Successful partnership with fintech student loan lender College Ave Student Loans previewed ahead of Money 20/20 conference
ACT (Advanced Call Center Technologies), a US-based business outsourcing provider and customer experience leader, announces a record year for 2022, including double-digit growth, creation of 5,000 new jobs across the U.S. and the opening of four new sites. The accelerated growth is due in part to the continued successful partnership with College Ave Student Loans, a leading fintech student loan lender. The solution integrates employee experience, customer experience, digital experience, and user experience in a multi-experience, omni-channel model, reflecting the companies’ shared strategy of differentiating based on total experience (TX).
When College Ave first engaged with ACT in 2015, they were an online only start-up challenging large, established private student loan providers. As such, they recognized the need to deliver exceptional support in all customer interactions from the first day of operations. Today, College Ave has grown to be one of the top three student lending institutions in the U.S., servicing more than $1B in student loans.
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College Ave considers its contact center to be a key source of competitive advantage, underpinning its ambition to be America’s student loan provider of choice. The company prides itself on providing the best experience through a top-notch team dedicated to assisting customers in finding the best college loan quickly and with ease. Their vision is to place the customer at the center of its operations.
“As a challenger in a competitive market and a completely online business, the contact center is a key customer engagement point and an opportunity to make a lasting impression,” said Eric Chas, Head of Customer Operations, College Ave. “It also had implications for the caliber of the agent, so we wanted professionally mature people representing the brand and our product in a ‘brand ambassador meets helpdesk’ combination.”
Striking the right balance with customer-centricity and advocacy was a crucial requirement. ACT undertook a deep dive with College Ave leadership to understand the business needs and the complexity of their program. ACT then developed an agent profile and business process that was customized to College Ave’s objectives, and built a bespoke team that was deeply embedded in the client’s company, operating as an extension of their business.
“Our clients depend on our agents as the human face of their brand. They need people with unique training and expertise. They need people who are committed. They need people they can count on to treat their customers with the same care as they would themselves,” stated Hunter Croft, President & CEO, ACT. “The reason we are able to provide that is because we prioritize employee experience as an essential component of our total experience solutions. As an employee-owned company, our people benefit directly from creating value for our clients. No other company in our space is able to say that.”
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“ACT has been part of our growth from day one. From the beginning, they put great effort into helping us succeed – and in my 25 years of customer operations, I’ve never seen anything like it. ACT is an extension of our business, which goes far beyond white labeling, and instead adapted and assimilated our culture at the contact center agent level. That’s very difficult to replicate,” Chas emphasized.
Because the relationship between College Ave and ACT has flourished since 2015, ACT is taking this opportunity to highlight the proven success of placing employee experience and a customer-native approach as key differentiators for customer experience, and, ultimately, total experience. The news also coincides with ACT’s presence at Money 20/20, an international conference featuring the best and brightest of finance and fintech. ACT will meet with players across the financial services ecosystem to discuss how delivering outstanding employee experience and integrating their agents into their clients’ teams substantially improves customer outcomes.
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