2024 CUSTOMER Contact Center Technology Award for Boromir – OEX VCC’s Analytical AI Solution 

OEX VCC’s proprietary system designed for analysis, monitoring, and optimization of agents’ work and operations within contact centers received the 2024 CUSTOMER Contact Center Technology Award! 

As a company providing comprehensive contact center services, we develop in-house solutions like Primebot to enhance customer service and optimize internal processes. When VCC couldn’t find a suitable market-ready tool for monitoring agents’ consultations and internal support requests, their New Tech team created Boromir, an AI-based solution designed to optimize operations for top e-commerce projects in Poland.

Boromir has already been recognized for its excellence – it won the “Supporting Technology” category at the Polish Contact Center Awards 2023.

This month, the tool received the 2024 CUSTOMER Contact Center Technology Award. The program honors the best customer service-enhancing technology solutions. TMC, a global integrated media company that helps clients build communities through in-person and digital marketing campaigns, announced the winners of its 19th annual Contact Center Technology Award, presented by its premier publication, CUSTOMER magazine. 

If you don’t know Boromir yet this article is for you. We will explain what Boromir is, how it works, and the results it has brought to our team.

What Is Boromir? – An Overview

Boromir is the VCC’s in-house tool that serves as a platform for overseeing and managing online consultations between agents and internal support, while also providing robust data analysis. It seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and incorporates proprietary ETL tools.

Its functionalities include analyzing the volume of posts on Teams, monitoring question frequency and timing, tracking response times, identifying peak activity periods, assessing agent effectiveness, and analyzing traffic patterns.

Currently, over 550 agents, along with 30+ team leaders and supporting agents, have access to the solution.

Understanding the Need for Building an In-House Analytical Solution

OEX VCC struggled to find an off-the-shelf solution to enhance efficiency and service quality for one of the e-commerce projects for a top e-commerce company in Poland, which encompasses providing customer service for Poland’s largest e-commerce platform.

These included: 

• Insufficient organization of agents’ consultations and inadequate tools for monitoring and analyzing their work hindered efficiency
• Access to fundamental information proved inadequate for promptly and effectively closing tickets
• Analyzing support consultations by agents was time-consuming, requiring manual searches on Teams.

Project Objectives

Developing a solution tailored to VCCs’ requirements to support the team in: 

• Monitoring and analysis of agents’ consultations in the e-commerce project and beyond
• Enhancing customer service by identifying common issues reported by customers and partners
• Implementing customized training, workshops, and user-friendly procedures to improve agent response time and productivity using data
• Accurate estimation and optimization of time and costs related to agent consultations and responses
• Improving quality and managing consultation time better
• Increasing NPS and improving project quality results
• Streamlining workloads for team leaders and agents.

How Does Boromir Work?

The agent asks a question on Teams → the leader responds → Boromir reports.

Boromir enables the generation of real-time data on failures, technical issues, and other factors affecting agents’ productivity.

• Boromir compiles data into clear formats, enabling consistent evaluation of consultation volume and duration based on agents’ skills, contact channels, and peak hours.
• Information, previously spread across 12 Teams channels, is now centralized, prompting agents to ask questions and seek answers from available sources.
• Boromir’s variety of filters enables users to extract information on each agent, team, contact channel, and timeframe.
• Leaders, provided with insights into recurring questions, have created additional training materials and cheat sheets for the agents. Moreover, the initial training materials have been revised and updated.

It is worth noting that, already during the testing phase conducted online, the key challenges encountered by agents were effectively monitored and analyzed. Questions they found difficult to answer were indentified and the materials were optimized.

How Effective IS Boromir? The Project Results

The numbers speak for themselves. Let’s examine the improvements in quality, response time, and consultation time.

• Quality improvement by 10pp since the tool implementation, surpassing the client’s target – currently, 94% positive ratings 
• Reduction of waiting time for the agents’ response by 3 minutes (Q1 of 2023 vs. Q1 of 2022 – a 50% decrease).
• Reduction of consultation time for the agents’ questions by 35%, resulting in financial savings and a project profitability increase, as well as better utilization of the team leaders’ time.
• Reduction of consultation channels from 12 to 9. 

Qualitative Results

The introduction of Boromir has enabled us to generate daily analyses of the performance of the supporting agents and leaders. This has led to improved planning and substantive support, resulting in more efficient consultation schedules. The trainers can now develop workshops and training sessions for agents based on emerging issues and difficulties encountered during consultations.

With insights into agents’ challenges, the team created accessible procedures and a universal tool for easy implementation in future projects. This tool also has potential for external deployment within VCC’s internal client departments.

Additionally, the team introduced more accurate shift scheduling based on the analysis of peak hours, providing the leaders with the necessary data to proactively address potential problems.

To enhance the agents’ performance, the team modified the agent onboarding program and individual developement plans, thereby improving service quality.

The Project Results – 2024 Update

• The response time for the agents has shortened and continues to decrease steadily. Since the implementation of the Q1 2022 tool, response time has decreased from 6.2 minutes to 2.8 minutes in Q1 2024 – a 55% reduction.
• Thanks to the data, VCC allocated over 1500 hours to team training sessions, resulting in significant improvements in quality metrics, efficiency, job satisfaction, and confidence among the agents.
• The team reduced the time for a new employee to achieve the expected quality result by a remarkable 61%, from over 3 months to just under one month after completing training. 

What’s Next? Boromir Implemented in Another Project

After the successful implementation of Boromir in the e-commerce project, it was also deployed in the extensive customer service project – an initiative catering to residential and industrial customers of an energy and heat services provider that focuses on delivering energy solutions on the Polish market.

The problem: 

• The need for a solution that supports agents’ internal substantive consultations
• Difficulties in measuring peak times, reoccurring problems in customer support
• The need to decrease waiting time for customers.

The results: 

• Moving 90% of agents’ consultations to Teams enabled accurate measurement of response time, support requests, common issues, and knowledge gaps
• This transition led to a 30% decrease in handling time annually. 

Boromir: Revolutionizing Customer Service Optimization and Operational Efficiency

Above, we have presented what Boromir is, how it works, and the results VCC has achieved thanks to its implementation within the contact center outsourcing services. Now, let’s take a look at the experiences of individuals who use Boromir in their daily work.

Boromir represents another step towards achieving excellence in customer service. We are extremely pleased that our proprietary technology has received recognition from the Polish Contact Center Awards jury. With real-time analysis of consultations, which is now easier than ever, we can not only identify customer issues more quickly but also develop training and accessible procedures for advisors more effectively. As a result, this significantly improves the quality of service.

Ewelina Kowalczewska, Site Director at VCC

Boromir is a fantastic tool that streamlines the daily tasks of team leaders. I’ve also managed to significantly improve quality. Before implementing Boromir, my team’s quality fluctuated around 84%, but after adopting and working with Boromir, the team’s quality increased to an average of 93.4%. Boromir is a great tool that allows for even better collaboration with the team.

Ryszard Kala, Team Leader

Boromir has made it easier for me to schedule shifts for team leaders and agents. I verified the peak consultation hours and preferred contact channels. With this information, team leaders can plan their work more efficiently. In every location and department (Client and Partner), we’ve managed to implement consultation schedules. Every leader knows when they can plan activities in their team, workshops, and meetings, as well as which hours are allocated for consultations. This division has brought many benefits – improved quality, efficiency of leader hours, and NPS. 

Natalia Lagowska, Project Coordinator

Author: Paulina Chmielewska, Marketing Director at OEX VCC.