many cases their BPOs are closing per productive hour and compare actualized hours to paid hours.
This has given the Wyze team full confidence in billing reconciliation with their BPOs — a remarkable achievement they previously lacked.
A mission to make smart home technology accessible
Wyze Labs, a Seattle-based company, is dedicated to making smart home technology accessible to everyone. By prioritizing customer feedback, Wyze creates highly desired products and features at unbeatable prices.
Emphasizing this commitment, the phrase "Be friends with our users" adorns the company’s office walls. Wyze's customer support organization is integral to fulfilling this promise and putting customers first, and Assembled is proud to partner with Bruce and his team.
