Case Study 1:
Make Customer-Focused Agents
a Competitive Distinction

Situation:

Pacific Bell started up an entirely new business when they entered the in-home entertainment industry. As a newcomer to the well-established cable industry, Pac Bell needed a competitive distinctive to take customers away from the entrenched operators.

Solution:

Strategic distinction: outstanding customer service. Pacific Bell focused their resources on their customer-facing jobs. These employees – inbound sales, installers, repair technicians, customer services agents – all received intensive training. we developed their entire sales and customer service training curriculum. To ensure that reps transferred these skills to the job and maintained them, we designed the performance monitoring and coaching programs. The job was designed so that the top performance criteria was “call quality” – listening, discovering customer needs, matching needs with appropriate services instead of the typical “quantitative” call stats such as call duration and average speed of answer.

Agents became the top of the organizational pyramid. Marketing listened to the agents’ feedback about customer reactions to their offers so that they could make important changes in their programs. Marketing sat side by side on the call center floor to hear customer input. (This is a best practice from a top- rated bank for customer service – its VPs monitor calls for four hours each month. It’s another our client.)

Results:

When did employees voluntarily get together to rehearse customer calls before going live? Pacific Bell agents were enthusiastic advocates for the sales culture. Pacific Bell got good penetration in those areas where they had built out.

Case Study 2:
Invest in Front-line Employees; Protect that Investment by Training Supervisors

Situation:

Pacific Bell started up an entirely new business when they entered the in-home entertainment industry. As a newcomer to the well-established cable industry, Pac Bell needed to be distinctive to take customer away from the entrenched operators.

Solution:

Strategic distinction: outstanding customer service. And to achieve that outstanding customer service, Pacific Bell invested in the systems and support of all front-line employees—inbound sales, installers, repair technicians, customer services reps.

We developed the Pacific Bell Customer College. The College contained a series of courses for each front-line job. Each course employed a combination of workshop with video-taped examples and audio taped role plays. After the workshop, employees further mastered their skills with self-study, skills tests to determine specialized instructional needs, performance monitoring with feedback and skills coaching, and other skills mastery techniques.

Pacific Bell supervisors were cross-trained in the courses, and then taught how to monitor and coach the skills. To create inter-rater reliability among monitors, they held calibration meetings to determine performance standards. Supervisors helped to increase the value of training by ensuring that skills were increased and used on the job.

We also taught Pacific Bell how to develop their own performance-based training courses.

Results:

When the business changed—new competition, new technology, glitches, breakdowns, pricing changes—subject matter experts (SMEs) in product knowledge, competitive intelligence, technical training, and trouble-shooting knew how to pass on their expertise and keep the content current.