This manufacturer enjoys a well-earned reputation as an automotive customer service leader. The automaker’s dedication to a customer-centric culture permeates every aspect of product manufacturing and support – from slowing production during a record sales period to focus on product quality, to offering a program during the U.S. recession that allowed unemployed owners to return their car if needed. The focus is on customer happiness. The company knows that superior service is delivered through superior people, and wanted a way to continuously improve the ability of its associates to respond quickly and accurately to customers. We were engaged to design and deliver a solution that would a) increase speed-to-performance for trainees, and b) provide more insight to management around training effectiveness and individual employee growth.

Our solution was a holistic blend of interactive technology and custom content, designed around the client’s core operational metrics. Learners would listen to call scenarios, map the process, and use social learning tools to comment on the quality of instruction in real-time. Feedback from the learners helped the company refine the training to maximise the positive impacts to the customer experience. Role-playing scenarios were monitored, recorded and evaluated, and personalised coaching sessions gave one-on-one guidance about the previous day’s performance. A cloud-based call routing system helped us evaluate learners and feed customer experience data back into the Learning Management System (LMS). This approach created a constant refinement and communication loop that improved curricula – which in turn improved the performance of learners. Results were tied back into our LearnPoint system, a reporting tool for management teams that tracks individual employee data from pre-hire through training to production performance and assessment.

The customer experience improved in both directions – average handle time went down 17.6 percent, and customer satisfaction went up 32.6 percent. The solution was recognised by the Brandon Hall group with a Gold service award for “Best Use of Blended Learning,” and a Silver award for overall results.