Creating memorable vacations

More affordable travel

Uplift makes it easier for people to make special memories and purchase incredible vacations. Based out of Sunnyvale, Calif. with offices in Reno, Nev.; Toronto, New York and Guadalajara, Mexico, the company offers simple no-fee payment plans in partnership with some of the travel industry’s leading brands, including Carnival Cruise Line and United Airlines.

“Customers shop online with their preferred merchant, process their order and receive a buy-now, pay-later option before checking out,” said Chrissy Vining, Director of Customer Success at Uplift.

A fast-growing digital business, Uplift is a hotbed of in-house collections experts, marketers, underwriters and systems engineers. The first point of contact is its customer services team, who must balance delivering amazing customer experience (CX) with strict financial regulations. And there was still room for improvement when it came to technology.

As a Silicon Valley startup, Uplift had a team of engineers handling customer service calls with Aircall PBX and Zendesk ticketing systems in the early days. With its rapid business growth, this process soon became unsustainable. The company needed a more mature contact center solution and dedicated customer service team.

The first order of business for the Uplift team was to evaluate its systems and determine where the highest impact could be made. “We realized our old contact center model was no longer scalable,” added Vining. “The systems in place just couldn’t do what I needed them to do. So, we started looking for a cloud solution with features like omnichannel, AI, and better reporting and metrics tracking.”

Greater flexibility and efficiency

After surveying four leading contact center providers, Uplift chose the Genesys Cloud platform. “Some of the other providers gave us the feeling that our project was too small,” said Vining. “Our Genesys rep did his homework on our business and understood what we were trying to do. Also, their platform is built on AWS, a platform we were already familiar with.”

Expertly implemented by cloud specialists InflowCX, the cloud contact center was up and running within six weeks. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the following year, the business was able to adapt quickly to hybrid working, a move that has since translated into a 40% productivity savings.

“Previously, with our old on-premises systems we’d need 50 staff,” said Vining. “With Genesys, I’ve been running under my staffing budget for the last 11 months. I’m able to operate seven days a week with 30 hybrid workers spread across the US, Canada and Mexico. And we’re always there for the customer, like if they arrive at their hotel late at night and are having an issue making a payment with our card. They need us all the time and it’s important that we are available to them.”

One management window

So far, Uplift has consolidated eight channels on Genesys Cloud — voice, SMS, email, chat, Trustpilot, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The first four are native channels, while Trustpilot is enabled via the Genesys Open Messaging API, and social channels through Genesys AppFoundry^® Marketplace. All are managed from a unified user interface.

Integration with the company’s homegrown CRM system was another major advantage. Genesys recognizes a mobile number and pulls up the customer’s name and loan agreement in a flash, enabling agents to give a personal greeting and build rapport — a simple service enhancement that wasn’t possible before.

“Volumes haven’t really altered, but the way we do business has,” said Vining. “Before, there was no IVR — just basic routing and voice recording. And we couldn’t rely on our data. Now, we’re able to deflect calls, consistently meet our SLAs and have life-changing APIs that connect all our tools and data.”

Adapting easily with apps and automation

The company has made good use of Genesys AppFoundry. “I plug in so many applications and absolutely love AppFoundry,” said Vining. “Along with our Pypestream bot, we use a partner for satisfaction surveys, dashboards from Brightmetrics and knowledge management with Shelf.”

Built with Pypestream conversational AI, a digital assistant powered by natural language processing successfully resolves many general inquiries. After confirming whether they’d prefer to be served in English, Spanish or French, the customer can choose to speak to an agent or continue using the digital assistant. If the latter, they receive a text message and click on a link, transferring from a call to a self-service chat where they can update their details, make a payment or get fast answers to FAQs.

“With our digital assistant we can quickly service many customers online, eliminating 15% of inquiries that would otherwise have escalated to a call with an agent,” said Vining. “At six minutes handle time per call, that’s a massive savings. And we’re achieving a 40% deflection success rate with our IVR. That’s freed up 2,500 hours in one month alone.”

Other Genesys features, like the call wrap timer, reinforce solid handle time metrics by providing reps with a countdown to complete notes. Routing is much more sophisticated. Before, if a customer was denied a loan they would call in to challenge the decision, but the agent was not qualified to help. Now, the system automatically picks out their number and places the caller in a separate queue to discuss the matter directly with an underwriter.

“Around 4,000 emails a month are automatically serviced,” concluded Vining. “InflowCX built a data table, so we’re able to detect specific email headings, like make a payment, and push a suitable reply with guidance to the customer. In fact, the Genesys platform is so intelligent we can tell if an agent is working at home in an unlicensed location and block the call for compliance.”