Customer Story

Contact Center Cuts Employee Training Time By 75%

How this BPO used the ScreenSteps knowledge ops platform and Find & Follow Training to cut Time-to-Proficiency from 60 days to just 15 days.

The Short Version

The short version (TL;DR)

Industry: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Challenge: 60-day average Time-to-Proficiency for new agents.

Solution: Find & Follow Training and interactive knowledge resources to remove the need for memorization.

Results: 15-day Time-to-Proficiency for new agents (75% reduction).

"It used to take about 60 days before call agents felt confident handling the full spectrum of customer calls. Now, after only 15 days of being hired, new call agents can handle any call. It's awesome. We are so thrilled."

Stephanie
Contact Center Training Manager

Call Center Reduces Time-to-Proficiency by 75%

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See How They Did It

The Company

Customer Support BPO

The contact center is a BPO (business process outsourcer) for customer support calls. They bring on new clients year-round, which means they are hiring and training new call agents on a regular basis. Their goal was to train confident & independent call agents who can provide a great customer experience with little to no hold time.

The Challenge

Ineffective Training Program Led to a 60-Day Time-to-Proficiency

The BPO always had a three-week training program. Two weeks in the classroom and one week on the floor. But, they noticed agents weren't confident coming out of training.

Stephanie, the Contact Center Training Manager, noticed that call agents weren't retaining much of what was covered during classroom training. Time and time again, new agents would take a call, put it on hold, and then ask the person next to them what to do.

Because of that, they found it took at least 60 days before new call agents felt confident handling the full spectrum of customer calls.

Stephanie's challenge was to make her classroom training more effective so that new agents could hit the floor confident and proficient.

"For some of the more involved calls, agents would just shudder because they didn’t want to take those calls. They just didn’t know how to handle them very well."

Stephanie
Contact Center Training Manager

The Solution

The ScreenSteps Knowledge Ops Solution

Stephanie recognized that when new employees are hired, they have a lot to learn. It's not realistic for them to remember everything they are shown during training. So, Stephanie decided to take a different approach. That's when she invested in ScreenSteps.

Interactive Digital Guides

Instead of expecting new agents to memorize everything, she created interactive call flows and troubleshooting guides in the ScrenSteps knowledge ops platform.

Now, agents (new and tenured) can search the knowledge base to find the answer to any call they get.

Find & Follow Training

Next, Stephanie revamped the classroom training to feel more like on-the-job training, using the Find & Follow Framework.

Days one and two in the classroom consist of an overview of the systems and how to use ScreenSteps. Then, the real training begins.

Days three through ten involve practicing real-life scenarios with the new agents. Trainers pepper the agents with real-life scenarios, ask them to find the answer in ScreenSteps, and then discuss it.

After that, agents spent five days on the floor within arms reach of a supervisor.

"Now, in training, I’m not focused on getting agents to memorize anything––I’m anti-memorization. The goal is for new agents to be able to find the answers in ScreenSteps and use them appropriately. That’s what I’m training them to do."

Stephanie
Contact Center Training Manager

The Results

15 Day Time-to-Proficiency

By integrating ScreenSteps into their training & performance support process, agents now reach proficiency within 15 days of being hired, a significant improvement from the previous 60-day timeline.

Before, agents struggled with complex calls even after weeks of training. With ScreenSteps, they confidently handle all call types early on, including the more involved ones, and by day 45, they are considered experts.

Key metrics like handle time, talk time, and hold time have all improved across the board.

Stephanie is an amazing trainer and a fantastic technical writer. ScreenSteps gave her the tools she needed to revamp her new-hire training so that agents could do their jobs better and provide an amazing customer experience over the phone.

"With ScreenSteps, new agents don’t seem to have any calls that they shudder with. They feel confident handling any type of call within the first 15 days of being hired, and by day 45 they are pretty much experts.

Handle time is down, talk time is down, hold time is down...the metrics across the board are a lot better than they used to be."

Stephanie
Contact Center Training Manager

Improve training & operations at your contact center today with a knowledge ops solution

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