Although our client knew us for our ability to hire, train, and manage our own customer experience associates, in 2011 they asked us for help with their own employees. This multi-national communications provider asked to us develop a better way for their associates to handle high-value “triple play” customers who subscribed to voice, data, and television services. We assumed responsibility for the performance of the contact center, and initially used our client’s own trainers and materials for onboarding of their new hires.

Our client’s newly hired associates were struggling in every key service metric. We were asked to bring in the team that trains our own associates – our Learning Innovation group — to evaluate their training curriculum and delivery. We looked at new hire performance in three primary targets: customer satisfaction scores, case re-open rates, and average call handling times.

In response, our team developed a Simulated Learning program, customized for the company’s performance and quality standards. The new program allowed trainees to learn, practice, make and correct errors within a test environment that mirrored the actual live-customer environment they would graduate to. The team used data-driven analytics to identify areas of opportunity within customer interactions (frequent or repeat issues) and employee workflow (system proficiency and call handling skills). Targeted training addressed these issues, and scorecards were introduced to track performance and hold trainers accountable for the success of their trainees.

All three performance metrics saw immediate and significant gains — for the benefit of customers and employees alike. Average Handle Time (AHT) went from 21.76 minutes, past the goal of 18 minutes, and down to 15.47 minutes. The percentage of re-opened cases decreased from a high of almost 31% to just under 24%. Customers obviously responded to the improvements — customer satisfaction scores shot up more than 36%.