Rather than focusing strictly on the do’s and don’ts of customer service, health-care and transportation management company MTM Inc.’s customer service training program blends state-of-the-art technology and person-centric approaches to achieve results for its clients. Through the use of role-play, call observation scoring, y-jacking, mock calls, and type/talk exercises, learners gain firsthand understanding of the customer’s perspective.
Program Details
Emphasizing sensitivity, the customer service training program begins on day one in the classroom, and teaches learners soft skills to effectively manage difficult calls on their own. Beginning in the classroom with the trainer, learners use call observation score sheets to rate recorded calls and calibrate their findings. This process gives learners an opportunity to view calls from the quality monitoring perspective and aligns them with performance expectations. Then, MTM’s extensive role-playing approach pairs new hires with tenured representatives to listen to their calls while scoring on the observation sheet. This is known as a “y-jacking” process. This practice is used a minimum of five times throughout the initial two-week classroom period, and follows key service teachings to reinforce the learning. When learners return to the classroom from this activity, they discuss their observations and relate them to the material they have learned up to that point.
Near the end of the classroom training period, learners begin to take practice phone calls conducted by a senior representative. This mock-call experience gives a full workday of practice calls to new hires, and is followed up with a coaching session at the end of the day. This process prepares learners for real-life scenarios when they transition to the phone call phase of training, called “nesting.” At this point, learners have had several hours of call observation scoring, listening to actual live calls, and practicing through role-play scenarios.
The final step in customer service training is to transition learners to the nesting phase, where they are paired with a tenured representative for the talk/type exercise. This process gradually eases learners into the service aspect of MTM by allowing them to focus first on real-time hard skills and computer navigation. Once learners become comfortable with the type portion, they transition to the talking, while the tenured representative does the typing. The final part of the talk/type day progresses to learners actively taking and managing the calls on their own, with the tenured representative available to coach as needed.
Results
Incorporating customer service training from day one by introducing new hires to the MTM culture, teaching specific service subjects in the classroom, and using extensive role-play began in one MTM call center location. After its success, it since has become a best practice at all nine call center locations as it has increased training satisfaction scores to 93 percent satisfied or above.
