Industry: Insurance and Financial Services
Scope of Services and Products: Offers life insurance, property and casualty insurance, mutual funds, annuities, pension and retirement related services and administration, asset management, securities brokerage, banking and trust services, real estate brokerage franchises and relocation services
Year e- Learning Introduced: 1999
Offices and Locations: Headquarters in Newark, New Jersey
Estimated 2002 Assets: Approximately US$556 billion in total assets under management and administration
Web Site: http://www.prudential.com
Number of e-Learning Programs in Entire Curriculum: More than 100
Prudential Financial companies serve individual and institutional customers worldwide and include The Prudential Insurance Company of America, one of the largest life insurance companies in the United States. The Individual Life Operations Business Unit was one of the first at Prudential Financial to venture into e-learning when in1999, they launched a new seven- week blended learning version of the Life Operations Call Center New Hire Training Program.
Prudential Financial selected a blended e-learning approach to:
Provide consistent delivery of content in process and procedures
Provide simulations of transaction systems to practice job activities
Improve quality of call handling through use of exams and coaching incorporated within the training
“The program combines over 100 call center simulations into classroom learning, mentoring sessions, live call sessions, and self-study,” says Suzanne LeVan, Director of Learning at Prudential Financial.
Typical transaction requests processed by call center employees include beneficiary change, report of a death claim, change of address, dividend payouts, loan applications, and cash surrenders. The seven-week program gradually improves how new hires handle these calls from customers. By using this approach for training, new hires are not overwhelmed by the volume of content, and they are given many opportunities to practice transactions, which greatly increases their retention of information presented in the program.
Customer Service Assistants (CSAs) in the call centers are the first line of contact with Prudential Financial’s customers. “One of our main business goals is to provide quality service and information to our customers,” says LeVan. With this in mind, the learning objectives of the Life Operations Call Center New Hire Training Program revolve around skill development in providing service to customers and also in handling all types of customer transactions.
Prior to the program’s deployment, Prudential Financial faced a number of challenges in training new hires. Says LeVan, “We found that because training was dispersed in several locations and delivered by various instructors, there was a challenge with having consistency in our process and procedures.”
Call Center employees must fully under- stand the types of products that Prudential Financial sells and all transactions related to those products. “We are an insurance company,” says LeVan. “Employees must understand all the various types of portfolio products that we have so when our customers ask a question, we provide accurate information and quality service.”
Provide quality service and accurate information to customers
Provide consistent delivery of content to all office locations
Train Customer Service Assistants (CSAs) in the handling of hundreds of transaction types
The program was designed and developed by members of the Prudential Financial learning team working with subject matter experts. The simulations were first designed in a storyboard or “spec” format and then final content was developed using Macromedia Authorware.
There were fifteen people, both full- and part-time, working on the initial project team. This team was supplemented with contract programmers, who did the initial work and also transferred knowledge to internal developers. The total program took about one year to design and develop.
New hires participate in the Life Operations Call Center New Hire Training Program for a period of seven weeks. Sixty percent of the program time is self-paced e-learning and forty percent is instructor-led classroom learning. The program begins with an instructor-led classroom orientation session about Prudential Financial. Then within the first few days, new hires meet with their mentors, and listen to customer calls to get a sense of types of calls to expect. Then back in the classroom, through online simulations and instructions, new hires learn about products, processes, transactions, procedures, and systems. “Each day the learners are working through simulations, coming back together for debriefing sessions, and then participating in classroom instruction,” says LeVan. “They are learning through simulations how to take various types of calls, and then we direct live calls targeted at their current learning level.”
Macromedia Authorware
Knowledge Planet, a hosted learning management system
Vendor-provided generic training courses
During the seven-week program, most calls are monitored by coaches, who provide on-going feedback and instruction. Learners gradually increase their skills to take more complex levels of service calls and transactions. “Each week builds on the next so by the end of the seven weeks new hires are totally competent in taking the full range of service calls that are handled in our call centers.” says LeVan. “Assessments are also built into the program and tracked.”
Additional generic soft skill classroom courses are also completed during the program, and at the end of the program, self-paced e-learning courses, such as project management, are available to supplement the learning experience. As part of the quality control for course development, all learning materials that contain any product information are reviewed by Prudential Financial’s compliance department for approval. “This is very to us important from a risk management perspective.” says LeVan.
The original 14-week classroom-only course was delivered at central locations throughout the United States. Now the new seven-week blended learning program is accessible at four Prudential Financial offices and is deployed through Knowledge Planet, a hosted learning management system. New hires attend the program at one of four dedicated call centers, and these centers are set up with special training rooms that provide access to the more than one hundred simulations and allow mentors to monitor the handling of calls.
Mentors track a new hire’s progress through the program using Prudential Financial’s learning management system. Says LeVan, “We analyze online test results, how many people had certain questions wrong, or if they had to go back and do additional work on certain points.” Learners must pass each assessment with 90 percent or above, and employees are also monitored and evaluated based on Prudential Financial’s criteria for call handling and quality. They are all required to meet certain standards prior to leaving this controlled learning environment.
The program does not require internal marketing because new employees immediately join the program when they start work at Prudential Financial. However, during the recruitment process, the program is used as a marketing tool, with major details of the program shared with prospective employees. It is also fully described in the new hire packet.
During recruitment process for new employees, major details of training program are shared
Program is described in new hire packet
Excitement is built about the program by demonstrating some simulations during the first-day orientation session
Prudential uses a number of criteria when evaluating new employees. One criteria is call handling time. For example, it may take on average eight minutes for a new employee to handle a customer call. “One impact of the new program is that we were able to reduce our call handle time because employees learned the best path through simulations and feedback,” says LeVan.
Within four weeks after graduation new hires might need to be down to a six-minute call handling time. Says LeVan, “We meet those measures through the simulations and the quality measures after graduation.” Level Three criteria is measured after eight to ten weeks on the job, and this level is defined as having a direct impact on the business.
Learners were able to achieve call handle time goals because they experienced the best path through simulations and feedback.
Learners were excited by the quality of the simulations.
Purpose: To provide consistent delivery of content for call center process and procedures and to provide simulations of transactions for practice in handling job functions
Program Structure: A blended learning approach, which combined:
60 percent self-paced e-learning using simulations
40 percent instructor-led classroom learning
Number of Learning Hours per Learner: 7 weeks
Total Number of Hours of Learning in the Program: 7 weeks
Number of Learners: 4,000 since launch
Completion Requirements:
All new call center employees are required to attend program
Pass all exams with 90 percent or above
Media and Tools:
Simulations developed in Macromedia Authorware
Monitored call handling in a controlled environment
Vendor-provided generic training courses
Deployment Mechanism:
Deployed in dedicated call centers
Hosted by Knowledge Planet learning management system
When budgeting for the development of a new program be sure to include in your plan how often and to what degree maintenance of the program must be performed.
When building training for company systems, work closely with the owners of the systems to understand their plans for system enhancements and modifications.
Spend the time to understand and select the authoring tools that will be used to build the programs and ensure that the one selected is part of the specification when selecting vendors to assist in the building of content.
If you are building a department capable of creating and maintaining e-learning, work out the roles, responsibilities, job descriptions, job grades from an HR perspective before hiring the employees.
When deploying e-learning that people will attend from their desktop, spend time in the beginning teaching people how to use the technology and how best to learn from e-learning.