Staffing and empowering a top-notch customer service team is critical, especially when you're in the business of putting roofs over people's heads. With more than 52,000 houses in 22 states, American Homes 4 Rent is the leader in the single-family rental homes industry. Behind their success is an unwavering customer commitment to provide professionally managed properties that meet a rigorous standard of quality. And the main face of that commitment is their contact center which handles inbound and outbound contacts for sales, customer service and maintenance.
In 2015, they realized that the capabilities of their existing call center software just couldn’t keep pace with their growing business and increasing call volume. They needed to find a new call center software solution that was robust enough to help efficiently handle their 3,300 calls per day, easily enable remote agents, drive operational efficiencies, and was flexible enough to handle even more growth in the future.
With their main contact center located in Las Vegas, American Homes 4 Rent faced some unique challenges in the areas of recruiting and retaining high-quality agents. The number of call centers in the area has grown 18% annually, with more than 150 in operation there today. American Homes 4 Rent knew that being able to offer agents the ability to work full or part-time from home would help them become an employer of choice and also enable them to broaden their talent pool beyond the local area.
As their workforce grew and they moved towards a highly remote staffing model, being able to efficiently manage agents became increasingly important—their previous manual, spreadsheet-based scheduling just wasn't cutting it anymore. They required an automated workforce management solution with robust forecasting and scheduling capabilities.
They also need more sophisticated, skills-based routing, and robust quality monitoring and management to help them enhance their overall customer experience and give them new insights to improve operational performance. From a broader perspective, the new solution needed to provide holistic data about their customers, contact center agents and contact center operations that would facilitate data-driven decision making, and enable them to standardize adoption of best practices throughout their widely dispersed organization.
American Homes 4 Rent found the cloud-based call center software solution their business needs to succeed—NICE CXone. Now, 75% of their agents work remotely, new agent set up is simple, scheduling is automated, calls are efficiently routed, and they have more visibility into agent performance. The company has also realized some very tangible benefits including lower IT costs, fewer agent sick days, higher customer satisfaction, and increased agent productivity. American Homes 4 Rent believes it is well positioned for the future and is planning to implement even more capabilities in the coming months.
Matt Halliday, EVP of Sales at American Homes 4 Rent, will share more about his company's contact center transformation at the upcoming Enterprise Connect event in Orlando. The session, Connectivity, Collaboration and Competition: Winning Over Top Agent Talent, will be held on March 19 from 2:30-3:15 pm. Hope to see you there!
