Case Study: US Airways achieves faster agent onboarding and reduced handle time with NICE Systems’ Merced Performance Manager

US Airways - Customer Case Study

US Airways, a major carrier operating more than 3,200 daily flights and serving roughly 80 million passengers a year, brought its inbound calling back onshore and hired several hundred new contact-center agents. The airline needed to cut average handle time (AHT), speed up onboarding, improve compliance and agent engagement, but its home-grown performance tools made individual coaching slow and error-prone.

US Airways implemented NICE Merced Performance Manager (branded internally as “Compass”) to consolidate data from WFM, call recording and ACD systems and give agents and supervisors real-time visibility. The solution enabled self-monitoring and targeted coaching, drove a 10-second reduction in AHT, shortened time-to-productivity from nine to five months, achieved high agent login rates (≈80%), improved compliance toward 93–95% goals and lifted quality scores—especially for lower-performing agents.

US Airways

Melody Niese

Director of Reservations Planning and Analysis, US Airways