Long wait times left pet owners growling

The Challenge: Long wait times left pet owners growling

Canadians love their pets. Lately they’ve been adopting furry family members in record numbers. But the surge in pet ownership brought an accompanying 50% increase in urgent calls to DMV Veterinary Center’s contact center.

DMV Veterinary Center tried to meet that overwhelming demand with their existing agents. Caller wait times grew. Their legacy Panasonic phone system gave DMV Veterinary Center no way to prioritize callers.

For example, an owner calling for help because their dog just swallowed who-knows-what would have to wait in the same queue as callers with routine billing inquiries.

Compounding the problem, the old system also did not provide any data on individual agent performance, so it was hard to coach agents and improve the customer experience.

Not that they had time. In addition to handling calls from 50,000 owners and hundreds of veterinary professionals, agents were manually sending 10,000 appointment reminders monthly by email and SMS.

“We desperately needed to eliminate unnecessary wait times and automate manual tasks,” recalls Noël Grospeiller, Vice President of Client and Employee Experience. Plus, moving communications to the cloud would eliminate infrastructure cost and maintenance, as the company had done with Microsoft Teams two years earlier.

The Solution: 8x8 Contact Center and CPaaS

DMV Veterinary Center looked at multiple offerings. Only 8x8 had the automation capabilities they needed, together with a certified contact center solution for Microsoft Teams.

8x8’s communications platform as a service (CPaaS) allows new digital communications channels to be implemented quickly to eliminate manual tasks and save agent time. CPaaS services use APIs to communicate between applications, so DMV Veterinary Center can embed messaging, like SMS and email, in their customer management applications.

The Benefits: Game-changing innovation tools

“We want to lead our market through innovation,” says Grospeiller. “That’s why we went with 8x8. These tools are game changers.”

Innovation is a continuous process at DMV Veterinary Center. It was the first to launch an app that enables pet owners to see and talk to their hospitalized dogs and cats.

With the advanced contact center capabilities in 8x8, DMV Veterinary Center can innovate to solve problems fast. Incoming call flow is designed so worried owners calling about their pets during busy periods will experience shorter wait times.

Any caller can choose a callback option without losing their place in queue. And callers with pet emergencies can receive directions to an emergency room via SMS without waiting.

SMS texts and email reminders are now automated using CPaaS, saving agents hours of time every day – so they can focus on customer satisfaction.

8x8 Speech Analytics gives DMV Veterinary Center the tools to balance customer satisfaction and wait times. “Knowing instantly when owners are happy or unhappy, we can improve the customer experience with emotional feedback,” Grospeiller says.

“People make the difference,” he adds. “With the continuous insights we get from 8x8, we can coach agents and help them do their best.”

DMV Veterinary Center replaced the office phone systems at all four locations with 8x8 Work with Voice for Microsoft Teams. Communications and collaboration are all in one place, under one familiar Teams icon. What’s more, 8x8 supports a full switchboard and having phones in exam rooms with no email address associated with them.

Grospeiller says DMV Veterinary Center has been successful with 8x8 because 8x8 understands their needs and provided day-to-day guidance throughout the implementation. “8x8 takes a broad view of the project,” he says, “and they try to say yes to all of our requests.”