Pearson’s customer service teams handle millions of interactions every year, from students with login issues to institutions looking to purchase textbooks and digital learning tools.
But without full visibility into these conversations, the educational assessment provider found it was missing opportunities to lift customer experience and identify sales prospects. Call times were generally long, and quality monitoring was inconsistent.
To turn things around – particularly in its higher education and clinical sales divisions – Pearson teamed up with business services provider Concentrix.
“We wanted a tool to record all interactions, improve quality monitoring, and reduce our AHT [average handle time],” says Adam Miles, Global Director of Customer Success for clinical and school assessments at Pearson. “Concentrix recommended Observe.AI, and I was impressed by the benefits we could achieve through the platform.”
Full visibility into interactions
Pearson’s higher education and clinical sales divisions needed more than just anecdotal feedback to improve their customer interactions. Without comprehensive insights into agent–customer interactions, it was difficult for the team to pinpoint service gaps, sharpen sales strategies, and coach agents effectively.
By leveraging Observe.AI’s analytics capabilities, Pearson captured 100% of customer interactions. The platform tracked key moments during a call, such as long pauses, customer objections, and buying signals – enabling Pearson to better recognize trends and understand customer sentiments.
“Our initial use of the platform to analyze dead air, hold times, and other inefficiencies helped dramatically reduce AHT and improve the customer experience,” shares Miles.
Having comprehensive insights into interactions paved the way for broader improvements in the company’s sales strategies and agent performance.
“Our goal is to move from being a cost center to a profit center,” says Miles. “Observe.AI has played a key role in this transition by helping us understand and act on critical customer feedback.”
Turning conversations into sales opportunities
This deeper analysis of customer interactions has also enabled Concentrix to uncover additional sales opportunities for Pearson.
As Miles explains, “We discovered significant upsell opportunities during customer calls where orders were being placed. By analyzing these calls, we developed focused training materials with Concentrix.”
Observe.AI’s Moments proved to be valuable in identifying opportunities to offer additional products or services. This feature highlights key instances and trends in customer interactions, giving agents insights to effectively leverage upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Coaching agents for better outcomes
Rather than relying on periodic QA reviews, Pearson has now switched to a data-driven coaching model to better monitor how agents handled customer objections and rebuttals.
“We tracked whether our agents, who we call ‘champions,’ could turn these rebuttals into sales or if they ended in no sales,” says Miles. “By evaluating this data, we observed improvements in how agents handled rebuttals.”
Real-time feedback offered agents clear and actionable insights into their performance, helping them improve their approach and customer engagement. This data-driven evaluation also ensured fairness by basing decisions on complete data rather than just a sample of reviewed calls.
Increased revenue
The results speak for themselves. Pearson’s clinical assessments division initially projected $2.2 million in revenue for the first year of strategically using Observe.AI. By the end of the year, actual revenue had reached $2.7 million, higher by more than 22%.
“That was a big win for us and Pearson,” says Samir Dey, Manager for Performance Optimization at Concentrix. “This success resulted in the project being nominated for the European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards.”
Customer sentiment also improved remarkably. Negative sentiment dropped from 45% to 21–25%, largely thanks to better call handling and streamlined workflows. As a result, Pearson’s net promoter score has risen to an average of 85 points from about 60.
Expanding insights
With this success, Pearson expanded its use of Observe.AI to gather feedback on specific products. Every product now has dedicated Moments that track positive and negative customer reactions.
“This feedback is shared with our product teams, who use it to improve the customer experience,” says Miles. “We analyze this data monthly to identify trends and understand the reasons behind both positive and negative sentiments.”
What’s next
Pearson is now exploring new AI tools, such as Real-Time Agent Assist, to further increase performance with instant prompts and suggestions. Currently, agents rely on spreadsheets and static scripts.
“By adopting AI tools that suggest next steps or prompts, we expect to see substantial increases in sales revenue,” says Miles. “The combination of trained agents and real-time AI suggestions, supported by Concentrix and driven by Observe.AI, will help make us much more effective.”
