Western Union Moves Toward Collecting Deeper Customer Insights

Western Union, a venerable leader in global payment services, selected NICE’s analytics-based solutions as part of a new technology initiative to bolster its customer-centric service model. Western Union aims to use the solutions to leverage customer insights and deliver an enhanced experience across the company’s Customer Care Centers.

“Western Union has been evaluating opportunities to improve our product and service delivery capabilities as part of our customer-centric strategy,” Steven Sigman, Western Union’s Head of Global Customer Care, told Loyalty360. “NICE technology provided us with a set of solutions to gain deeper insights into our customers’ interactions and improve the performance of our contact centers.”

Sigman said in 2013 more than 70 million consumers used Western Union services in more than 200 countries and territories around the world.

“Finding ways to maintain and build consumer loyalty is a priority for Western Union, and enhancing the service center experience allows us to do that,” he explained.

By implementing the NICE solutions, Western Union will be able to analyze, learn from, and act upon these interactions to help improve its ability to resolve customer service requests upon first contact across multiple touch points, including retail agent locations, online and mobile application transaction service requests, and the company’s international customer service phone line.

What’s more, the implementation of NICE solutions by Western Union will also allow the company to standardize its global care center procedures and apply performance management tools that engage employees. Ultimately, this will improve customer service processes on both the “send” and “receive” side of a Western Union Money Transfer transaction.

“By analyzing customer interactions, we are able to identify key drivers and operational improvements that ultimately correlate to improvements for the customer and operations, including lower call transfer rates and increased first call resolution,” Sigman added. “Western Union routinely explores new ways to use technology to improve the customer experience. Implementations of new technology allow us to accelerate our customer service strategies.”

Sigman said an ongoing challenge is meeting the evolving needs and channel choice of customers’ money movement preferences, including utilization of online and mobile platforms. 

“Increasing our Customer Service Center capabilities and responsiveness was a key criterion for our selection of the NICE Customer Interaction Management solution,” Sigman said.

Matthew Storm, Director, Innovation & Solutions for NICE, told Loyalty360 that Western Union has been a NICE customer for several years.

“As the partnership has evolved, Western Union had been looking for new and innovative ways to deliver on their customer promise,” Storm said. “These new solutions were a step up from that partnership.”

Engaging experiences from engaging employees are the path to deliver the type of loyalty that Western Union is seeking from both sides of the transaction, Storm explained.

“To streamline coaching and be more proactive with problem resolution are common goals for most NICE clients, and Western Union is taking the steps to ensure that overall productivity and the customer experience come first,” Storm said. “The NICE solutions enable Western Union to standardize its global care center procedures and apply new performance management tools to engage employees.”

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