The challenge

GE Healthcare needed to change the way it trained new associates hired to staff a customer service line that nurses and engineers called with inquiries about the company’s medical devices. Associates handled calls for four lines of business – but they were only trained on one line of business at a time, meaning they had to later be cross-trained on the others.

The approach typically took 40 days of class time plus months of additional on-the-job training to get associates up to speed. Compounding the problem, inconsistency among associates’ skillsets led to frustrating experiences for callers. If someone called with a question about GE Healthcare’s diagnostic imaging products, for instance, and the associate who answered wasn’t yet trained in that line of business, the caller was sent back into a queue to wait for someone who could help. First call resolution rates suffered.

Our solution

TTEC’s Learning and Performance team worked with the company to create a universal associate curriculum that combined all four lines of business under one umbrella of training. We worked with the company to ensure that all training content flowed well from one line of business to another.

The curriculum was designed to be interactive, agile, and accommodate different learning styles. It included gamified courses, self-paced learning, on-demand videos, guided demonstrations, and AI-powered role-playing.

The results

Training across all four lines of business became faster and more efficient with our universal curriculum. The 40-day training program was reduced to 25 days.

The new curriculum has cut the time new associates spend in class training by 38%. In addition, the contact center’s error rate fell to 0.05%, against a benchmark of 0.25%, within four months.

Associates’ speed to proficiency under the new training is less than 30 days total, and their quality scores and error rates are similar to more-tenured associates. Associates’ average quality score is 92.2%.

Burgoyne Hughes, senior manager at GE Healthcare, said he is particularly impressed with associates’ speed to proficiency. Our team continues to track results and, based on our early successes, GE Healthcare plans to adapt this learning model to other lines of business.