Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / Contact Center Attrition: How EmpireOneCX Gets It to 3.4% a Month | Fauad Nasir
Transcript
- Gina: Hello everybody. Today we are chatting with Fauad Nasir, who is the founder and CEO of EmpireOneCX. Welcome to the podcast, Fauad. Fawad Nasir: Thank you and thank you for having me, Gina. Gina: Awesome. So let's start out with the basics. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Fawad Nasir: Sure. So my name is Fauad Nasir, as you mentioned. I'm the founder and CEO of EmpireOneCX. Home for me is Toronto, Canada. And I like to play pickleball sometimes if time permits, or get out of the golf course, but it it has rarely happened. Gina: Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, Fauad and how you got into the contact center? Fawad Nasir: Sure. Yeah, so the the BPO happened by accident. And you know, I also own a travel agency and about ten years ago, so twenty sixteen, I was asked to go to the Philippines and get some contracts for hotels and resorts and what have you. And as soon as I landed in Manila, I I fell in love with the country, with the people, with the culture, the food. and I said, How do I keep coming back here? So I look around all the beautiful and big buildings and they're not banks, they're call centers, they're BPOs. So I said, Look, I can't open a bank, but I could open a BPO and that's how it began. Gina: I love it. So it, you know, you have built it from the ground up, like the company. And and so it wasn't a specific problem or a gap that you saw in customer service. You were just like, I love this country and I want to keep coming back. Fawad Nasir: Yes, that was one of the reasons. And then when once, you know, we pulled our sleeves and got into the business a few years later we found out what would be our competitive advantage and we kind of focused in that niche and area. Gina: So why don't you give us your elevator pitch? What what do you guys do and how you know how close is it to the original vision that you had when you founded it? Fawad Nasir: Yeah, so EmpireOne focuses predominantly on customer care, customer service, inbound, voice, non voice, live chat, email support. we do not do any outbound, we don't offer any, you know, telemarketing and stuff the the sort that really affects your culture within the within each site. And so we are experts in that particular area where when businesses are having complications with labor and performance either in-house or with other BPOs, they choose us. And what makes us a better partner, in my opinion, is because our philosophies and strategies a little bit different than how we operate our sites, which are physically located two to three hours away from the main hubs. And that gives us amazing attrition numbers and it also allows us to own and operate our own buildings. And so having all of the strategy in place has proven that we can hold agents for a lot longer than an average BPO hub would. Gina: And you know, let's talk about your attrition for a minute because I remember when I first saw your stats and and I questioned you because I've never seen that low of attrition or high of retention rate ever. Did would you mind sharing with everybody what attrition? Fawad Nasir: Yes, absolutely. So our you know, standard industry standard is about five percent a month, ours is about three point four percent a month, and that is all attributable really to the culture we've built and also being away from the main hustle and bustle and providing jobs really within the five mile radius of our sites. agents are happy, they show up on time, they go back at the end of the day to see their families, they don't have to board three or four hours away. so that is what has really helped us have the competitive advantage in the industry, if you will. Gina: Yeah. Now you guys are a little bit different in your approach because you blend AI and the data intellect analytics, sorry, into your delivery model. So can you kind of help us understand what that looks like day to day and kind of where the human team picks up where the AI leaves off or kind of how you blend the two of them? Fawad Nasir: Absolutely. So AI has been a significant portion of our strategy for the last two years. And AI, agentic AI in particular, is is what we use for mostly all of the triage calls, the initial calls that are coming in. It filters through them. And if the AI can't handle it, then the human kicks in. On the other side, we also have our own in-house AI teams that are built that have built our auto QA that are it's all AI driven and that instead of doing sample testing of calls, emails, and chats, now we can do 100% of it. And so our QA team has more time to meet with the agents one-on-one, have that human conversation rather than simply just listening to calls and emails and chats and whatever else comes on the way. So it has been a significant boost in our in our productivity. along with accent neutralization, which you're familiar with, which we deploy in all of our accounts at this point. And so essentially we have eliminated accent from our folks from the Philippines and Colombia for the bilingual Spanish and English. Gina: Love that. Walk us through one of your use cases or a customer example success story where they maybe use a blend of AI and your agents and and tell us how you help them and what their kind of end numbers Fawad Nasir: Yeah. Gina: look like. Fawad Nasir: Absolutely. So we just recently had a a BPO a client switch BPO from Latin America to EmpireOne because they're you know the AHT was very high, the occupancy rate was very high, very high attrition, and all of that really attributed to the fact that they didn't have any AI embedded in there to take care of some of the the calls whether it's they they weren't a 24 hour service so we turn them into 24 hour because you know 9 a.m to 6 p.m eastern could be the agent handling the calls but then anything in between or after hours AI kicks in and helps answer those calls very very efficiently and also because they wanted human and ai together the AI answers the call first if the agent is not available If the agent is available, the human touches the most important for this client. They want the human to answer the calls, the emails, the chats. However, if they are busy, there is no more waiting. There is no more, you know, Gina: Mm. Fawad Nasir: a problem with the abandoned calls or anything. So the AI kicks right in. So AI is working simultaneously alongside the human agent to make this happen efficiently. Gina: Love that. And you mentioned that you guys only do inbounds. So talk about who your your ideal customer might be and what would be kind of maybe what they're feeling or what they're experiencing before they would say, okay, EmpireOne, you're the right fit for. Fawad Nasir: Yeah, and that's a great question, Gina, because what we do is we don't bring in on an account and and say, Okay, we've onboarded, everything is good, one person runs it. We bring in different departments of our team to make sure that this business is efficient in what they want us to do. And that is our QA department plugs in, right? Very very efficient folks and professionals and technology that we use here. So their QA is going to be automated and taken care of. Workforce management kicks in, right? process improvement department kicks in. All sorts of other departments in the back end plug into each account to make sure that the client and is getting exactly what they need without them coming to us and saying, hey guys, Our QA was not good today, or our workforce met, you know, how do we do the scheduling for next week or next month is our busiest season? They don't have to come and tell us we are proactive in the back end and we go to them and say, look, this is what your trends are, and we want to make sure we're prepared, we have staff properly, we have the right AI that we're using. So these are some of the cases that makes us or differentiate us from others, whereas others charge for these departments. For us we believe without it, I don't think we can make an account successful, right? It's it's simply not about answering a phone call or responding to an email. There's a lot more that happens in the ecosystem of a BPO in the back end. Gina: Love that. And for problems that customers are having where they might entertain you, is it, you know, the cost of, like you said, they're being charged for QA, they're being charged for process improvement. what are some of the, like, what are some of the ideal customer service type calls, or what are the ideal customers that you'd want to have in there? Fawad Nasir: Yeah, so so our ideal customer would be businesses, I mean, and we've got clients in Canada, US, UK, Dubai, and Australia would be businesses that are extensively looking to take care of their customer care and omnichannels. Gina: Mm-hmm. Fawad Nasir: so there's a lot of inbound influx of either ordering or communications after sale that happens. you know we've we've got clients in the jewelry business, we've got clients in the pool business where we design and we have architects and engineers building pools and designing the in AutoCAD and being able to sell. So we're not just a BPO that says we're gonna answer calls only, right? We don't sell button seats only. So our clients can range anywhere from retail to services to to real estate. automotives and by the way, we just opened up our new division, EmpireOneHealth.com. Gina: Let's talk about that. That's exciting. Fawad Nasir: Yes. Gina: What are you what are you guys doing there? Fawad Nasir: So in EmpireOne Health's main focus right now is RCM record revenue cycle management. And we Gina: Okay. Fawad Nasir: focus on the payer and the provider side of things. And we've brought in very experienced folks with, you know, over forty years of experience in this particular health area to build this division for us, build a training program, hire the right people and manage and run them. before we even start bringing in clients. So we are we're ready basically to hit the ground running. Gina: That's very exciting. And and leading a BPO at this pace, I mean, in this time in our lives, right, where AI is everything, and you're across multiple countries, multiple industries, the ground must be shifting constantly, right? So do you find certain countries or locations produce better results for different verticals? Fawad Nasir: Absolutely. I think so Philippines is predominantly the the the Filipino folks have a lot of empathy. They're very kind people, right? So having them on the phone with a lot of patience is going to win. Now, if you want Gina: Mm. Fawad Nasir: sales and aggressiveness, we go to Latin America, right? Our Columbia site can do all of that. If we want technology, we can go to South Africa. We can, you know, there's there's different countries that offer different expertise. depending on the needs of that particular client, we would we would strategically create the proper geo and say, Okay, you need a hundred agents, we can have twenty five be here and and twenty five here and so on and so forth, A for redundancy and B for those expert skills that they may have. Gina: that. is there anything you'd like the audience to know for what that I haven't asked you? Fawad Nasir: I think you've covered just about everything. I would say that things are, like you said, are changing in our domain very rapidly. AI is a big player in this in this realm and and I know AI is overused a lot of time. I I personally believe that AI is a friend of ours. It is not an enemy. And and I see BPOs in my perspective in the next year or two. We are gonna be 50% machine or AI and 50% human. And for anybody that's denying that is is gonna have problems. But we have welcomed AI since day one, since ChatGPT opened up and OpenAI. And so we're looking forward to building and developing our healthcare division as well on the same platform as AI and and what we've accomplished in the past. So I'll be happy to chat with anybody. about our businesses. Gina: Awesome. And to wrap things up for what I've always been a fan of James Lipton. And so to end the podcast, we do a little bit of rapid fire. So what sound or noise do you love? Fawad Nasir: I would say sound birds chipping. I love that. Yeah. Gina: And what sound or noise do you hate? Fawad Nasir: Traffic. I I live in Toronto. Yes, Gina: Yeah. Being in Toronto, I understand. Fawad Nasir: yes. And traveling to the Philippines every now and then. Traffic drives me crazy. Yes. Gina: Yes. what profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Fawad Nasir: I would love to be a CSI officer, a CIA agent or something, That sounds cool. Be the James Bond, right? Yeah. Gina: Absolutely. Absolutely. So for what, for anybody listening that wants to explore more what EmpireOneCX could do for their business, how do they get in touch? Fawad Nasir: They could absolutely reach out to us at empireonecx.com or myself, followed at fauad@empireonecx.com, and our team would be happy to help them and run them through the process of onboarding and and how to save them a ton of money and agony from what they're running through. Alternatively, run them through you because you and I have worked on multiple accounts and I love and enjoy working with you and you have a world of experience in terms of technology. and the BPO and the business. So it would be amazing for them to go come to you and say, hey, who's the right person for this particular area? And I know you would give them the right company and the right person and I hope I'm one of them. Gina: Absolutely. Thank you so much. It was so great having you on the podcast for one and learning about it. And I'm so excited to see the medical arm of this and see what Fawad Nasir: Thank you. Gina: what you guys do next. Thanks so much for being here. Fawad Nasir: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Have a great day.