The Project
Agents must provide customers the right products and services and deliver excellent customer service. Quality associates have identified soft skills as an area for improvement.
The Problem
While we have a comprehensive product training program for our agents, we lacked resources specifically focused on developing soft skills. We needed a ready-to-use product that could be incorporated into our training courses.
The Solution
I proposed the creation of a Soft Skills Library that our instructional designers could readily use. Additionally, I suggested using this curriculum as a marketable go-to-market product to attract new clients.
Collaboration
I collaborated with the media specialist team to establish a color palette and define the overall visual style for this series. Afterward, we developed a PowerPoint storyboard to guide the designers in collaborating with the media team. This ensured that the necessary on-screen elements for the videos were designed seamlessly.
The Result
I led a team of 16 instructional designers in creating the Soft Skills Library, an extensive collection built from scratch. This project went through multiple stages of development, resulting in a library comprising 43 videos and 43 digital courses. The video courses were produced using Synthesia then later enhanced with animations by our media team.
The Soft Skills Library covers a wide array of topics, including:
- Proper Greeting
- Tone of Voice
- De-escalation
- Handling Threats
- Identifying Customer Personas
- Gathering Information
- Active Listening
- Filling Dead Air
- Pacing
- Building Rapport
- Call Handling Techniques
- Setting Expectations
- First Language Influence
- Offering Self-Service Options
- and so many more!
The team designed 43 scenario-based digital courses demonstrating examples of poor soft skills before presenting the appropriate way to handle situations using the newly acquired soft skills. Each course concludes with a practice scenario.
Additionally, the team collaborated with the conversational BOT team to create six interactive chatbots. These BOTs allowed learners to practice call handling in a simulated environment.
Client Testing
The healthcare vertical for our organization heard of this project, and we had 10 team leads review the content and provide feedback on how the courses and videos could work on our healthcare projects. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
User/SME Feedback
“Amazing course. I definitely believe this course would help agents who struggle or panic when needing to de-escalate a call. As several customers call in frustrated, and from agents I have spoken to, sometimes they do not know what to do when someone starts off the call extremely frustrated.”