PagBank provides first-class support faster — with a 25% drop in AHT

A fast-growing financial services player

From marketing to fulfillment, there are many phases in a banking relationship. But perhaps the most important of all is the point at which money changes hands — and that is where no business can make mistakes. It was this need that saw Universo Online, the world’s largest Portuguese language news portal, launch an online payments service called PagSeguro in 2006.

PagSeguro grew quickly, moving into offline payments with digital point-of-sale devices in 2013 and providing consumer banking services in 2017, before going public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018. It was rebranded to PagBank in 2019. But by then its contact center platform was beginning to feel the strain.

To meet its purpose of facilitating the financial lives of consumers and businesses, and live up to values including simplicity, reliability and collaboration, PagBank needed a modern contact center platform.

Moving to a trusted platform

At launch, PagSeguro had inherited the contact center setup used by Universo Online. This was a combination of an Avaya PBX plus an on-premises Genesys Engage system for agent control and service management. This combination had served PagBank with no problems for more than a decade, but by 2019 it became apparent that hosted model was out of date.

Apart from hosting costs, new releases would require server updates. And a growing range of customer service features, such as chat support, required separate software packages, hampering the efficiency with which agents could respond to customer queries.

“Our agents used, on average, 15 software programs simultaneously,” said Rodrigo Passos, Head of Planning and Projects at PagBank. “We also had a large voice channel and a channel for chat. Our goal was to offer voice, chat and WhatsApp over a single channel.”

A move to the cloud

At the same time, a technology shift toward cloud-based services was underway. Vinicius de Oliveira Ferreira, Director of Project Planning and Business Intelligence for PagBank, remembers seeing the first presentations of the Genesys Cloud™ platform in 2017. “We gradually matured the idea internally with the business teams. In 2020, we were able to put together a business plan explaining the gains we would have with the migration from Engage to Genesys Cloud.”

Even then, PagBank opted to move cautiously, issuing a request for proposals. But Genesys Cloud was the obvious choice. “We already used Engage and understood that it would be a smoother transition than to look for another partner,” said Ferreira. “The big Genesys difference is the unified solutions module attached to the tool. In addition to all the channels, my quality area can report on each call and chat in the tool itself. We can see the entire customer journey.”

With the decision made, PagBank took precautions to ensure the move from Engage to Cloud could happen with minimum disruption. The migration took almost two years, between 2021 and 2022, and was overseen by the São Paulo-based customer experience system operator and Genesys partner Coddera.

Improvements across the board

Decision-makers at PagBank were watching with interest to see how the introduction of Genesys Cloud would affect key service performance indicators such as average handle times (AHT) and customer contact rates. All of them got better after the cloud platform went live, with AHT dropping 25% in less than four months thanks to improvements in routing and omnichannel delivery.

“In addition, it brought many internal benefits, such as cost reduction, since we didn’t need to maintain a data center infrastructure,” said Carlos Eduardo Santos, General Manager of Software Engineering at PagBank. “Genesys best met our needs on a single platform. It provides the routing of interactions across different channels besides offering a module for monitoring and recording agents.”

Other benefits include monthly updates and seamless integration with a wide range of other software services like business intelligence systems and PagBank Salesforce CRM platform. “I do not have to worry about compliance,” said Santos. “The cloud environment is already PCI-compliant and meets all regulatory requirements in Brazil and abroad.”

Because the platform is hosted in the cloud, it’s more robust than an on-premises system. “Since we implemented it, I only remember a few hours of downtime — and I’m talking about three years of using the tool,” said Ferreira. “It also helps that the platform is built around microservices. You can have downtime in a single microservice that does not affect other service areas. Genesys Cloud’s availability is incredible.”

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.