The essentials to getting started with SymTrain
Best Practices for Managers
SymTrain is a tool meant to support your team’s learning. They need to feel comfortable that training here is a safe space, and that they can practice until they feel ready to do the job. It isn’t like tools you’ve used before, so be ready to adjust your interactions and see what your team benefits from most.
- Try out the system yourself - If you haven’t used SymTrain before, make sure you complete a few syms in all different types that you are assigning. Being familiar with the system and the content will make it easier to set expectations with the team.
- Set Expectations for your Users - Syms can be built in a variety of ways, and if you don’t help the team interact, it may take them longer to learn the intended lessons. For instance, if keywords are set up with alternatives, you may want agents to speak more naturally, instead of hitting the script exactly, whereas you may want exact wording for compliance-based syms.
- Give trainees enough time - Syms may take a few minutes to run, and you want to give enough time to run each more than once. Allow time for your users to try a few times, and to review their playback to learn from them and improve each time.
- Use Reporting and Playbacks - Review reporting and playbacks to find examples of great behavior and share with the team. Hold up your best users as models for everyone to see.
- Explain Practice and Test mode - Depending on your set up, these modes may be very different for the trainees. If you need them to take a Test, make sure you remind them, and explain the difference.
- Practice will always show the script and will only display your keyword score.
- Start Test may not or may not show the script, and will display both keyword and sentiment scores unless the sym creator has configured the sym not to display them.
- Keep Assignments Clean – All syms and modules assigned to an agent will remain visible on their dashboard. If you overload them at any given time, it may be hard for them to focus on the lesson at hand. Make sure you keep access to the things they need, and unassign anything that they shouldn’t be working on.
Best Practices for Trainees
This is a practice tool. SymTrain is your role play partner. The more you practice, the faster you will build confidence and competence. Imagine you are on the phone with an actual customer as you practice.
- Check Hardware first- When you go into SymTrain for the first time and click on the play button for a sym, you will see an option to check your hardware. Before you click Practice or Start Test, use this option to make sure your microphone is working, which is necessary for SymTrain to work. Check Hardware is in the upper left corner of the page.
- If you get a popup asking permission for the browser to use your microphone, click Allow. Otherwise SymTrain will not be able to hear or score you.
- Issues with the system- If anything does not work or if you do not understand what to do in SymTrain, please ask your manager or trainer first. Once you’ve started using SymTrain, it becomes very easy to troubleshoot common items.
- Modules- You may have modules (groups of syms) that must be executed in the order displayed. If it will not let you choose what order you want to execute the syms, this is not a malfunction.
- Test and Practice Mode – These are two different ways of interacting with a specific sym. Check with your trainer or manager if you need to be running syms a certain way.
- Practice will always show the script and will only display your keyword score.
- Start Test may not or may not show the script, and will display both keyword and sentiment scores unless the sym creator has configured the sym not to display them.
- A good idea is to practice the sym to learn what you need to say and do multiple times until you learn the structure, then test what you learned. It’s ok to run the test multiple times to improve.
- Advancing in the sym
- Speaking - The Trainee script line will show up in blue in the lower left. Once you say the line out loud, press enter, space bar, or click next in the lower right. If you only see a blue speech bubble with three dots you will have to recall the script line without hints. If it is too hard, go back and run the sym in Practice mode so that you can see the script lines.
- Screen Navigation – You will have highlights or actions displayed on the screen that you need to interact with. If you do not see highlights on the visual screens, you will need to recall where to click and what to do. If it is too hard, go back and run the beginner sym so that you see the navigation cues.
Scoring and Playbacks
Sym Score - This is calculated by the keywords in the simulation. Keywords can be worth various amounts and may contain alternatives. Make sure you inform your trainees if you want them to be natural in how they deliver, or if they should strictly follow the script; this will impact scoring.
Click Score - This is calculated by the navigation on a visual sym. Clicking in the right place advances the sym. Entering information in the text field will advance the sym. Click scores include interaction with checkboxes, drop downs, written fields, and click to advance type hot spots. You are scored based on completing these items in the right order, and selecting the correct action on the first try.
Text Field Keyword Score - This is calculated using written keywords in text field hotspots on a visual sym. This allows you the capability of measuring and ensuring the accuracy of the information that the trainee is typing into the system. If you are required to enter something exactly into the text field and you do not, the sym will advance but points will not be granted in scoring.
Sentiment Scores - Confidence, Concentration, and Energy are calculated for the entire sym. It is important to learn to balance these sentiments and that takes practice. Raising your energy score often lowers your concentration score. Listen to your recordings and note what you could have done differently in your delivery.
- Confidence - Using a lot of filler words (um, ah) will affect this score. This classification measures the trainee’s overall level of certainty. It considers a balance or lack thereof between the logical and the emotional activities from uncertainty to confidence.
- Concentration –This classification measures your overall level of concentration or involvement. It reflects how focused and engaged you sound in the conversation. An uneven pace in your delivery will lower your score because it sounds like you are not actively listening.
- Energy - This classification measures your overall level of energy and connection. It considers a range of energy from extremely low, like tranquility or boredom, to extremely high, like irate or peppy. Have the appropriate level of energy for the conversation. A high energy score may not be appropriate for your industry or the scenario. If someone is saying something that warrants empathy, we certainly do not want to lower our energy to a level where it seems we don’t care.
Types of syms
It may appear at first that you are running the same sym scenario repeatedly. The scenarios may be the same, but the level of difficulty is different.
- Beginner syms provide the most guidance and scripting.
- Intermediate syms have less guidance and scripting.
- Advanced syms have minimal or zero guidance and most closely replicate an actual call.
Random branched syms offer multiple options of a given scenario. Each time you click Start Test or Restart Sym, you will be randomly served one of the options. This replicates the unpredictability of real calls.
Reporting Options and uses
Sym Report - lists all syms. No date ranges. Is there a good variety of syms?
User Report - lists all users. No date ranges. Who is active in SymTrain?
Teams Results Report - displays results of the members of a team, or a specific team that you are looking into. You can compare their results here.
Sym Results Report - This shows the results of all syms that have been taken. Use filters here to see specific results by individual syms taken.
Module Results Report - Like the Sym Results report, but for anything that has been organized into a module.
User Results Report - This will show you consolidated results by an individual user. If you want to see how someone on your team is engaging with SymTrain, start here.