New Leaf: Scaling Customer Operations Where Every Interaction Matters

About New Leaf

New Leaf Service Contracts Inc. provides extended service plans for critical home systems. When products fail, customers reach out with urgent needs and high expectations. Every interaction directly impacts customer satisfaction. As demand for digital-first customer experiences has grown, New Leaf has expanded service volume while maintaining strict service standards.

Operational Context

Post-COVID labor shifts made in-office hiring challenging in key markets. New Leaf operates a multi-location customer operations model that requires operational resilience, nearshore in-office staffing, and consistent quality assurance across sites. The partnership works because The Functionary's teams are embedded into daily operations through an integrated leadership cadence and structured performance standards, strengthening service consistency while maintaining cost discipline.

Challenge

New Leaf operates in a high-pressure environment. “Customers call us when something has gone wrong and need our help,” says Martin Cuellar, Sr. Director of Operations.

To protect customer experience, New Leaf made deliberate operating choices:

• Multi-location operations for resiliency
• In-office teams to protect culture and accountability
• Nearshore staffing to manage cost without lowering standards

As hiring conditions shifted, scaling in-office teams became harder at the same time demand was increasing. Maintaining consistent service across locations required a more resilient operating model.

New Leaf needed:

• In-office talent at scale
• Operational redundancy
• A quality center of excellence (COE) across locations
• Cost discipline without service degradation

Solution

New Leaf partnered with The Functionary as an embedded operating extension. Rather than running isolated call centers, The Functionary helped build a multi-location customer operations center of excellence across multiple sites.

Key Components

Embedded Integration

• Supervisors sit inside New Leaf’s management structure
• Shared weekly operating cadence
• Same recognition and performance standards as internal staff

In-Office Nearshore Talent

• Recruiting and management owned by The Functionary
• Stable pipeline of high-quality staff
• Local leadership aligned to New Leaf culture

Structured Quality Assurance

• Dedicated QA function
• Scores improved from 10–15 points below internal teams to full parity
• Standardized oversight across locations

Today, The Functionary supports New Leaf across customer service and back-office functions.

Critical KPIs

Key performance metrics from the New Leaf customer operations partnership.

• Quality: ~92% and trending upward
• Utilization: Increased from ~80% to 85% in three months
• Staff Stability: Clear internal promotion paths
• Cost Efficiency: High-quality nearshore staffing at lower cost per interaction

Summary

New Leaf built a resilient, multi-location customer operations model without sacrificing service culture or quality.

By embedding disciplined teams and structured QA inside the operation, The Functionary helped New Leaf scale while maintaining control, consistency, and cost discipline.