Carnival Cruise Line Sets Sail with Verint

Post-call surveys assess quality of service and gain insights for improvement.

Read the Report

About Carnival

Carnival Cruise Line was founded in 1972 with the idea of being able to give everyone a memorable experience at a great price. Today, “The World’s Most Popular Cruise Line” carries 5.4 million passengers annually. Carnival Cruise Line’s contact center handles 10 million calls a year, approximately seven million for service and three million for sales.

Carnival Cruise Line is committed to customer satisfaction. When guests called about a particular issue or concern, the company sprang into action to address the matter.

However, with upper management wanting to understand whether or not guest feedback was representative of its customer base as a whole, a more effective way to truly measure guest satisfaction was needed.

Solution

Carnival Cruise Line launched an analytics-driven quality initiative to evaluate agent performance in real-time and proactively identify opportunities for improvement. Using Verint Interaction Experience, the company conducted post-call surveys to assess the quality of service and gain insights for improvement.

The surveys were designed to measure guests’ perceptions of their interactions with Carnival and understand the company’s proficiency in resolving guests’ questions or issues on the first call.

“Our goal was to evaluate the customer experience as a whole,” says Brandon Roundtree, Manager of Commercial Reporting & Analysis at Carnival Cruise Line. “It required a focused effort and allocation of resources. By no means was it an ‘overnight process,’ but it was successful and did work out the way we anticipated.”

Working with Verint

Working with Verint, Carnival developed surveys spanning customer satisfaction, agent performance, and knowledge, measuring everything from how easy the agent made the interaction to whether or not the issue was resolved. Separate guest service and sales surveys for travel agents and direct agents help generate even more targeted insights.

Administered via a “warm agent transfer” to Carnival’s IVR system, the surveys use the same voice – “Tina” — that Carnival uses for its regular IVR prompts, since this was something guests were accustomed to, Roundtree says. “We wanted a voice that people would understand and recognize.”

“We have been able to attach a survey to each agent skill, break down skills by department, and map them to uncover areas for CX improvement,” adds Roundtree. “This effort has been invaluable to our business.”

"Using Verint Enterprise Feedback Management for post-call surveys helps us make sure that each guest is getting the best customer service during the first contact. By solving first contact resolution, we can stop repeat calls, which goes a long way toward ensuring customer satisfaction."
Brandon Roundtree Manager Comercial Reporting & Analysis, Carnival Cruise Line

Benefits with Verint

The Verint software has enabled Carnival to increase customer satisfaction while reducing costs through higher first contact resolution. This translated to fewer repeat calls, enabling agents to more effectively handle Carnival’s growing book of service.

To help prevent agents from simply “cherry-picking” the best calls for surveys, callers are transferred directly to the survey once the agent disconnects the call. As a result, the company achieved a survey participation rate of 25 to 30 percent, well above industry standards.

“Using Verint Enterprise Experience for post-call surveys helps us make sure that each guest is getting the best customer service during that first contact,” Roundtree says. “By solving first contact resolution, we can stop repeat calls, which goes a long way toward ensuring customer satisfaction.”

Results

More than 90 percent of surveys scored agents in the 4s or 5s (on a scale of 1 to 5), confirming that Carnival’s contact center performance was much better than the handful of animated letters indicated, Roundtree explains. “But there was still an area of opportunity within the other 10 percent, and that became our focus for coaching.”

Carnival employs a three-tiered approach to coaching, with trend reporting, agent-level reporting, and email alerts. Agents see their scores immediately, so they stay apprised of performance in near real-time.

If a trend report indicates an agent may be missing the mark, an email alert follows within 45 minutes of a call. If an email alert indicates the incidence of another under performing call, the Carnival coaching staff can contact the agent for proactive coaching and mentoring while the scenario is relevant and top of mind.

By employing this data-driven approach, Carnival can more effectively deploy coaching and training to agents with the greatest need.