Newspapers and contact centers may seem like old-school communications. But both media, when applied correctly (apologies for the forthcoming bad pun), keeping with and in anticipation of the times, can be relevant, informative, and helpful for their audience.
And today, more than ever, in our chaotic, anxious, and angst-riddled environment, embedded with deepfakes and fake news, having strong independent journalism is essential.
That means newspapers especially, having to cost-effectively provide excellent support to their customers. Specifically, the print and digital subscribers who pay the bills: both directly through their fees and indirectly by viewing advertising and patronizing those businesses.
The Seattle Times, headquartered in Seattle, Wash., is a long-established, well-respected, locally owned news media organization. One that, in keeping with its market being the home of several of the planet’s leading technology companies, is digital as well as print.
According to Comscore, The Seattle Times is the most-visited local digital news source in Washington State. So how has it managed to do just that amidst both high inflation and expenses, and equally towering customer expectations for excellent service?
Tamara Galván 
Matt Ayton To find out, we had a virtual conversation with Tamara Galván, Circulation Customer Service and Department Manager, and Matt Ayton, Call Center Manager, The Seattle Times.
Tamara answered the questions in the main part of the article while Matt provided information for it and in the accompanying BOX on remote agents.
Q. Tell me The Seattle Times story.
The Seattle Times is one of the few independent and locally owned news media organizations in the U.S. We are multimedia with 47% digital and 53% print subscribers.
Alden J. Blethen purchased the paper in 1896 (it originated as the the Seattle Press-Times, a four-page newspaper founded in 1891 with a daily circulation of 3,500). It was renamed the Seattle Daily Times and its circulation doubled within half a year.
By 1915, the circulation was around 70,000 and today the paper is still owned by the Blethen family and is now led by the fourth and fifth generations (Frank Blethen, Publisher and Ryan Blethen, Associate Publisher).
The Seattle Times has a strong history of independent public-service journalism and continues to serve the Northwest with principled, quality journalism dedicated to the highest journalistic standards. We tell uniquely local stories you won’t find anywhere else: stories that have been recognized nationally for their exceptional depth and impact and have been the winner of 11 Pulitzer Prizes.
At the same time, Seattletimes.com is the most-visited digital information source in Washington State. More than 1.9 million adults in the Puget Sound turn to The Seattle Times each month for vetted news and information that is timely, relevant, and easy to access in multi-platform experiences.
The Seattle Times is a pioneer among news media organizations, creating innovative funding models for public-service journalism initiatives that improve our community.
We are a national leader in developing community funding for high-impact journalism projects that tackle urgent community issues head-on and create change. Our in-depth, solutions-based reporting has changed public funding and policy and resulted in action at the highest levels of state government.
Q. What is the function of your contact center?
Our contact center provides support to our customers and assists them with resolving delivery, billing, technical, and any other issues they may have, and does so in a timely and seamless manner, which helps us improve customer retention. We manage these interactions across multiple channels: IVR, calls, chat, email, etc.
Our contact center is a mix of in-house (five reps) and outsourced at Alorica (25 reps). Alorica handles the initial contact for all subscribers and there are certain situations or subscriber issues where they escalate to our in-house reps. Alorica has been our call center vendor for about 20 years.
“When people are having issues that they want resolved, they want to speak to a live person.”
We also do outbound call campaigns that focus on customers with a high hazard score (a weighted measurement of number of contacts, complaints, open cases, etc. on a customer account), within a one-week period for the daily edition and a two-week period for the Sunday edition.
These calls are to ensure that the customers’ concerns and issues have been resolved to their liking and are not ongoing.
Q. Speaking of digital, why continue with voice and live agents in a tech-savvy market like Seattle?
First and foremost, our commitment is to our customers. When people are having issues that they want resolved, they want to speak to a live person. They want and need to know that someone is listening, cares, and is going to ultimately solve whatever issue they are calling about.
Q. What were the needs that you had and what action did you take?
Our first need was with our customer contact technologies, which had a CRM integration with Salesforce. Our old vendor didn’t have capabilities we needed. So, in 2016, we moved digital subscribers and, in April 2017, print subscribers from our old vendor to VoicePort.
Q. I understand that you had a circulation change. Could you discuss its impact on customer service and the contact center?
This was our second need. Our print subscriptions have continued to decline, but we have managed to stabilize these numbers, including in areas affected by the shift to mail delivery.
“Customer experience is at the heart of what we do at The Seattle Times. We partner with vendors and service providers that believe that too...”
Our revenue remains strong [however] due largely to our digital subscription growth. We have 94,000 digital subscribers, ranking us among the highest in regional metros.
Obviously with less circulation, specifically print customers, this means fewer calls. But more importantly, our service levels are among the best in the business, which means fewer complaints and therefore less call volume.
Q. What methods/solutions and vendor(s) did you select and why?
Initially, due to our circulation system change, we just needed a new IVR. VoicePort was able to add a couple of other products (soft phone system and messaging) as we discovered other improvements that we needed to make to our customer service process.
This was just done through conversations with VoicePort. Customer experience is at the heart of what we do at The Seattle Times. We partner with vendors and service providers that believe that too, so advocating for a solution that helps us realize that vision isn’t usually too challenging.
Q. What were the goals that you set out?
We had several specific ones:
- Better and real-time call monitoring and coaching of agents.
- Integrated automation with IVR and later our chatbot for improved self-service for complaints, credits, and other routine transactions to reduce hold times and free up agents for more complex calls/issues.
- Cost savings: cloud based versus physical phone hardware, automation.
- Improved reporting/performance metrics.
- Improved work-from-home (WFH) capabilities (See BOX).
Q. Outline the process. Can you provide any details, like on deployment, training?
We began the process in April 2023 because VoicePort, which was now Enghouse (Ed. Note: Enghouse acquired VoicePort in 2022), was upgrading its software. This included an extensive IVR questionnaire for the initial deployment.
We trained, and since then, we continue to regularly train our points of contact with our customers, including thorough documentation, training sessions, call observations, and optimization to ensure we’re serving them in the best ways possible.
Q. What have been the results and how did they compare with the goals?
Our overall goals were to continue to serve our customers as we had done in the past, while addressing the new circumstances and environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic, like our switch to a 100% remote call center (also see BOX). The Enghouse upgrade enabled us to meet them.
Q. Where do your innovations go from here?
We’re exploring more ways to allow our subscribers to handle their subscription issues through self-service.
“...we continue to regularly train our points of contact with our customers...”
Q. What are your recommendations to other news media contact centers that are looking to follow in your footsteps?
Maintain close relationships with vendors through regular face-to-face meetings and communication.
Switching to Remote
The Seattle, Washington metro area was reportedly one of the first in the U.S. to be hit by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. And The Seattle Times, as with many other employers, quickly switched to remote/work-from-home (WFH).
“We had to quickly adapt in a matter of days/weeks to set up our Seattle call center as well as our Alorica call center so that our reps could work safely from home,” recounts Tamara Galván.
“This meant transitioning quickly to soft phones, setting up a temporary volunteer call center made up of various employees from departments across the company, and providing our agents with work laptops and other necessary equipment, like noise cancelling headphones, mice, keyboards, and stand-up desks. All to enable their work-from-home transition. We provided ISP subsidies as well.”
There were challenges, as would have been expected. “We did not have enough work laptops for everyone,” says Tamara. “Those who had personal laptops they could use did so until our IT department could order enough for our entire employee base that needed one to conduct business.”
To help out, some of The Seattle Times’ non-contact center employees volunteered as agents to help staff the phones.
“These employees really enjoyed it,” adds Matt Ayton. “We talk about the priorities of serving readers, but it is often a rarity for employees to engage readers so directly. We maintained high service levels but were relieved to transition back to skilled live agents to serve customers.”
With the end of the pandemic many employers have moved back to the office either entirely or on a hybrid basis.
But The Seattle Times chose to stay with remote agents, though many of its non-contact center staff returned to the office. To ensure the long-term success of remote working, it sought improved WFH capabilities and obtained them when it upgraded its Enghouse contact center solution in 2023.
“We needed software to allow agents to work effectively remotely, improving flexibility and reducing office space requirements,” says Matt.
The SEATTLE TIMES AT A GLANCE
Number of agents
--30 agents
Percentage in-house versus outsourced
--16% in-house and 84% outsourced
Volume (last year available)
--About 306,000 customer interactions between calls, chats (SMS), and emails
Inbound/outbound split
--99% inbound and 1% outbound
Inbound channel split
--228,000 calls
--41,600 emails
--36,500 chats (SMS)
On-premise/home office split
--100% WFH
Key technologies used
--Enghouse multichannel IVR and automated cloud contact center
--Salesforce CRM