What if you could coach every student loan servicing representative on every call?

You can't be everywhere at once, obviously, but what if there was someone - or something - that could?

The secret to helping representatives be at their best is finding a best-in-class, real-time representative assistance solution.

Focus on outcome, not activity

First and foremost, the solution should be built for outcomes. 

So much of what we measure in a student loan servicing contact center is about activity and not outcome. Calls made. Time spent in-call. Time spent in wrap-up.

But don't we actually care about outcomes? Isn't the result of the call what we're really interested in?

If your business success is driven by the outcome of borrower conversations (and isn’t it all?), then your conversations should move you closer to those outcomes. 

That's what real-time assistance does. It guides representatives toward outcomes, helping them reach the success you are all looking for. Here are eight benefits you'll get from using a great representative assistant tool:

8 benefits of real-time representative assistance

1. Effectiveness

What constitutes an effective engagement?  In student loan servicing, especially after such a long break, we're looking for a payment plan the borrower can sustain as well as a positive experience for them.

By analyzing and learning from the best calls, your representative assistant will help your team reach those outcomes more efficiently. 

With the right representative assistance solution, everyone in the contact center can apply knowledge about: 

• the right points to achieve a desired resolution
• the best nudges to improve the probability of a key outcome
• which borrowers are most likely to achieve the best outcome
• which accounts are unlikely to reach a resolution

By knowing which actions are most likely to drive the best outcome, every one of your representatives can become more effective.

2. Reduced ramp time

Hiring and retention are tough right now for everyone, but in a high-stress student loan servicing representative role, that pain is even more intense.

That means time-to-value for new hires is crucial. With real-time representative assistance, constant, engaging reinforcements of the things that you cover in months of training can reduce training expenditures and time taken for agents to start taking calls by over 50 percent. 

3. Increased productivity 

A great representative assistance tool will help you reduce activities that are not outcome or value-focused (such as training, feedback sessions, recalibration, and training refreshers) and let the representative learn by doing.

No matter how many modules you read or scripts you follow, you can’t replace a great in-call mentor that guides you to the right responses.

Real-time representative assistance improves in-call time of agents by over 20 percent.

4. Improved compliance adherence

You know compliance adherence is central to your work, but it's just one thing in a long list your representatives need to remember.

A world-class representative assistance solution will let you add legacy compliance guidelines and configure and deploy new guidelines within minutes, and coach and remind representatives about compliance in every call.

Real-time assistance allows representatives to improve their compliance adherence by 10-15 percent.

5. Better borrower experience

Let’s be clear: Improving the experiences of student loan borrowers is not a footnote. Borrower experience is the most important outcome you can work toward because it plays into every other metric for success.

Looking to enhance the borrower experience happens at the conversation level. A great conversation is focused, empathetic, and draws on the right context.

Having a tool to guide representatives through the process of making sure their interaction is all those things pays off with positive borrower connections and better outcomes.

6. Increased agent focus

Representatives have a lot to pay attention to on every call, and every one of those distractions can make a difference in their effectiveness.

Bringing in an representative assistant to support your team through the guidelines and technical flow of the conversation allows them to focus their attention on crafting and building a better connection and conversation. That's going to be so important as we ramp back up the loan repayment process.

7. Just-in-time coaching

In order to help representatives through calls, they've traditionally been asked to go through scripts and scenarios long before each conversation, or, worse, during the call, when they're trying to stay focused on the conversation (see #6).

What you want from an assistant is one that works in real time, offering up a clear next action exactly when they need it, keeping them focused and engaged. 

8. Higher job satisfaction

Better performers are much less likely to churn compared to low performers. And how do good representatives become great representatives? Through practice and excellent coaching.

Combining in-the-moment interaction with engaging gamification and leaderboards can make work just that much more interesting — and that much more rewarding. 

All of that focus on the representative and the conversation can fuel a contact center built on the borrower experience. 

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