U-Haul delivers on what customers ask for.

When customer feedback signaled, U-Haul partnered with Mindful to provide a choice at every touchpoint.

• Headquartered

  Arizona

• Industry

  Moving & Storage

• Agent Count

  1,900

• Yearly Call Volume

  +17.8M

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“I can’t believe this—I waited on hold for SO long and the hold music was terrible!” This is the immediate feedback nearly every agent at U-Haul would hear upon answering the phone.

Customer venting was taking a hefty toll. Conversations would start negatively, creating an uphill battle for agents to turn the interaction positive. Worse, it added vital seconds to handle time. For a brand like U-Haul, and its contact center, which handles more than 17.8M calls per year, that time adds up quickly.

To transform the customer experience, Evan Johnson was brought in as the Vice President of the Contact Center. Long-time U-Haul employee, first-time manager of a contact center, Evan walked in on day one with the goal to identify and overcome the most significant challenges the contact center was facing.

Taking efficient action, Evan identified where customers and agents were most unhappy, took quick steps to launch solutions, and eliminated caller frustration while improving agent efficiency with Mindful.

Customers expect a hold time alternative.

Operating a team of 1,900+ agents, Evan had a deep pool of feedback. By surveying and listening to front-line staff, he discovered very quickly nearly every agent was experiencing customer venting due to long hold times.

Recognizing a great agent experience will foster a better customer experience, Evan saw hold time as a glaring opportunity for improvement. The team mobilized and began seeking solutions.

Option 1: go with a “free” feature.

When it comes to callback solutions, there are plenty of providers with features built in directly to the CCaaS or ACD platform. As many others do, Evan’s team started with this option.

“We tried to leverage our telephony system’s out-of-the-box solution. Even with significant time and effort invested, it was not successful—there was too much volatility when we were connecting with customers if we even did. This, paired with a lack of visibility to measure our success, created even more hardship.”

With millions of calls per year, this lack of precision wasn’t going to cut it. Ultimately, the feature add-on didn’t meet the primary goal of letting customers save their spot in line and receive a callback when an agent was available.

Option 2: go with an enterprise callback solution.

In just two months, the Mindful and U-Haul teams worked diligently to deploy Mindful Callback on all queues. Mindful’s deployment team worked in lockstep to dial in precisely the right settings to meet customer and agent expectations.

The change was immediately noticed—feedback about long hold times vanished.

“A successful virtual queue wasn’t just for our agents—it’s the customer’s expectation with any company to not have to wait on hold,” Evan explained. “We weren’t meeting customers where we wanted them to be met, rather we were meeting customers where they expected and deserved to be met.”

U-Haul wasn’t satisfied, though, as the next step was to offer Mindful’s Second Chance Callback to callers who initially said “no.” This dialed up the impact even higher, as 90% of callers who were offered a Second Chance Callback accepted.

The results? In one-year, Mindful removed 30+ million minutes of caller queue time—the equivalent to 57 years. The reduction in queue time also lowered toll fees by an estimated $453K and raised service levels by over 15%.

“Mindful Callback has been a complete game-changer for U-Haul Company. In the event our team isn’t immediately available, we can provide flexibility so customers aren’t inconvenienced and can go about their day until our team is finished assisting other families. By taking care of our customers, and focusing on their experience, we’ve seen an increase in CSAT, NPS, and other operational metrics.”

Customers also expect convenience online.

Addressing and eliminating hold time immediately relieved customer frustrations. It also freed Evan to return to his original goal of identifying and correcting the most glaring opportunities the contact center was facing.

“There are many customers who still want to talk to a live representative,” Evan shared, talking through the next area he focused on. “Moving can be stressful and our agents are tremendous at providing help and certainty.”

With this in mind, Evan saw an opportunity to bridge their digital and voice channels. U-Haul launched Mindful Scheduler in the footer of Uhaul.com to offer customers a clear bridge to speak with an agent.

Click-to-call improves every aspect of a call.

“We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to contact us via phone call, should a customer desire.”

It’s never been more convenient than today, with Mindful Scheduler. Customers are able to remain in their web session and schedule a call whenever is best for them.

Evan elaborates, “If a customer still has questions after attempting to use our self-service offerings, the last thing the customer wants to do is pick up the phone, navigate the IVR, only to end up waiting on hold. Even without the hold, it’s a frustrating and inconvenient process. Plus, all customers aren’t always familiar with the vernacular used.”

Click-to-call with Mindful Scheduler avoids all of that. With the use of Mindful Scheduler Intents, U-Haul was able to route the caller to the right team the first time and schedule the call when best for customers. Mindful made sure the call was connected and flowed easily into agent queues, at the time promised.

Customers love this level of convenience. Evan loves it, too, as ASA takes a major cut when IVRs are removed from the equation, making online-generated calls breeze by every SLA.

Quick wins start—and increase—with feedback.

Your customers are talking and providing a gold mine of feedback. Sometimes, all it takes is listening and acting.

“It boils down to listening to customers and listening to agents,” Evan sums up perfectly.” Listen to the customer and they’ll tell you what they want more or less of.”

It’s this listening that is leading U-Haul to invest even more in the customer experience through their mobile app. The U-Haul App provides customers with convenience and personalization of products and services to meet their needs now and in the future. This design will ensure they’re leveraging technology to help customers have the most frictionless experience.

Evan and his team know digital interactions are key to convenience, and as the broader organization continues to lean into improving that user experience, Evan knows the future is bright for each and every U-Haul customer to have a successful, stress-free move!