Crafting Tomorrow’s Federal Contact Centers

Ryan Haywood: Hello everyone and welcome back to the another episode of Highlight Cast. I’m Ryan Haywood, the director of Corporate Portfolio Development for highlight. In this episode, we’re gonna explore the world of contact center operations within the federal sector and discuss the transformative role. AI is set to play inside constituent facing operations.

In the future, we’ll also cover how to run an efficient, modern. Contact center, including ways to improve efficiency, streamline processes, and deliver exceptional services. Also, we’ll look at how Navi Connect, powered by AWS provided by our partner, pioneer CX is helping contact centers provide the best possible experience for stakeholders.[00:01:00]

Joining us today is Kerry Trahan from Pioneer CX, one of our strategic partners, and Ryan McCarthy , from highlight who supports our SBA IT services contract. Welcome to the show.

And as we’ve been discussing internally and in conjunction with our partners at Pioneer, there much is happening within the contact center modernization world, specifically within federal government agencies following the start of the new Trump administration.

So we want to explore some of the trends that we’re seeing. Around operational and technological efficiencies. So I do wanna start with a more general question Kerry and have you weigh in on just some of the key performance indicators that we’re seeing and modern contact centers and what the view is on really establishing customer satisfaction from a scoring perspective?

Kerry Trahan: I know it’s changed with some of the new tools and [00:02:00] obviously channels that we’re seeing deployed in environments. Sure, yeah, I appreciate that. And again, we really value the partnership that Pioneer CX has with highlight. So I’m happy to be here and talk about these things today. Thanks for the chance. Key metrics, I would say first call resolution, right? It’s great when you can service a citizen’s need. The first time they get in contact with you and they don’t have to con call back. Average handle time, right? That you don’t want the citizen to feel rushed through the transaction, but at the same time, you want to use your CSR resources efficiently. Csat of course, is a great one. Call abandonment rates. Maybe you’ve got some some accessibility challenges that you need to deal with. I would say two others are a SA. No. Nobody wants to wait on hold for a long time. So are you staffing your center commensurate with the volume of calls that you’re getting so that your a SA can be acceptable levels?

It’s not gonna be zero, [00:03:00] shouldn’t be 15 minutes. And lastly one that we look at a lot is IVR containment rates. So the more we can enable a citizen to self-serve within the IVR. Then the better the experience is gonna be for that citizen, unless they really prefer the human agent channel. But IVR containment rate is one that we look at a lot also. ’cause there’s ways you can use that to improve self-service. That’s great, Kerry, thank you. And Ryan, in thinking about how we track these metrics most prominently supported Amazon Connect and our SBA environment, and we’ve done some work to really enhance their ability to assess the successes and failures within the help desk environment.

Ryan Haywood: Can you speak to that, some of the work that your team’s been doing to really help us streamline reporting and really provide the customer with those necessary views specifically around KPIs and some of the other, metrical analysis?[00:04:00]

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, definitely. So when we first started up, we were able to get the Amazon connectedness online and immediately we were able to start developing these metric reports and providing real time information to the client. And as it went on to develop over time, we were able to fine tune what we were looking for and the different metrics we wanted to report on. And ultimately the. Customizable for the most part. So it’s relatively simple to go in there and change what you need to change to, to get the reports you need and the specific metrics you wanna focus on. And we really were able to get in there quickly and customize our reports and get them to start sending out automatically and deliver to the client. And of course there was always there, there was always gonna be some. Fine tuning and requesting changes to any specific reporting.

But for the most part, those changes are relatively straightforward. It’s you just go in change a couple settings, click a [00:05:00] couple buttons, and then your your new metrics are being sent out and developed on a daily basis. So that’s, it’s really a fluent platform and very yeah, it’s really solid.

Ryan Haywood: Excellent. Thank you. And I know with the new found need to support doge oversight and the we’ve really been front and center in helping the customer understand where they’re most successful. Where there may need to be some refinements to some of the internal methodology supporting end users. And with that, Kerry, I was gonna have you, speak to us a little more about Navi Connect broadly. Again, I know we probably need to define it and what that platform means in terms of supporting customers through traditional channels, but also the new channels that we’re seeing erupt in the government agency landscape, which is typically behind the commercial arena, right? In terms of adopting new customer centric, tools and, AI [00:06:00] infused advancements to support an operation. But would love to have you talk about that.

Kerry Trahan: Sure. Thank you. We provide turnkey, omnichannel contact centers solutions for our clients. And so it’s not all just about technology. Technology’s very important and great. Technology is critical. But Navi Connects allows us to select a technology platform and then reinforce that platform with management processes that have been honed over decades with recruiting, staffing, and training procedures that have been, that have won awards for several years in a row now. And so we see the Navi connects as the. As the curated set of technologies and management processes and staffing and recruiting processes really allow us to identify a contact center solution for a client, design it, and then implement it in a highly effective manner. And [00:07:00] while taking into account existing training and secure and SOPs that the client already has and wants to retain. It allows us to implement. You were mentioning some of the more forward looking technologies that have really made a lot of advances in the last six months. Ai. And so leveraging a tool set like Amazon Connect gives us access to a lot of AI tools that can be used as part of the Navi Connect solution.

So it’s it’s flexible, but it is. Leveraging together the best practices that we’ve learned as operators over years along with the best technology that’s coming to the forefront today. Excellent. And I, and Kerry, you touched on something. I think that’s vitally important, right? We cannot forget the human element in contact centers.

Ryan Haywood: I think everyone’s enamored with what’s happening within the technology arena and with the government’s new kind of stringent focus on. Deploying [00:08:00] AI wherever feasible to support streamlining interactions of in all forms. But I, can you speak to some of the challenges that we’re seeing today specifically around customer service delivery through actual agents, and not just technology, because technology’s an important part of it, right? But as you mentioned, you’re really training and equipping. Agents to provide meaningful support to customers. And we’re doing that obviously through our alliance. But more broadly, each of us is really dedicated to that individually as well. So I know that we tend to think of challenges more along the lines of resolving problems through technology.

But there’s also that, that human component. And I wanna spend a few minutes looking at that because I think it’s gonna continue to be. A prominent aspect of what we see in contact centers and can always be resolved through obviously just deploying new and [00:09:00] innovative technology modules to, to streamline operations.

Kerry Trahan: Yeah. That’s exactly right. Ryan and I, when I think of this, I think of it in two ways, right? One is, there is, there are some things that can be done with. With a bot and some people who are very comfortable interacting with a bot, there’s other types of transactions that maybe are better done with a human agent or more, more empathically done with a human agent.

And likewise, there are some people who just aren’t gonna be comfortable doing their transactions just with a bot and want to talk to a, to an actual human agent. Similarly, you can have AI and technology as front of house solutions where they’re customer facing and they’re delivering service to the caller. But you can also use AI solutions in the back of the house where they’re helping the agent by listening in on the call at the same time that it is going on [00:10:00] and whispering into the agents here what the proper answer is. And that’s important because that helps you to give the callers a consistent answer.

Regardless of which agent they talk to and how long the agent’s been working on that particular program. So just to recap, sometimes it’s a caller preference. Do they wanna talk to a human or do they, are they comfortable working with a bot? Sometimes it’s a message issue. Is this message appropriate to be delivered by a bot, or is it really more appropriate to deliver it with a human?

And then there’s the. Are you gonna make your bots color facing, or are you going to use them as a force multiplier to enable your agents to be more effective? Great. Thank you, Kara. Yeah, and it’s, I think it’s always that whole concept of channel of choice, right? That we’re trying to promote with our customers because you cannot forego meeting people where they are and ensuring that they can obtain support where they’re most comfortable.

Ryan Haywood: And Ryan, to that end, I know we’ve touched on some of the advancements within. The IT [00:11:00] services center at SBA, but what are some of the trends that you’re seeing amongst the end user population that we’re supporting there, that you all are trying to care for? And anything that we have on the horizon that you think is beneficial to share in terms of best practices and just general advancements within that landscape?

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, generally I think we’ve had a pretty solid startup. For the most part. It’s been about a year or so now. We’ve got everything stood up and all the reporting going out consistently in terms of any improvements. We were able to early on, develop a live realtime dashboard that displayed these metrics in real time. This assisted the other agents as well as management and kind of seeing what was really happening at any moment. That was one of the many enhancements we early on. Providing, like I said, the agents and the management a better kind of view of what was going on. And [00:12:00] aside from that, we initially, we had some conversation about possibly implementing some chat bots and then self-service assistance.

I’m not really sure whether there’s effort efforts ever ended up, but we were looking. Looking into those initially, and then on the horizon we just continue to develop excellent service and we’re seeing really solid numbers across the board as we continue to hit our stride into this second year of the contract.

Ryan Haywood: Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. And so we talked about, I think, everything that’s happening within the broader marketplace. But I did wanna spend Kerry just a few minutes because, we talk about this revitalized view on seeing more commercially oriented best practices and trends being adopted within the federal landscape. And I think sometimes we blur the lines in terms of understanding what that actually means. Can you describe, ’cause I know your background is [00:13:00] multifaceted some of the key differences between federal and commercial contact centers in today’s world. And this could be across, the board, right?

We’re not just talking about technology, but just operationally, because I still think that there are some limitations, right? To what we can deliver in a traditional federal. Citizen facing contact center versus what, our commercial counterparts can deliver within a private organization’s customer service function.

Kerry Trahan: Sure. First of all, security is important regardless of whether it’s a commercial contact center or a federal contact center. But people expect and rightfully they expect their federal government. To have extremely high levels of security. So I would say the stringent regulatory and security frameworks associated with associated with government work are a big difference between between a commercial solution and a government [00:14:00] solution. And, we recognize that because we have a very forward looking compliance posture based in NIST 861 and a very well evolved lines of defense. Framework for our compliance programs. So that’s one area. I think another area, Ryan is surge, right? Federal centers really have to manage enormous surge during crisis situations.

And I know highlight did that when you guys deployed 306 3,600 people for SBA programs during the pandemic. We’ve done it at fema. A as a subcontractor, and in fact, we’re getting ready right now to handle tremendous surge as a storm season gets ready to start here in August.

Again, citizens have, and rightfully have an expectation that government’s gonna be there for them when they need it. It’s gonna be there quickly when they need it, and it’s gonna be there securely when they need it. And maybe I don’t have all the same expectations of an [00:15:00] airline or a retail vendor.

Ryan Haywood: Absolutely. Yeah. I’m, and I appreciate that and I think that you really defined for us, what the differences are. And I think that what we share in terms of our partnership vision is this elevated view of hiring, training, and retaining talent that really supersedes all those boundaries because we’re really looking for the most empathetic and qualified people.

To to serve our end customers. And so that in and of itself is a foundational building block for everything that we do, aside from what we’re, providing from a technological perspective. And I think that’s just important as we, continue to see an evolution of not only ai, but just some of the new.

Standards within people management inside of the contact center industry. I do wanna spend a little more time Kerry and Ryan [00:16:00] talking about emerging trends because I think, again, that goes beyond ai. And Kerry, one of the topics I know you and I have been discussing quite often as we prepare for some upcoming procurements is really.

Just the emerging trends, right? Everyone’s talking about ai, but what are some of the other trends that we’re seeing within the contact center sphere that are gonna impact the way, not only highlight Pioneer delivers in the future, but really everyone in this in this particular industry, subsegment.

Kerry Trahan: Yeah. I’ll go first Ryan, and then let you chime in as well. But I think one of the, one of the trends that has transformed delivering contact centers over the past three or five years is the readily available cloud-based scalability. That that comes to play, it helps to keep costs down for the client and for the program.

It [00:17:00] enables you to scale rapidly and, back in the dark ages, right? We used to say, you don’t want to build the church for Easter Sunday but now the church can be any size you needed to be at any moment that you needed to be that size. So I think that coupled with the advancements in the FedRAMP program over the last few years, so that.

As a provider I can focus again, we said earlier, technology is important, but the human element is important too. And the human elgen element is much more difficult to manage and train and retain. And I can spend more of my focus on the human element because I know there are multiple places I can go.

Azure, Google Cloud, AWS Nice and many others. There’s multiple places I can go to. Find the right technical solution and I can spin it up quickly and I can roll it out effectively and give lots of people access to it easily. And that’s tremendous. That’s that coupled with what we’re going to [00:18:00] start to see in Agentic AI and other AI solutions make this a really exciting time to be doing what we do.

Ryan Haywood: Yeah. Ryan, anything you’d like to add just in terms of what we’re seeing at SBA and what the team’s planning for?

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, for sure. I definitely piggyback off of what Kerry was saying just generally the customizability, the availability of these pla these cloud platforms, they’re incredibly solid.

There’s really no downtime any. Necessary changes you need to make from a development perspective are very straightforward to implement. Like I said before, just going in, changing a setting here and there and then changing any other subsequent system you have and making sure everything kind of lines up.

And we’re seeing it constantly on the SBA side too. Oftentimes management will reach out to us and ask, Hey, we need to add this specific metric or. We need to change the format of how this is delivered. And for the most part it’s very it’s very straightforward. Mostly just go [00:19:00] in to, of course, you need to mostly know what you’re doing and have a general understanding of the system.

For the most part, it’s significantly easier to make sure things are customizable and just at the ready whenever you need. And that wasn’t how it used to be. It’s very much changed in the past couple years. The remote aspect as well has changed a lot of things. Everything is remote.

Everything is just a click away internet connection away, and that really allows us to deliver a lot better and a lot of, a lot better. Speed to outcomes is how I would put. It.

Ryan Haywood: Yeah. And I appreciate you acknowledging Ryan, that, we’re supporting, individuals in a hybrid environment, right?

Both in office and remote. And that’s gonna continue to be the trend. And we all know that, from a contact center perspective, the likelihood that we’re gonna see. Return to, a hundred percent brick and mortar in-house operations is unlikely, Kerry. But I know we’re looking at all of the [00:20:00] happenings within individual states in terms of how remote employees are supported by government and also what each government is looking for to keep.

Those workforces active, so I’d like to spend a few minutes just talking about that. And we, both organizations obviously have an extensive remote workforce and, we’re obviously maintaining those relationships, so we’re equipping, cSRs and obviously management personnel to work from home.

You don’t have the traditional brick and mortar operational constructs to contend with. But Kerry, what do you see, if anything happening within the near term as far as really strengthening at home capabilities? Because I know there was a lot of reticence early on to allow people to work from home, but now it’s, table stakes as far as operational delivery is concerned, but I know that with all of the evolutionary cycles, there’s gonna be more happening to, I think, improve some of those experiences and [00:21:00] make it easier to obviously reach individuals and more remote locations.

Kerry Trahan: Sure.

Look at this this webcast that we’re doing right now, right? We’re not all in the same location. We’ve all gotten very good at being able to collaborate and work together virtually through, through things like teams et cetera. And what we have found is that driven by the pandemic and the need to work remotely.

What we have found is agents can be just as productive given some of the cloud-based tools that Ryan was talking about a few minutes ago. Agents can be just as productive working remotely as they can, working in a center. It’s not for everybody, not every agent. Works out, but that happens in a brick and mortar facility as well.

But the thing that really makes that a successful experience are things like virtual training where, you know our training team are experts in how adults learn in adult learning, how adults learn. And they are able [00:22:00] to have. Effective training classes even though most, if not all of the trainees are participating virtually.

We leverage that same technology. Then once the agent is actually handling calls, because their supervisor is always available to them whether it’s through a chat or whether it’s through a teams call, their supervisor’s always available to in person, help out that agent with a call. And the cloud-based tools that we’re talking about.

All come with consoles that allow our supervisors and our managers to monitor agent’s performance in real time. Make sure they’re being productive. Are they handling calls? Are they in an active state? It may be. It’s as effective, if not, maybe more effective than trying to in the old days when you’re trying to manage them all on the floor.

Ryan Haywood: And you can only be in so many places at once. So I’ll leave it there. [00:23:00] Thank you Kerry. And Ryan, anything you wanna add? Just about some of the advancements we’ve seen over time supporting the, SBA ecosystem, which I know has in some ways retracted, given some of the recent cuts. But there was a time, we had 95 plus sites that we, had exposure to and obviously a workforce that spread out between, Washington, dc, Denver, Colorado and other locations. I dunno if there’s any think you wanna add personally or just from within the contract related to remote workforce support and what that’s meant.

Ryan McCarthy: Yeah, from the SBA side there the remote aspect delivery is excellent in my opinion. It’s always you’re always able to reach out and get support for anything. And then even after hours as well, sometimes you need escalation and you need assistance from somebody who might not always be available, but you can at least reach out and they might be able to get you back.

Like an hour [00:24:00] later or so. And that’s just, it just improves outcome aside from when it used to be you’d have to wait till the next day. So there, there is this degree of very valuable speed there. And that’s available now due to this overall remote work aspect. And that’s what I’ve seen across SBA.

Ryan Haywood: Excellent. Yeah. A lot to think about as we re watch our government counterparts return to the office, and we continue to support citizens and end users from different locations. In thinking about the future I wanna ask both of you. If you were able to sit down with the all of the agency leaders, what recommendations or advice would you offer them as they’re looking to explore, the infusion of additional AI capabilities into their environments, or just simple process improvements. Which we’ve talked a lot about today because it’s not always about, investing in some state-of-the-art [00:25:00] technology platform. Sometimes it’s just about reconfiguring your training and operational protocols to optimize performance. But what would recommend to them as they’re thinking about what the transition and buy-in aspects of those look like?

Kerry Trahan: Yeah. I thank you, Ryan. I I would say, and this is old, but it still holds true. Begin with the end in mind, right? Start with a clear vision of the citizen experience that you want to deliver. The old days are gone when you bought the IVR from this provider and the telephone lines from that provider and the CRM system from this provider, and then the labor from this provider, right? That all comes together now. So start, instead of worrying about assembling the right puzzle, start with the vision of what you want the citizen experience to be or the employee experience to be. And then build it. On a scalable cloud platform because it’s gonna maximize the value for you. It’ll be big when you need it to be big and it’ll be small when you need it [00:26:00] to be small. Deploy user-centered solutions ’cause they’re gonna build trust, with your and as you said earlier, Ryan, meet your.

Meet your constituent where they are. And then lastly, I would say if the end goal is to provide as much self-service and automation as possible build the clin structure in a way that I. Allows transactions to move from being human delivered to being automation delivered without penalizing the service provider along the way and allows the agency to then pay a lower price for an automated transaction. Because you’ve properly structured the clean structure in a way that enables transactions to flow between being human delivered and being automation delivered. That’s what I would say. Great. Yeah. And we always wanna be mindful of cost sensitivity, right? Kerry? We know that’s not going away despite anything that may be happening on the technology advancement front.

Ryan Haywood: But Ryan, anything you want to add [00:27:00] there?

Ryan McCarthy: For sure in, in terms of AI implementation across the agencies. Some just a perspective I would provide is that oftentimes users do not enjoy interacting with AI agents. A majority of the time they will bypass anything and just request an agent because they don’t wanna deal with it, and they’re not really interested in working with AI agents just yet.

And I think with that being said, it will be a definitely a slower rollout. I don’t I feel like a lot of times there’s, just, since the hype of AI has started, there is this idea that, okay, let’s just put it right here. Instead of a slow, slower rollout in a more thoughtful way to implement the tool instead of just like throwing it out there and hoping for the best.

I, I definitely think there is a certain degree of just reservation you need to have in terms of setting expectations, like Kerry said. I think additionally, I think it would be more [00:28:00] useful to create it as a side loaded tool that will assist. And enhance the current agent workflows instead of trying to just all out in place.

I think it’s more of an assistance tool rather than a complete replacement. So that’s just what I would add there.

Ryan Haywood: Yes, and I wholeheartedly agree with you, Ryan, and I think, again, we cannot forget the human element as we’ve been talking about throughout this podcast, because I know as a team we’re extremely focused on making sure that we can provide that.

Personalized and obviously live support and not just rely upon technology to to resolve incidents and to support interactions. This has been wonderful. Kerry, I know you see me very often these a pleasure. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah. Not as mu much of a a welcome surprise.

But Ryan, thank you for joining us and providing your direct on the ground insights supporting one of our key customers, SBA. And obviously we’re [00:29:00] very excited about the evolving nature of the highlight pioneer partnership, which brings, over a half a century of success supporting federal and state government contact centers.

Combining our capabilities and obviously unique understanding of the marketplace to really drive next generation citizen facing support now and in the future. Again, I appreciate you all joining me, and thanks for those of you listening in to highlight cast. Please keep up to date with everything that we’re doing on LinkedIn and on our website, highlight tech.com.

Tune in for our next episode. Thanks and see you then. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the hosts and do not necessarily reflect, highlight technologies and or any agency of the US government.