Summary
Established in 1817 and based in Canada, BMO Financial Group serves more than 10 million personal, commercial, corporate and institutional customers in North America and internationally.

Challenge
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are the cornerstones of the Bank of Montreal. The bank’s mission is to continuously and rigorously define new levels of customer service and excellence. To meet that corporate objective, BMO’s call center, known as Direct Bank, was looking to a launch a skills-based training program to deliver the desired client experience and achieve incremental closes. Plus, it wanted to enhance its coaching program to do so.

Solution
Direct Bank’s leadership team began looking for a solution to meet its corporate objectives. They chose Ulysses Learning because of the strength of Ulysses’ CoachingMentor and ServiceMentor programs, backed by its dynamic, simulated scenarios that have been validated by more than 70,000 actual customer calls. BMO was drawn to Ulysses’ approach that combined online, role-playing simulations with facilitator-led learning and coaching, along with the fact that it is easy to deploy from a technology standpoint.

To help agents develop – and then reinforce – the crucial customer service skills they need, Ulysses Learning worked with Creighton’s team in multiple ways. This included:

 • Providing a safe, simulated environment to learn and practice. This allows agents to try out new skills in a realistic, yet    safe environment where they can make mistakes in private and learn from those mistakes.
 • Enabling agents to articulate their responses. By saying the responses out loud, recording them and playing them    back, agents were able to develop and practice their own “scripts” for handling different customer interactions,    enhancing their confidence levels.
 • Accommodating different learning styles. Ulysses takes individual learning styles into consideration. Some employees    chose to tackle the simulations right away, while others read or listened to audio files first.
 • Tailoring learning to different levels of expertise. Based on their skill level, agents can take different paths.

Another area that the Ulysses Learning helped BMO develop was coaching.

“Many managers found conducting one-on-ones with all employees on a consistent basis to be quite a challenge, especially from a time standpoint since they did not have specific training on providing quick, immediate and concise feedback,” said Creighton.

Results
 • The division received more customer compliments in the three-month period following the training than they had in the    previous two years
 • Employees were acting calmer, taking control of the calls, showing improved confidence and handling the calls more    effectively
• Service Quality Index (SQI) increased  • Employee commitment and confidence increased

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