Providing “legendary experiences” for its customers and employees is not just a strategy at TD Bank—it’s “who we are.” It is at the heart of both the bank’s external brand and Employee Experience.
For many of TD Bank’s customers, its phone and online channels are the primary portals to that experience, supported by more than 1,200 employees in three contact centers. Over the years, the Contact Center New Hire program had gone through numerous edits and was a less-than-stellar experience for new employees. Many were overwhelmed by information overload, with little opportunity to practice before they plunged into taking live customer calls. This affected not only the quality of service they could provide, but their own confidence, as well. Unprepared to meet their performance goals, participants left at an unacceptably high rate of attrition, and the cost of recruiting and training was increasing alarmingly. A complete overhaul of the training program was needed.
Program Details
The new program focuses squarely on the Employee Experience, building confidence along with proficiency. It more closely aligns with TD Bank’s sales and service goals, and clearly links all training activities with those goals. The Contact Center New Hire program now provides an effective blend of instruction and on-the-job experiences in the earliest stages of the training. Participants acquire foundational content, but this is almost immediately combined with exposure to the real environment in which they will work. Right from the start, participants experience real customer calls, working side by side with seasoned employees, for a part of each training day. In the classroom, they then receive feedback in role-play activities, practice simulated calls, and test their growing proficiency with frequent checkpoints.
The program is based on a strong partnership between trainers and floor supervisors. Both deliver program content and share coaching duties. Seasoned employees are recruited as Ambassadors to support participants during shadowing, reverse shadowing, and their first efforts to handle real calls on their own. A sense of camaraderie and mutual support buoys participants through their transition to solo calls.
Results
This new approach already has proven its value. Participants say they are highly confident they can apply what they learned in training, at much higher levels than the previous program. Supervisors report that participants are more self-sufficient and much better equipped to meet TD Bank’s high customer service standards. The business impact is clear: The average call handling time has decreased by nearly 6 percent; participants are meeting their sales goals two months earlier than previous trainees; and sales revenue generated by the average new employee has increased by 11.3 percent over those trained in the previous year. Best of all, attrition of new employees is down 7 percent, with considerable cost savings to the bank.
The approach has been so successful that it has become a best practice for training new employees in other TD Bank groups. For example, TD Auto Finance (TDAF) faced similar challenges in its Collections New Hire program: constant change in policies and procedures, multiple system enhancements, and overwhelmed trainees. It now is successfully using the Contact Center’s learning and coaching approach in its Collections New Hire program.
