The Mission
Casella Waste Systems, Inc., headquartered in Rutland, Vermont, is one of the largest recyclers and most experienced fully integrated resource management companies in the Eastern United States. Founded in 1975 as a single truck collection service, Casella has grown its operations to provide solid waste collection and disposal, transfer, recycling, and organics services to more than one million residential, commercial, municipal, institutional, and industrial customers and provides professional resource management services in more than 40 states.
The Challenge
The quality assurance manager at Casella Waste Systems reviews calls from 80 agents, which are spread out between 2 offices and remotely. Their goal is to ensure agents are all speaking the same language and providing information uniformly, as well as setting clear expectations about the services the company provides. In the past, scoring calls was time-consuming, and it was difficult to find coachable moments in the recordings and transcripts, which resulted in spending more time sorting through calls than coaching agents one-on-one.
The Resolution
Automatically scoring agent calls with AI
To measure agent performance at scale, Casella Waste Management uses Invoca. Invoca’s AI automatically scores 100% of phone calls to customer care based on chosen criteria. The quality assurance manager uses AI to ensure that, on every call, the agent:
- Opens with a proper greeting
- Confirms the caller’s information
- Qualifies the caller as a lead
- Sticks to the right scripts to set expectations and describe the service
- Uses good etiquette throughout the call
- Ends the call with a proper closing
The “setting expectations” criteria is one of the most important for the Casella team, since many customers don’t have prior experience with their services. For example, many don’t know that there’s a weight limit for dumpsters, and they need to be conscious of keeping water weight from rain and snow out. With Invoca, the quality assurance manager can ensure that agents are clearly laying out these specifics, so there are no surprises when bills come due. This leads to better experiences and happier customers.
Invoca’s call quality assurance helps us create better customer experiences. We can ensure that our agents are sticking to the right scripts and setting the right expectations with customers. The great thing about Invoca is that we can always tweak our AI scorecards as our needs change and our business evolves.
Anna Olson, quality assurance manager at Casella Waste Systems
Helping customer care managers identify coachable moments
In the past, Casella Waste Systems had difficulty identifying coachable moments in call recordings and transcripts. The quality assurance manager spent hours listening to calls at random, which took away from time they could use to give agents feedback and help them build new skills. Now, with Invoca’s AI, the QA manager can automatically pinpoint when agents fall off their talk tracks or fail to meet scoring criteria. They can then use the call recordings and transcripts as coaching tools to show agents how they can improve next time.
Thanks to Invoca, our customer care team achieved its highest-ever quality assurance score: 91.5%. The platform gives us the ability to quickly identify coachable moments for our agents. We can now do immediate, on-the-spot coaching and give them hands-on feedback about how they can improve their performance. It’s been very powerful for agents to hear their calls and it’s given them the confidence to polish up their skills.
Anna Olson, quality assurance manager at Casella Waste Systems
In addition, Invoca also allows Casella to globally search their call transcripts to locate when customer service issues occur. Invoca also helps them track when callers hang up on agents prematurely due to an unresolved issue. This helps them quickly identify callers who had a negative call experience and follow up with them to resolve the problem and retain their business.
Identifying coachable moments with Invoca Agent Voice ID
Casella Waste Systems also uses Agent Voice ID, Invoca’s AI-powered voice biometric technology. Agent Voice ID analyzes calls and creates the equivalent of a vocal fingerprint that identifies the specific agent speaking on the call. Invoca associates the agent who took the call with their call recording, transcript, and call score for reporting and review.
Prior to Invoca, the team had to look for clues in transcripts to identify which agent was speaking. This was very time-consuming, and with around fifty agents for the team to manage, the process was difficult to scale. Now, with Agent Voice ID, Olson and her team can quickly pinpoint coachable moments for each rep without wasting time sifting through unrelated calls. Agent Voice ID has given Olson 50% in time savings in her agent QA process.
Invoca Agent Voice ID is fantastic. I no longer have to waste time searching for calls during the coaching process. I can easily login, select an agent, and listen to all of their calls in one place. It’s also improved the feedback we’re giving agents — we can identify coachable moments and areas for improvement more quickly than ever before.
Anna Olson, quality assurance manager at Casella Waste Systems
The setup for Agent Voice ID was painless — Olson and team were able to activate the feature quickly and easily.
“Setting up Agent Voice ID was seamless — we had no issues on our end,” said Olson. “Our managers simply entered their agents into the portal and asked them to read from a short script so the AI could get trained on their voice. We were up and running in no time.”
Coaching remote customer care agents
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Casella Waste Systems gave its customer care team more flexible remote and hybrid work options. While the new arrangement had its benefits, it also created challenges for the quality assurance manager. With agents more dispersed, it was difficult to monitor their progress and provide the right coaching they needed to succeed. Invoca helped them overcome these challenges with its automated quality assurance and searchable call recordings and transcriptions.
Invoca was key for helping us adopt a remote work model. The automated QA allows us to monitor our agents’ performance no matter where they’re working, so we can make sure they’re always in line with our standards. The platform also helps us identify their strengths and areas for improvement, so we can give them all the hands-on coaching they need.
Anna Olson, quality assurance manager at Casella Waste Systems
The Results
- Achieved its highest-ever quality assurance score of 91.5%
- 50% time savings on agent quality assurance
Everyone at Invoca has been amazing to work with. If I have questions or need assistance, my customer success manager is very responsive and eager to help me out.
