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Symtrain’s CEO and Chief Learning Officer joins the Freightwaves Podcast to discuss how role-play can positively impact the Transportation and Logistics Industry. Does role playing work in freight? – What The Truck?!?

On today’s episode Dooner and The Dude are asking the question: Is this all just a simulation? They’re talking to Dan McCann, CEO and chief learning officer at SymTrain, about the company’s simulation-based role play training. They’ll find out if sim training is the new way to go for getting your employees up to speed.

The guys may be back from Ballyhack but today they’re taking another trip to the greens with Chris Douglass, president of the Nashville Transportation Club, and Christian Huffman, board member in charge of golf. They’re talking about the NTC’s 2022 charity golf tournament.

Tim Perkins, chief business development officer at Spartan 5S Solutions, talks about elevating yourself to an executive role and counting trailers on the highway.

Trey Griggs from Standing out Podcast on Sales, Marketing and Leadership invites Dan McCann to discuss the power of SymTrain.

Download podcast here:  Standing Out Podcast featuring Dan McCann and Symtrain

Onboarding agents remotely is proving to be more difficult than in-person training. As a result, agents are less prepared, and companies have higher rates of attrition. New hires get less facetime with trainers and find it harder to ask questions or seek one-on-one help when they don’t share the same physical space. But you don’t need to accept lower standards or less desirable outcomes. Change the game now by leveraging technology to improve results instead of simply enabling content delivery.

Raising the Bar to Create Masters of the Customer Service

Trainers don’t always know who needs more support or additional training. It’s hard to gauge the level of each agent’s comprehension, especially if they don’t speak up or ask for help. Quizzes and tests help trainers assess knowledge, but the best way to assess comprehension is through instructor-led role-play exercises. Unfortunately, there simply isn’t enough time to practice every scenario with each agent in class.  

However, adding SymTrain to your curriculum can increase the frequency and amount of practice each agent receives. Athletes, pilots, artists, and doctors all show us how important practice is to improve our skills.  Now, automated role-plays provide one more way to deliver situational practice, set achievement standards, and get the results you need. 

Furthermore, it creates an example of how to apply knowledge and raises the bar on performance.  And the instructor-led, guided coaching with immediate feedback ensures that each attempt is better than the last. Increasing situational practice through automated role-plays will allow your agents to develop their skills and become masters of the customer service experience.

Give Your Agents Superpowers with SymTrain

Even if you don’t have enough available human resources to provide adequate one-on-one repetition and consistent reinforcement, you don’t have to short-change your employees during their training.

SymTrain can fill the void. Our intuitive AI, Coach Sym, provides the individualized training and guided practice they need. It sets a standard, and most importantly, ensures that each agent receives the same consistent feedback on their actual performance. They can also revisit skills or scenarios whenever necessary, even when they have already successfully completed a sym. 

Additionally, automated role-play increases engagement for new hires. It enables agents to build confidence and develop skills to perform better and faster through repetition. They practice at their own pace with reinforcement and increasing complexity to achieve skill mastery. With SymTrain in your digital toolbox, your agents can become customer experience superheroes.  You improve KPIs and raise the bar, while simultaneously removing the crutch of remote training.

Imagine a World Filled with CX Superheroes

With SymTrain, you can transform your entire workforce into a team of customer experience superheroes. Not only do you have a streamlined training curriculum, but it will also improve the overall customer experience. Agents who are better trained and more confident in their abilities spend less time searching for answers, place customers on hold less frequently, and resolve issues correctly the first time. When your training and operations teams combine forces, they work together to create better learning content and drive better outcomes.

If you want to see what the power of SymTrain can do for you, contact us to schedule a demo, and let us become a part of your origin story.

Dan McCann and Joe Lynch discuss the SymTrain story. Dan is the CEO & Chief Learning Officer at SymTrain, an advanced AI-based training platform that is unlike any other.

Download podcast here: The SymTrain Story with Dan McCann

About Dan McCann

Dan McCann is the Founder and CEO of SymTrain, the maker of immersive learning technology that gives employees real job experience by engaging them in authentic work simulations. Dan is an experienced and dynamic leader. His passion for lifetime learning, growth, and innovation has led him to build SymTrain, an SaaS platform which automates the process of role-play and coaching. SymTraining allows employees to apply knowledge, build confidence, and develop skills quickly.

About SymTrain

SymTrain is an advanced AI-based training platform that is unlike any other. It simulates real-world coaching scenarios to prepare front-line agents for interactions with customers. Much more than a simulation, the platform is an immersive CX training experience that combines audio and visual elements for an all-encompassing approach to training which helps agents to better understand and retain the information. Benefits include improved quality, reduced training time and training resource costs, increased speed to efficiency, and an overall improvement in the key metrics that matter most to clients. SymTrain is emerging as an innovator in AI coaching and virtual training, and was recently awarded two International Stevie Awards for innovation in workforce readiness and corporate learning. Follow our journey at www.symtrain.ai.

Key Takeaways: The SymTrain Story

• Dan McCann is the Founder and CEO of SymTrain, a firm that is revolutionizing the way frontline teams are trained and coach.
• In the podcast interview, Dan and Joe discussed Dan’s entrepreneurial journey and the founding of SymTrain.
• SymTrain is an immersive learning technology platform that gives employees real job experience by engaging them in authentic work simulations.
• Lean Solutions Group and SymTrain have formed a partnership that enables transportation and logistics companies to use industry specific simulation training modules that were developed by the Lean Solutions Group.
• SymTrain engages employees in simulated work experiences that feel “real” – working at their own pace, anywhere, anytime, on any device.
• Employees are empowered to take charge of their own learning and success. As a result, they learn faster, retain more, build confidence, and master the skills they need to deliver the best customer interactions every time.
• SymTrain is a simulated training solution that creates a hands-on experience for sales, services, and support employees within a safe space
• By digitalizing the manual training and coaching processes, Symtrain enables companies to build employee attitudes, skills, and knowledge – faster, better, and cheaper.

It’s impossible to ignore the connection between your employees’ well-being and their motivation to make an impact within the company. There is no doubt that when your employees thrive, you thrive. So, why are so many people “quiet quitting” or leaving their positions altogether? Is it really that people don’t want to work? Or is it that they need to find more purpose in their job than simply showing up to “get things done”? To help your employees find greater satisfaction, you must support them every step of the way, beginning from the moment they start training. Here’s how SymTraining can come to the rescue during the Great Resignation.

What Is the Great Resignation?

The Great Resignation refers to the ongoing trend of employees who are voluntarily leaving their jobs en masse. Although it started in early 2021, it is still impacting the workforce today. Economists first believed this was a result of the uncertainty caused in the wake of the pandemic. However, changes in corporate policies, benefits, and engagement struck a nerve with many people who were not satisfied with their jobs.

While the pandemic may have triggered it, labor issues have been a brewing powder keg for years. What changed was that people had time for self-reflection during the transition. It caused them to re-evaluate their roles and value to their companies, with many choosing a greater work-life balance.

These realizations have also led to “quiet quitting” in which workers are no longer going above and beyond the duties named in their job description. Now, they are merely doing the bare minimum to keep their jobs since they are asked to do more with less resources and sometimes no compensation.

Although it may seem that we are at an impasse, companies must find a way to navigate the problem to find solutions that work for everyone.

Why Are People Leaving Their Jobs?

The current work shortages are apparent in every industry. So, why are so many people leaving positions, and sometimes even changing industries?

It comes down to one fundamental truth: people need to see that their companies are taking care of their physical, mental, emotional, and financial well-being. If that isn’t the case, then more people are more willing to leave positions that don’t meet their personal needs since there are many companies out there that will.

Employees are no longer willing to work unpaid hours, bend their personal lives to the demands of their job, deal with disrespect in the workplace, or stay in a company that doesn’t provide opportunities for advancement. Quiet quitting is a direct response to the lack of care or negative reactions from their managers. But, until these issues are addressed, the resignation letters are likely to continue piling up.

How Can SymTrain Come to the Rescue?

It’s clear that people need more than a paycheck to feel valued by their company. Offering ongoing training is the perfect way to not only support your employees’ professional growth but also to empower them.

Individualized training and practice is one way you can ensure they have the skills they need to perform their jobs well. Your library of automated role-plays will allow employees at all levels unlimited access to any additional training they need, whether they are new hires or tenured agents. Since it is self-paced learning, they can take their time to review difficult skills and concepts. This builds confidence in both their own abilities, but also the support of their leadership team.

Employees want to feel that their company is invested in their success, not just its bottom line. To learn more about how SymTraining can come to the rescue during the Great Resignation, contact us to set up a demo. Let us show how we can boost your employees’ confidence, performance, and overall job satisfaction.

What Is Individualized Practice?

Individualized practice refers to customized plans for self-paced learning. Sometimes it incorporates human-to-human coaching. However, it usually works along a virtual training curriculum to support trainers and reinforce content outside the classroom. Since it is impossible for trainers to give their full attention to every agent who is in need of support, especially in a large call center, individualized practice allows agents to work through the material at their own pace.  

However, the advancements in AI technology have provided a new option for automated role-playing. With SymTrain, agents receive individualized assistance from our AI. Coach Sym provides the guidance and additional support you need to increase skill mastery and comprehension. Not only are companies embracing this style of self-paced learning to better assist new hires, but it also serves as an important learning tool for more tenured agents who may need to revisit skills or challenging workplace scenarios.

What Are the Benefits?

SymTrain offers several benefits to any training program. First and foremost, it brings value to your curriculum and adds another tool to your library. Since everyone learns in different ways, it provides one more way to connect agents to the material. And, the personalized feedback offers insights into each person, helping trainers to better identify strengths and weaknesses. This makes it easier to adjust your curriculum or approach as needed to improve the overall comprehension and performance of your agents.

Digital role-play also leads to improved skill mastery, faster. The only way to get better at something is with practice. So if your agents are struggling, they can repeat the same scenarios over and over until they feel confident to handle the situation without assistance. It even provides visual cues and guided navigation to show them what to do through each sym. 

And ultimately, it leads to better quality interactions in the classroom. Trainers spend less time performing these repetitive tasks in class, and more time on the content that matters.

What Is the Long-Term Impact of Individualized Practice?

Over time, the individualized practice has several proven positive effects. Taking into account that people also learn at different rates, giving agents more ways to learn ensures that fewer people fall between the cracks. Not only does this better prepare your agents, but trainers have also found that people are more satisfied and confident when there are more choices and freedom within the training curriculum. Happy agents usually translate to lower attrition rates.

Furthermore, SymTrain’s automated role-plays ease new hires’ transition and allow everyone the time and space to learn at their own pace. And since the Syms require verbal feedback, it helps agents to stay engaged in the material so they don’t “check out” as many people do during group practice.

However, it is also an effective tool for agents who are struggling with a particular skill, even after months or years on the phones. Coach Sym guides them through the scenarios and then provides immediate feedback, touching on both their strengths and areas for improvement. So no matter where your agents are on the training spectrum, SymTrain can support your training objectives with targeted, individualized practice to achieve your long-term goals.

The ability to work from home has quickly become one of the most sought-after benefits for employees. Each year, more people are seeking positions that offer at least a partial work from home schedule, with over 52% of Americans already working from home at least once a week. And when you look at international trends, 16% of global companies have fully embraced the change and only hire remote workers. However, many are experiencing high attrition rates and are struggling to design a training program that leads to skill mastery. SymTrain provides a way to help you solve this training dilemma for work at home employees.

The Draw to Work@Home

During the pandemic, many workers transitioned out of physical offices into the work from home environment. After this change, people discovered they had more freedom and control over where, when, and how they work. It also afforded them greater flexibility to meet the demands of their personal and professional lives. People also found more time for the things that matter most since they no longer had to commute. Many businesses also embraced it, seeing a new way to reduce expenses since they didn’t need to support as many people on-site.

More Convenience, Less Connection

No one can deny the conveniences and advantages that remote work offers. However, convenience comes at a price. There is a more significant disconnect between leadership and the employees who support the company. Many report feeling more isolated and out of touch, and therefore less attuned to the company culture.

Performance has also suffered since the traditional training curriculum doesn’t translate well to a virtual environment. Since classroom techniques are less effective when training remotely, agents feel less confident and less prepared. This ultimately results in higher attrition rates and job abandonment if agents don’t feel they are capable of performing the job they were hired to do.

More Convenience, Less Connection

One way trainers are helping to span the virtual disconnect is by embracing the digital tools at their disposal. SymTrain’s automated role-plays now offer a new way to support your trainers and give agents the extra practice they need without dedicating more time or resources than necessary.

Your trainers become more effective since they can offload repetitive tasks to the AI. With SymTrain’s automated role-plays, they don’t have to spend valuable time doing one-by-one role-play scenarios in class. Instead, agents can now complete this on their own time. By automating these aspects of training, trainers can dedicate more attention to difficult content and support struggling agents.

Automated role-plays also allow you to emphasize and practice the skills your agents need to be successful in their position. You can customize your scenarios and recreate real-life situations to better prepare your agents. And since you are no longer limited to the training schedule, each person can practice outside of classroom time and have more attempts to complete each sym. 

With your own library of Syms, agents can work at their own pace, and repeat the interactions until they feel confident. And, the material will always be available to more seasoned agents who may need a refresher course. So no matter where your agents are in their SymTraining, the automated role-plays offer one more way to solve the training dilemma of work at home employees.

As the workforce transitions to remote and hybrid environments, many companies are facing the challenges of how to adapt their training programs. One way that SymTrain is transforming virtual training is by offering more effective coaching at scale.

A Standardized Approach to Coaching

One of the most valuable features of SymTrain is that it creates a standardized approach to coaching. In addition to offering more consistency in the criteria and feedback, it develops and holds all employees to the same standards of achievement. SymTrain also allows you to compare progress for the individual or across a larger group. Once you have the baseline requirements, it is easier to pinpoint improvement areas.

Reduction in the Time and Cost to Train Employees

The time and cost benefits are important factors that make SymTrain so effective. SymTrain saves your training departments hundreds of hours in labor costs. Trainers no longer have to dedicate as much time to practicing role-plays, reviewing performance, and giving feedback since it is automatically generated. They now have more time to focus their energy on efforts that have a greater impact on overall performance. And since it is an AI-guided training, your employees can log as many hours as needed to practice different Syms. Each time they engage in realistic work scenarios and practice the skills required for their position, the better prepared they will become to handle live calls. Once you create your Sym library, you also have access to one more resource for ongoing training. This adds immense value to your training program. And with no limit to the number of users, it is easily scalable for companies of all sizes.

Self-Paced Practice for Skill Mastery

SymTrain also provides many advantages for your employees. It can be difficult to manage a team that learns at different paces. However, automated role-plays help to overcome this obstacle and provide one more tool to support them. For those who require more practice, it gives them real-life scenarios they can run through as many times as necessary. Allowing people to work at their own pace builds confidence and leads to skill mastery for more of your employees.

An Effective Platform for Ongoing Training

Although the emphasis is focused on new-hire training and the onboarding process, SymTrain offers an effective platform for ongoing training as well. With the automated role-plays, you can roll it out to your entire CX team when you require immediate training or upskilling. And, you can quickly deliver annual HIPAA compliance training across large groups of agents. And don’t forget, you are creating an entire Sym library which can be revisited and practiced whenever refreshers are needed. Utilizing quick-hit role-plays to highlight a single aspect of training is another excellent way to reinforce skills. And, you can always create new training programs when you implement a new process or product. Having a digital tool like SymTrain at your disposal allows you to optimize performance and offer more effective training at scale.

The workforce is in transition and so are our training methods. Before Covid-19, most training took place in the classroom. However, as more agents work remotely, companies have had to adapt and find new ways to effectively train new hires. As training programs continue to develop in the virtual environment, many people are seeing that performance-based work requires automation.

The Challenges of Training Remotely

With more work-from-home positions, it is becoming harder to train and retain employees. Attrition rates are higher than ever and fewer people are completing their training period or successfully transitioning into their new roles.

There are several factors to consider that make it harder to recruit and engage with people in a remote environment. The lack of physical interactions makes it more difficult to accurately gauge their comprehension and provide coaching. Furthermore, trainers have less time to dedicate to individual practice with each trainee.

This often leads to agents being thrust into their positions prematurely, before they are ready to perform the job they were hired to do. People need more reinforcement and feedback before they are put into real-life scenarios. Rather than letting them learn on real customers and negatively impact the customer experience, SymTrain offers automated role-plays to increase competency and support your new hires during the training process.

The Impacts of Automation

Automation is transforming the way we train. And, it can drastically reduce your training time and costs. Not only does this make the training methods more effective, but it’s also a more effective strategy for resource management. It offloads time-consuming responsibilities from trainers so they can focus on other aspects and give more personalized attention to those who need it. 

Having agents practice workplace scenarios outside of the classroom also provides more time for individual practice and performance support. And, it gives people the freedom to work at their own pace. In addition to higher proficiency and faster skill mastery, it also builds their confidence in system navigation and overall level of preparedness. The automated role-plays will allow you to onboard new agents even faster and ensure they are ready to interact with customers.

Why Performance-Based Work Requires Automation

Adding a certain level of automation to your training program will not only help your trainers become more impactful but also allow you to apply your methods at scale more effectively. It creates a performance standard that is consistent for all employees and can be applied to all levels of learning. Automation gives you a repeatable and consistent experience that can be scaled across large populations.

Furthermore, the AI, which we call Coach Sym, uses the same criteria to assess employees’ performance and provides targeted, immediate feedback to ensure that everyone receives the same training. And as they complete these role-plays, you can use this information to monitor progress for the individual or compare it across groups. These tools will allow you to pinpoint areas where you are doing well and where they need improvement.

Automation can be a powerful tool. And with SymTrain’s innovative training solutions, it will help you achieve the results you need faster and for a fraction of the cost.

What is immersive learning?

Immersive learning is a technique that teachers have utilized for many years to help students gain a better understanding of the content and improve retention rates of what they are learning. When applied to the workplace, immersive CX training prepares new employees for real-world scenarios they will encounter, but in a simulated environment. SymTrain presents experiential learning opportunities through hands-on practice. Allowing people to have several attempts to work through each scenario has proven to give students a better grasp of the content. However, our training platform takes it one step further. In addition to giving people the time and space to work through each skill, they also receive guided practice and AI coaching to help them achieve skill mastery.

What are the benefits?

People learn more efficiently through the process of doing. Studies show that immersive learning enhances cognitive skills and understanding, improves memory, and increases problem-solving skills. Therefore, SymTrain has created a training platform that gives people the chance to perform and apply what they are learning in realistic workplace scenarios. Furthermore, it allows agents the time and space they need to build the confidence and competencies they need to reach proficiency faster. Step by step, it adds to and builds upon their existing knowledge and skills. Once you build your Sym library, your employees will have ample opportunities to practice with these self-paced learning simulations.

How does SymTrain deliver immersive CX training?

SymTrain’s platform recreates many real-life scenarios that agents will encounter when they are working with live customers. Rather than having them learn in real-time, our Syms provide people a safe space to practice, make mistakes, and correct themselves with the guidance of our intuitive AI, Coach Sym. With our AI coaching, agents receive targeted and immediate feedback to help determine what they are doing well and identify areas for improvement. And, they can repeat each lesson as many times as they wish, until they feel comfortable with the content and ready to move on to the next skill. The level of assistance can also be adjusted to help agents become more autonomous until they can successfully complete each scenario on their own. Adding automated role-plays to your curriculum will transform your training and help agents reach skill mastery faster by delivering an immersive CX training experience.