Contact Center Pipeline June 2025 | Page 9

Our revenue remains strong [ however ] due largely to our digital subscription growth. We have 94,000 digital subscribers, ranking us among the highest in regional metros.

Obviously with less circulation, specifically print customers, this means fewer calls. But more importantly, our service levels are among the best in the business, which means fewer complaints and therefore less call volume.

The Seattle, Washington metro area was reportedly one of the first in the U. S. to be hit by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. And The Seattle Times, as with many other employers, quickly switched to remote / workfrom-home( WFH).

“ We had to quickly adapt in a matter of days / weeks to set up our Seattle call center as well as our Alorica call center so that our reps could work safely from home,” recounts Tamara Galván.

“ This meant transitioning quickly to soft phones, setting up a temporary volunteer call center made up of various employees from departments across the company, and providing our agents with work laptops and other necessary equipment, like noise cancelling headphones, mice, keyboards, and stand-up desks. All to enable their work-from-home transition. We provided ISP subsidies as well.”

There were challenges, as would have been expected.“ We did not have enough work laptops for everyone,” says Tamara.“ Those who had personal laptops they could use did so until our IT department could order enough for our entire employee base that needed one to conduct business.”

To help out, some of The Seattle Times ' non-contact center employees volunteered as agents to help staff the phones.

“ These employees really enjoyed it,” adds Matt Ayton.“ We talk about the priorities of serving readers, but it is often a rarity for employees to engage readers so directly. We maintained high service levels but were relieved to transition back to skilled live agents to serve customers.”

With the end of the pandemic many employers have moved back to the office either entirely or on a hybrid basis.

But The Seattle Times chose to stay with remote agents, though many of its non-contact center staff returned to the office. To ensure the longterm success of remote working, it sought improved WFH capabilities and obtained them when it upgraded its Enghouse contact center solution in 2023.

“ We needed software to allow agents to work effectively remotely, improving flexibility and reducing office space requirements,” says Matt.

THE SEATTLE TIMES AT A GLANCE

Number of agents--30 agents

Percentage in-house versus outsourced--16 % in-house and 84 % outsourced

Volume( last year available)--About 306,000 customer interactions between calls, chats( SMS), and emails

Inbound / outbound split--99 % inbound and 1 % outbound

Inbound channel split--228,000 calls--41,600 emails--36,500 chats( SMS)

On-premise / home office split--100 % WFH

Key technologies used--Enghouse multichannel IVR and automated cloud contact center--Salesforce CRM

WHAT METHODS / SOLUTIONS AND VENDOR( S) DID YOU SELECT AND WHY?

A: Initially, due to our circulation system change, we just needed a new IVR. VoicePort was able to add a couple of other products( soft phone system and messaging) as we discovered other improvements that we needed to make to our customer service process.

This was just done through conversations with VoicePort. Customer experience is at the heart of what we do at The Seattle Times. We partner with vendors and service providers that believe that too, so advocating for a solution that helps us realize that vision isn’ t usually too challenging.

WHAT WERE THE GOALS THAT YOU SET OUT? A: We had several specific ones:

• Better and real-time call monitoring and coaching of agents.

• Integrated automation with IVR and later our chatbot for improved self-service for complaints, credits, and other routine transactions to reduce hold times and free up agents for more complex calls / issues.

• Cost savings: cloud based versus physical phone hardware, automation.

• Improved reporting / performance metrics.

• Improved work-from-home( WFH) capabilities( See BOX).

OUTLINE THE PROCESS. CAN YOU PROVIDE ANY DETAILS, LIKE ON DEPLOYMENT, TRAINING?

A: We began the process in April 2023 because VoicePort, which was now Enghouse( Ed. Note: Enghouse acquired VoicePort in 2022), was upgrading its software. This included an extensive IVR questionnaire for the initial deployment.

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