The challenge

A leading U.S. health and wellness company prided itself on being a supportive resource for its members along their wellness journey. Members called into the contact center for answers to questions about program pricing, lifestyle information and tips, and membership account support.

However, customer feedback identified that some customers felt unsupported, anonymous, or disconnected from the company when they called the contact center. Root cause analysis determined that offshore contact center associates had trouble relating to the lifestyle issues that U.S. members were calling about. As a result, they were not confident enough to communicate empathy and build rapport.

Beyond just operational metrics, the company realized that associates need to understand the member point of view in order to connect with them on a personal level and create a good customer experience. They needed help understanding members’ struggles and acknowledging their successes.

Our solution

Our team modified associate learning and development to provide rapid cultural immersion into U.S. health and wellness issues. We developed a range of new learning services to educate, engage, and inspire associates so that they could rapidly become company advocates.

For example, a new course was developed on basics of North American culture, including values and cultural norms, time zones, states, and capitals. We then created a cultural immersion course about the client company that included its history, values, and detail about the health and lifestyle business. Associates learned about what sports are popular, how members phrase questions, what slang they use, and basic facts about the government and society that might be mentioned in conversation.

The team took a Discover Learning approach to immerse and engage people. This meant that curriculum included videos for visual learning, as well as hands-on activities for associates to find relevant information themselves in the knowledgebase. In addition, we employed Real Play learning where the students took simulated calls to help them practice their new skills.

The new resources were incorporated into the standard new-hire training program.

The results

In the year following the curriculum changes, the client saw dramatic improvements around handle time and member satisfaction, and in feedback from the members calling in. Customers felt more satisfied that they were talking to someone who was really there to support them.

Standout results included:

• Issue resolution increased to 88%, up from 80%
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) increased from 68 to 80
• First call resolution (FCR) increased from 85% to 91%

Such impressive results prove that the human touch — soft skills like empathy and compassion — plays a vital role in the operational success of a contact center.