David Grant:
Thank you, everyone, for watching and listening to this customer spotlight. My name is David Grant, and I’m a Customer Success Manager at AMC Technology. I’ve been with AMC for nearly six years, starting on the new business side, where I worked on closing new customers. One of the last customers I worked with before transitioning to customer success was CAA Club Group. We’ve done a lot of great work together, and I’m excited to be joined today by Kevin, who will share how AMC and our DaVinci Toolkit have supported CAA. Kevin, could you introduce yourself?

Kevin Mak:
Thank you, David. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. My name is Kevin Mak, and I’m a supervisor in the membership department at CAA Club Group. This year marks my 10th anniversary with CAA. I started on the frontlines, taking calls as an agent, so I have a strong understanding of day-to-day operations and what we’re looking to improve. One of our latest initiatives has been our partnership with AMC and the implementation of DaVinci Technology. I’m happy to discuss that further today.

David Grant:
Excellent. This is our first customer spotlight, but we don’t want it to be the last. We’re looking forward to speaking with more customers to learn how they use the DaVinci Toolkit. Every organization has unique use cases, and DaVinci’s flexibility allows for customization that enhances their experience.

From CAA’s perspective, I know you weren’t directly involved in the pre-sales process, but I worked closely with your colleagues. They were focused on achieving measurable time savings and improving customer satisfaction by modernizing the contact center experience. Given your background as a call center agent, could you share some insight into the services CAA provides? What are the main reasons people call?

Kevin Mak:
Absolutely. CAA’s core service is roadside assistance. It’s a trusted brand in Canada—if you ask someone who they’d call for a tow or emergency roadside help, CAA is usually the first name that comes to mind. Across the federation, we have over six million members. CAA Club Group specifically serves South Central Ontario and the municipal regions, with over 2.5 million members.

Our agents handle roadside assistance calls, input service requests, and dispatch trucks to help members stuck on highways or dealing with car trouble at home. Since CAA operates on a membership model, we also handle a lot of membership-related inquiries, such as renewals, address updates, and questions about member benefits and discounts. While memberships can be purchased online or over the phone, the phone channel remains one of our primary service channels.

David Grant:
That’s interesting. Have you ever had to call CAA for help yourself?

Kevin Mak:
Not since I started working here, but my family has been CAA members for years. Growing up, I was familiar with the brand but didn’t fully understand everything CAA offered. I remember seeing tow trucks on the highway and the CAA sticker on my mom’s car. Once, I ran out of gas while driving her car, and I knew to call CAA. It was a great first experience with the service.

David Grant:
That’s great. In the U.S., we don’t have CAA, but I’ve used roadside assistance before. One time, on my way home for Christmas break, I got a flat tire on the interstate. My friends joke that they would’ve changed the tire themselves, but I called AAA instead, and I don’t regret it.

Kevin Mak:
For our American friends, CAA is essentially the Canadian equivalent of AAA.

David Grant:
Got it. Would you say roadside assistance makes up the majority of the calls you receive?

Kevin Mak:
Absolutely. Roadside assistance generates the highest call volume, especially during harsh Canadian winters. For example, last month, we experienced a polar vortex and snowstorms, which significantly increased call volume. Our call center activity is highly seasonal, with winter being the busiest time.

David Grant:
That makes sense. It also explains why CAA would want to improve the agent and customer experience, particularly for these interactions. Most people calling roadside assistance aren’t in a great mood, so reducing handle time and improving efficiency can make a big difference. Faster authentication and screen pops that provide customer details instantly help streamline the process.

You use SAP CRM alongside the DaVinci Toolbar, which functions as a softphone rather than SAP’s built-in toolbar. One challenge your team aimed to solve was making call transfers smoother so the next agent has immediate access to customer details. While many organizations deal with transfers, your case is unique because the person on the other end of the call is often stranded on the roadside. Ensuring the right account is linked is critical.

On the roadside side of operations, your team uses a custom in-house CRM, which we collaborated with your development team to integrate. Could you share more about how that process has impacted your operations?

Kevin Mak:
Your technology, DaVinci, is used not only for membership, but we also use it for roadside as of late 2023. And now we’re also using it for travel as of late last year. So for all those combined for Q4 of last year, the average savings was 40 seconds per call.

David Grant:
Travel, yeah.
When you were working as a call center employee—I’ve never asked you this before, so for anybody listening, there’s no prep here, but…

Kevin Mak:
There’s no script.

David Grant:
There’s no script here.
Do you remember offhand how many calls you were taking a day? Were you working on the membership side then?

Kevin Mak:
Oh yeah, I would say anywhere from 50 to 70 calls a day. Just from my end, yeah.

David Grant:
That’s a lot of phone calls.
Do you have any recollection about how much time on average you were spending per call?

Kevin Mak:
Yeah. And again, this is where I speak from experience when I talk about members needing time to find a car sometimes, ’cause I heard those calls personally. It can take anywhere from—depending on the nature of the call—you can take anywhere from 5 minutes on average. We kind of want that to be our sweet spot, a little bit over 5 minutes at least for the membership support side, where I’m from.

David Grant:
OK.

Kevin Mak:
On average, some of them can take longer if it’s related to a more complex sale or process.
Although typically, we are in and out very fast. Again, we want to get them in there, get the trucks out, and help them as soon as possible.

David Grant:
That makes a lot of sense.
Now, when you were doing this—when you were taking calls yourself—you didn’t have something like DaVinci handling those calls, right? You were looking…

Kevin Mak:
No, we did not.

David Grant:
You were looking up customers manually, am I correct?

Kevin Mak:
Correct.

David Grant:
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a great time to me. So I’m very grateful and thankful that CAA found us and that I got that email from your coworker, Voytek, so I could spread the good word about DaVinci.

Kevin Mak:
For sure.

David Grant:
Before we hit record, Kevin, you let me know that you guys are actually looking to add more to what you’re already doing with DaVinci today.
So for anyone listening—CAA is primarily using the DaVinci Toolkit for inbound calling: screen pop, shortening average handle time, giving agents confidence that they’re talking to the right person.
I’m sure there’s some outbound, but it probably pales in comparison to inbound, right?

Kevin Mak:
Right.

David Grant:
So, beyond those use cases, what is next in your path toward creating a better agent and customer experience?

Kevin Mak:
Yeah, great question. I literally just mentioned this right before the recording, so it’s new to you guys as well.

David Grant:
I’m gonna be as surprised as anyone listening. I love this.

Kevin Mak:
Right. So first of all, we’re always looking for ways to better the member experience. We’re always looking to improve efficiency.
One of the first things we’re looking to do is auto logon. I think we mentioned this before—single sign-on to make sure our agents are consistent and we’re leveraging technology as much as possible.
From there, you mentioned earlier about transfers and time savings during transfer calls.
We’re also looking to see if we can improve the verification process from the get-go.
Doesn’t even have to be a transfer. Are there ways we can partner with you to find a solution that makes verification easier for frontline agents—or even take it completely out of their hands and automate it with technology?

David Grant:
Yes.
That’s a great idea, Kevin.
We’ve worked with customers on use cases like this before, and there are a lot of different ways you can solve it.
Verification is especially important with industries like financial services where it’s a tier-one priority.
One trend is voice biometrics, but with the advent of AI, there are also newer options we’re exploring.

We’ve started a sandboxing engagement with another customer, and that might be something I’d recommend for CAA too.
AMC would take on the burden of investigation, exploration, and basic testing for different technologies in our own environments.
Once we narrow it down, we’d show you a demo of what we recommend.

At that point, you could say, “This is awesome,” or “This doesn’t meet our needs”—and either one is okay because we’d all still learn a lot.
But ideally, you’d say, “Let’s test it in our environment,” and then we’d work with you to fine-tune it and roll it into production.

That’s the engagement model we use with customers who are trailblazing new changes.
There are so many ways to solve these problems, and we want to recommend what works best for you.

Kevin Mak:
That sounds great, David.
We definitely need to chat more about what you can demo for us. Maybe it can help us reach our goals around efficiency and the member experience.

David Grant:
And for anyone listening—take what I say with a grain of salt. I’m not a technical person.
I know just enough to get myself in trouble, but I feel pretty confident about what I just said to Kevin.

Kevin Mak:
Wonderful.

David Grant:
Kevin, this was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed talking to you about CAA and the different ways you’re working to solve your use cases and improve the customer experience.
Any parting thoughts for our listeners or viewers?
Any car safety tips you want to share?

Kevin Mak:
Definitely drive safe during the wintertime!
And just keep doing what you’re doing—thank you for having me today.

David Grant:
Love it. Thanks, Kevin.