Insights / Success Story / Zenarate Improves Sallie Mae’s Agent Training Process and Performance
Zenarate Improves Sallie Mae’s Agent Training Process and Performance
By adopting Zenarate’s AI simulation and coaching, Sallie Mae transformed how new and tenured agents practice, certify, and perform in live customer conversations.
Industries
Banking
Use Cases
New Hire Training
Tenured Agent Training
Certification Training
Tenured Agent Training
Certification Training
Company Description
Sallie Mae is the leader in private student lending, providing financing and expertise to support college access and completion. Sallie Mae offers products and resources to help students and families start smart in planning for higher education.
Proven Results
Attrition Reduction
Employee attrition decreased by 32% due to more realistic training.
Training Efficiency
Agents reached proficiency 56% faster with less classroom time.
Faster Certification
Certification time dropped from 2.5 days to just 2 hours.
Reducing Training Time While Elevating Agent Performance
Sallie Mae’s training organization noticed that their agents were spending most of their time in the classroom with traditional, passive learning, and they noticed that their active learning role-play was effective but inefficient and unscalable. They asked an aspirational question they felt might be difficult to answer: Can we make hands-on, active learning efficient and scalable while reducing overall training time? Can we automate our agent certification process to take live calls, and develop confident prepared agents who can deliver superior customer experiences starting with their first call?
Key Results
- 56% new hire speed to proficiency acceleration
- 22% conversion rate lift
- 33% QA and compliance score improvement
- 32% employee attrition reduction
- Reduced certification time from 2.5 days to just 2 hours
Sallie Mae’s Education and Instructional Leadership places emphasis on providing the best learning experiences for their agents, enabling agents to deliver superior customer experiences. A common challenge for training groups in large enterprises like Sallie Mae is improving agent speed to proficiency. Diane Porter, Director of Education and Instructional Design at Sallie Mae, recalls when the team noticed an opportunity to improve agent training, “When we noticed too much time and resources were being spent on classroom training, we knew that we needed a solution that would not only decrease classroom time, but allow training managers to scale skill development, and improve new hire performance so they are confident and prepared when they take their first call."
"After partnering with Zenarate, we saw immediate benefits for the new hires interacting with the AI conversation simulation. Our agents are hitting the floor at a much higher level of performance than we saw previously."
Diane Porter
Director of Education and Instructional Design, Sallie Mae
Scalable, AI-Driven Simulation for Every Agent
Sallie Mae needed a solution that could quickly scale their best and required practices across their enterprise. Zenarate’s AI CoachTM helps Sallie Mae agents in learning, whether new hires mastering high-impact topics they will face with live customers or tenured agents closing call type and skill gaps, by immersing agents in real-life conversation and chat simulation. Replacing agent-to-agent role-play was important to Sallie Mae, as human role-play is expensive, awkward, and difficult to scale. Matt Wheeler, the Instructional Design Manager at Sallie Mae says, “I remember the stress of sitting in class, trying to figure out how to do an awkward mock phone call with the agent next to me. And after all the classroom time, it would take me months on the floor before I felt comfortable in my call flow. After partnering with Zenarate, we saw immediate benefits for the new hires interacting with the AI conversation simulation. Our agents are hitting the floor at a much higher level of performance than we saw previously.” Zenarate allows agents to role-play with their personal unbiased AI CoachTM, and for training managers to see and hear agent topic and skill mastery in the platform.
"Our previous board certification process would take every new hire through a paper test that would take 2 hours. Then the manager would spend days grading the boards and providing feedback. Now, our trainees take their boards through Zenarate. What used to take us 2.5 days takes only 2 hours."
Diane Porter
Director of Education and Instructional Design, Sallie Mae
Faster Certification and Measurable Skill Growth
Sallie Mae’s training managers can easily assign targeted training simulations for agent skill-building, hear agent improvement through immersion call listening, and see agent topic & skill proficiency through their simulation scorecard.
The Education and Instructional Design team saw immediate improvements in their instructional efforts. Porter points out, “One of the things we were able to measure very quickly was time savings. Our previous board certification process would take every new hire through a paper test that would take 2 hours. Then the manager would spend days grading the boards and providing feedback. Now, our trainees take their boards through Zenarate. What used to take us 2.5 days takes only 2 hours.”
Today, Sallie Mae is automating the agent certification process as well. “If you thought 2 hours was fast, we are starting to certify agents in 30 minutes through AI Coach’sTM automated simulation scorecards.” Additionally, they have been able to use Zenarate in the classroom setting to improve new hire engagement by, “delivering education skill sets in small amounts of active learning so we can break-up skill-building to review as a class.” says Porter.
"One of the things we were able to measure very quickly was time savings. Our previous board certification process would take every new hire through a paper test that would take 2 hours. Then the manager would spend days grading the boards and providing feedback. Now, our trainees take their boards through Zenarate. What used to take us 2.5 days takes only 2 hours."
Diane Porter
Director of Education and Instructional Design, Sallie Mae
Expanding from Collections to Sales and Customer Care
Sallie Mae’s collections department was the first to pilot Zenarate. With collectors having some of the toughest customer conversations, they wanted to train new hire collectors to have exceptional empathy skills and to meet rigorous compliance requirements. They focused on training agents to understand the customer’s situation through soft skills such as active listening, acknowledging the customer with empathy, and asking probing questions to find the right plan for each customer. “We want our customers to walk away knowing that Sallie Mae did everything in our power to get the best resolution, and Zenarate is key to helping us with that goal,” says Porter.
Sallie Mae expanded Zenarate AI CoachTM from collections to its sales and customer care departments mastering the high-impact call types sales and customer care agents commonly face with live customers. For example, new hires are mastering how to take a borrower through the Sallie Mae loan process. “Zenarate gives us the freedom to build out any story, making the technology beneficial for any customer-facing interaction,” says Wheeler. Sallie Mae is excited to continue expanding use across their enterprise powering human connections, helping agents feel confident delivering consistent superior empathetic customer experiences.
Future-Ready Learning: Meeting Modern Workforce Expectations
Sallie Mae’s Education and Instructional Design team has observed that the younger workforce entering new-hire training expects the modern experiential learning approach that Zenarate AI conversation simulation provides. “The younger workforce wants experiential learning and immediate answers, and that’s what Zenarate provides. If they don't remember something about a call type, soft skills, or compliance, they can go into the training simulation to practice,” says Porter.
Zenarate Improves Sallie Mae’s Agent Training Process and Performance
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