The Problem
An international insurance company maintained a multi-discipline call center with a rotating staff of representatives. As new employees were brought in and existing ones retrained, there arose a need for a faster, monitorable, and sandboxed training suite.
However, the current suite of applications used was from a mixture of external vendors, as well as the dedicated in-house development team. This caused inconsistent training, with part of the training including real-world calls.
The Solution
Initial Design
The initial design was for a series of pixel-perfect, web-based recreations of the existing desktop apps. These training apps would enable employees to learn and experiment freely without risking production data.
Expansion
As development continued, the concept of an all-encompassing solution was proposed. Instead of a series of separate web apps, the new approach would involve creating a simulated web-based operating system. This system would incorporate features like draggable windows, application opening/closing, and user authentication. The training applications previously developed could be launched and utilized within this new interface, providing representatives with a comprehensive practice environment that eliminates the need for them to handle calls from actual end users.
The Results
Training Time
Before the introduction of this new sandboxed environment, trainee representatives were obliged to handle calls from actual end users and were unable to freely experiment with the applications that they would be using for their daily tasks. As part of a comprehensive revamp of the training procedures in this call center, the time required to train a representative was shortened from weeks to days.
Management
The department's Admin Team could now monitor representative training progress, review mock tickets, and adjust the training regimen accordingly.
Representative Confidence
A common fear among new and retrained representatives was performing on a live call for the first time. The inability to fully use the ticketing and call management applications, as well as practicing mock calls to completion, only exacerbated these fears. With a sandboxed environment in place, representatives could now be more confident that they knew what to expect. Having gone through the process multiple times, surprises were less likely to occur.