Customer Success Spotlight
Cedar Financial Case Study
Powerful digital transformation for a leading asset recovery firm
Background
Cedar Financial is a leading asset recovery management (ARM) company with expertise in a wide range of industries, from education, healthcare and government to retail recovery and commercial. Cedar is known for its strong online presence, use of advanced technologies and specialized personnel education programs. This translates into higher conversion rates for clients and a more positive payment experience for the client’s customers.
The team at Cedar set out to explore possible technology partners for an IP communication platform and conducted an 18-month search before selecting a new platform. To maintain its leading position, the team decided a technology stack refresh was needed. The key goals were to increase efficiency, incorporate AI and smart workflows into their core business activities, and expand their customer communication channel mix beyond voice alone.
Goals and Selection Criteria
Cedar selected Nextiva as its technology partner to expand the range of channels, introduce automation capabilities, and consolidate vendors. Cedar’s leadership determined Nextiva to be the best fit for several reasons:
- All in one solution, reducing vendor management requirements
- Automation capabilities in workflows and compliance, reducing labor-intensive elements of their business processes
- Expansion of consumer touchpoints beyond voice – SMS, voicemail drop, chat, and email
Nextiva enabled Cedar to make a rapid and seamless transition. Moving from seven distinct vendors to a single technology partner in a matter of weeks required tight collaboration between the Cedar and Nextiva teams. Since Nextiva would fill a role previously supplied by seven different vendors, the key focus during implementation was to maintain business continuity for Cedar with zero downtime.
Doing so primarily required an integration between Cedar’s back-end systems of record and Nextiva’s cloud contact center infrastructure. This would allow data to flow between Cedar’s databases and the front-line agents on the phone with consumers. A unique challenge presented by this system was that Cedar’s system of record is not housed in the cloud. This demanded the creation of secure servers that could communicate with Cedar’s on-premises installation of their back end system and Nextiva’s cloud-native solution.
Nextiva enabled Cedar to take live traffic on the new system within a matter of weeks, which exceeded the team’s goals and expectations for this engagement.
Results & Benefits of Nextiva
Using Nextiva, Cedar was able to reduce vendor complexity (7 vendors down to 1), boost agent productivity 40-50%, increase revenue 30%, start auditing agents in in real time and automatically, and realize immediate and substantial cost savings.
Consolidation
Previously, Cedar used seven separate vendors for:
01
PBX/messaging
02
Recording
03
Dialer
04
Telco (PRI, VOIP, Local LD, voicemail drops, SMS, onsite LCR)
With our help, they regained focus on their core business. By eliminating Cedar’s need to test integration and maintain separate systems, we were able to save the team time, effort, and money.
Reduced Costs
Cedar saw an approximate 30% savings overall by switching to Nextiva, through a combination of agent fees and telephony/SMS, integration, and licensing costs.
Productivity
Cedar’s old system restricted the team’s productivity. Calls per day per agent were approximately 70-100. Manual campaign and list management drained supervisor time and increased agent downtime as well. The vendors Cedar used were costly, prohibiting the use of reporting, analytics, agent productivity insights, and predictive/progressive dialing modes. With Nextiva, calls per day per agent went to 400+. Automated list management and performance tracking freed supervisors to monitor, supervise, and coach agents to success. Increasing the volume of outbound dialing resulted in more consumer contacts. The tight integration between Nextiva and Cedar’s system of record saved time on each transaction and on an enterprise-wide scale.
Scalability
The previous collection of 7 different platforms did not have the ability to scale seamlessly, and it was not easy to add agents on to the platform owing to the complexity of separate pricing models.
Nextiva provided Cedar with the technologies required via flexible microservices in a single platform. The ability to add and change services all within one platform meant faster time to market and the ability to adapt to customer demands quicker.
Compliance
Cedar’s old system required compliance staff to manually audit a random sample of phone calls, listening for agents who may not have conducted proper disclosures. This increased Cedar’s risk of fines and litigation in the event of non-compliance by agents. Nextiva’s AI-powered Transcription and Compliance Scorecards allow Cedar fine-grained control over which agents receive near-real-time compliance audits, which flag risky calls and enable swift supervisor responses. With the cost of each individual violation exceeding $5,000, these enhanced supervision tools enable Cedar to engage in a more extensive supervisory regimen as part of an overall risk-reduction strategy.
“At Cedar, we are committed to delivering exemplary performance and outstanding customer service. Everything we do is relationship driven. With Nextiva we are now properly armed in real time with a 360-degree view of our end users. We can better and more efficiently service them on their terms – whether that be a call, chat, SMS or email. We’ve seen a substantial increase in efficiencies in the range of 40% as well as an uptick of agent revenue generation in the range of 30%. These speak well to the value we are receiving from our investment in Nextiva.”
Amir Erez — Cedar Financial Founder & CEO
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