Digital transformation in the age of AI
In the digital-first era, even long-established institutions are evolving to provide people with new, easier ways to stay connected. Tithely was founded from just this kind of thinking: that managing a local church should be as seamless and simple as using a mobile app to place an order at Starbucks. Today, Tithely’s software provides over 37,000 churches with simple, effective, and affordable software to manage their places of worship and improve engagement with their congregations.
Joshua Greenfield, Director of Customer Success & Operations, is on the front lines of making sure every church using Tithely is getting the full value from their products. With a fully remote team, he knows firsthand how important it is for employees in support and success roles to understand what they need to be working on, when. That’s why Joshua and the team at Tithely first turned to Assembled to help them manage scheduling. Assembled’s workforce management software made putting the right person in the right place at the right time much easier and more efficient. Using Assembled WFM, the team surfaced valuable insights into the rhythm of their support function.
Digital transformation is built into Tithely’s DNA. In the same way that their software helps churches move into the new era of technology, Tithely was ready to explore the new opportunities opened by generative AI, but they didn’t want to automate away the human touch. Before jumping into choosing a technology partner, Joshua knew the first step was to get internal alignment.
I involved a task force of team members to get traction and buy it because people were scared of AI. People are wondering whether this is going to take over their jobs. First, I needed to hear their feedback and after that, I needed to get their buy in over time."
Joshua Greenfield Director of Customer Success & Operations, Tithely
Making an instant impact on handle time
The AI task force decided that the most important KPI to focus on would be reducing handle time for their cases. The next step was to choose which technology partner to work with. In a crowded landscape, Tithely wanted a partner who would help them score some quick wins while also focusing on quality in the long term. Assembled already had insights into their staff and process through their workforce management software, so Tithely felt confident that Assembled Assist was the right choice to unlock the power of next-generation AI for support.
In less than three days, Assembled Assist integrated with existing data in Tithely’s ticketing system, knowledge base, and company style guide to ensure every reply was both accurate and empathetic. After setting up these basic connectors, agents started using Assist’s copilot functionality to get quick answers and automatically draft replies.
Empowering agents and transforming their roles
Even seasoned agents found value from using Assist. Moriah Elliott, a customer success agent in Tithely’s finance department, uses Assist on 100% of customer interactions. One of Tithely’s processes is to include a helpful link in every customer interaction, and looking up the right link used to be a highly manual process. With Assist, Moriah doesn’t have to remember exact keywords or scroll through lengthy documentation for just the right answer.
When I started using Assist, I thought “Oh, my gosh! This is incredible!” Assist speeds up so much of my work and saves me a lot of headache, especially when I'm on live chats or calls. Assist can work on getting me an answer while I’m helping the customer with something else."
Moriah Elliott Customer Success, Tithely
For agents like Moriah, the real value of Assist is in how time savings add up throughout the day. Getting help with a small task may seem inconsequential, but over the course of a week, experienced employees can expect to see hours of time back. In fact, all of Tithely’s most productive agents use Assist in their day-to-day workflows.
Assist has helped transform agents’ roles, empowering the most effective agents into resources for their peers. Now, those employees are helping train their colleagues on the benefits of using AI to super-power their support processes. Moriah and other top-performers record videos of their workflows so every team member can shadow them and see how they stack up their efficiencies with Assist.
Skyrocketing productivity and putting AI on autopilot
Tithely’s support team focused their efforts on the KPI of lowering handle time, and the efforts have paid off. Average handle time for their most productive agents improved 11% for email and 26% for chat, but the impact didn’t stop there. Agents who used Assist the most improved their productivity even more than the rest of the team, increasing cases solved of 23% for email and 205% for chat.
Joshua and his team continue to partner with Assembled to identify new opportunities to make the support process more efficient. And the rest of the Tithely team is finding new ways to leverage AI. David Barker, Operations Specialist at Tithely, has started designing his own automations in Assist, including a workflow to check in with users whose NPS ratings are below a certain threshold.
With Assist, Tithely makes sure every customer feels heard and served, so they can put the focus where it needs to be: connecting with their church communities.
Products used: Workforce management, Assist
