Search past winners/finalists


  • MESA logo

First American Database Solutions - Customer Service Training Team of the Year

 

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2019, Click to Enter The 2020 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Company: First American Database Solutions, Santa Ana, CA
Company Description: First American Financial Corporation (NYSE: FAF) is a leading provider of title insurance, settlement services and risk solutions for real estate transactions that traces its heritage back to 1889. First American also provides title plant management services; title and other real property records and images; valuation products and services. For more information visit: http: //www.firstam.com/.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Training Team of the Year - All Other Industries

Nomination Title: Going Beyond “Thank You for Calling” – Driving Customer Satisfaction by Driving Critical Analysis Skills

Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since the beginning of July 2017 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Executive Summary:

Beginning in 2018 the Training Unit for First American’s Database Solutions (DBS) Client Services Department evaluated the existing training and trends and decided to scrap our existing programs. We desired to move beyond myopic training on soft skills, platforms, process, or other “fact-based” content. While important, we believe that they are only a part of an integrated approach to training. We decided to re-tool the entire program to focus on Critical Analysis Skills with the goal of driving Customer Satisfaction , CSAT (1) and Net Promoter (2) scores to provide awesome customer service.

Issue

Our programs were having minimal impact with highly uneven CSAT results ranging from a low of 60.3% to a high of 85.7% with no consistency, month-over-month. Our re-evaluation determined that our existing content focused on independent areas, such as email and phone skills, platform use, how to submit tickets, escalation processes, and the like. At issue was the question:

What does a program look like that gives agents the skillset to know when to go “off-script” thereby driving CSAT scores?

To integrate disparate subjects into a unified whole, we re-designed our program with a more fundamental approach focused on Critical Analysis Skills. Critical Analysis focuses on “Going Off Script” for a customer versus only dealing with “How To Do Something”. Stated differently Critical Analysis, from our position, encompasses the following:

1. Knowledge- Information and Facts

2. Understanding -Meaning and Organization of Information and Facts

3. Wisdom -Going Off Script

Our current training programs took staff only through the understanding phase without integrating the analysis to assist a customer in the best manner possible.

Our new program is designed to drive the following…

o Needs Analysis and Issue Restatement
o Solutions and Explanations
o Setting Expectations
o Clear Closure

While integrating the standard…

o Welcoming Statements; Professionalism and Etiquette
o Clear, Concise, Organized Communication
o Documentation and Compliance

The most important area to reinforce was the Needs Analysis and Issue Restatement as this drives understanding of the client’s question(s). Everything hinges on this area. This may sound elementary but if a CS Representative cannot restate the concerns, both explicit and implicit, they will probably not provide the best solution for the customer or know how to “go off-script”.

Solution

Beginning in July we rolled out scenario-based training that required Client Services team members to:

-Analyze and restate a client request, isolating both the explicitly stated and implied questions
-Provide a step-by-step solution that answered the same and was clear and concise
-Re-summarize the issue(s) and solution

Team members are required to present their responses both via email and in live presentations to management and training staff for review and scoring. The new Quality Assurance Program DBS Client Services implemented in parallel with this Training Program was also leveraged to score the team members efforts.

Results

The revised program began in July 2018 with the first full reporting in August. Two sets of graphs are provided to show the CSAT trend and the Agent QA Scores as the latter drives the former and helps us determine if the training is driving the desired outcome.

CSAT Scores for the first three months of the revised training program: Please see the attached full-version of the entry ("Training.pdf") which includes the graphs.

To correlate whether or not the CSAT scores were related to the revised training program, the QA Team, using their own recently revised scoring metrics and categories, provided the Agent QA Scores(red line) for August through October overlaid against the team CSAT (blue columns) scores: Please see the attached full-version of the entry ("Training.pdf")which includes the graphs.

We anticipate this trend to continue and are targeting a minimum CSAT score of 95%, team-wide by January, 2019.

Example Attachments

Training Presentation and Scenario video: Example of one of the presentations used for our training events.


1 Transactional customer service score; done at each customer/agent interaction

2 Net Promoter is a customer loyalty score