The challenge

As a result of a surge in e-commerce activity and customer demand, a leading online retail marketplace needed to quickly expand its customer support, including monitoring transactions for fraudulent activities. It needed a partner with the resources and expertise to remotely train hundreds of associates—many who were working from home for the first time—on critical trust and safety protocols and manage obstacles such as government-mandated quarantines and lockdowns during the COVID-19 crisis.

The solution

With a track record of delivering excellent results, the client entrusted TTEC with solving this challenge as well. We immediately activated a plan to train 170 team members on critical trust and safety issues (e.g., guarding against account takeovers, chargebacks, and fraud) in a virtual contact centre environment amidst a country-wide lockdown in India.

We quickly identified training, operations, and quality assurance candidates and engaged our global training network in the Philippines which included certified trainers who would spearhead the WFH training initiative. After delivering the necessary equipment and IT assets to the team members’ homes, we collaborated with the client on identifying specific topics for a customised virtual training program that accounted for the top volume drivers to keep the training focused and increase efficiency.

And in true TTEC fashion, we maintained a partnership with the client throughout the program, adjusting sessions and exercises for topics that needed additional exposure and incorporating continuous feedback from team members and the client.

To further expedite the program, we ran 4 parallel virtual batches which were monitored and observed by program-certified training and operations leaders to assess training efficacy. We also created a succession plan for the trainers in India who shadowed and co-owned at least one batch to ensure a seamless knowledge transfer, enabling them to conduct training for the remainder of the batches and ensure business continuity.

The results

A close collaboration between the client and our team enabled us to meet our targets, earning multiple kudos from the client. All training batches went live as scheduled and we succeeded in ramping up to 170 team members in 40 days during the lockdown. The team members remained enthusiastic throughout the process and some even volunteered for additional practice sessions. In fact, remote training throughput came in at 91% compared to 88% in a brick-and-mortar contact centre.

As the Global Partner Management Head put it, “If anyone told me before this craziness started that we would have 1%, let alone 95% working from home, I would have said you guys are crazy. But yet you have done it and done it well. On top of that, we are growing with you, which should tell you what we think of the partnership and how you guys have come through.”