Customer Service Training & Best Practices
Client Story
A healthcare organization with several hundred employees, growing through acquisition. After a six-module executive leadership program, the organization brought Connection Lab’s work to its customer service teams, where agents supported different products and departments, each with its own processes, tools, and culture.
The Challenge
Nobody calls customer service to say things are going well.
Agents were handling difficult conversations under pressure while navigating new products, systems, and merging cultures. Without a shared approach to this service, customers could receive a different experience depending on who in the organization they had reached.
Some experienced individuals had tremendous engagement and communication practices, while agents newer to the work relied on scripts to serve their users. Agents felt isolated, and new team members didn’t know what they didn’t know. The challenge became to create a best-practice program in support of the customer support team.
Our Approach
Rather than imposing external scripts, Connection Lab designed a peer-led development initiative to surface and share the expertise already within the organization.
- Field Discovery: Spoke with 40+ agents and supervisors to identify real challenges in communication, workflow, and stress management.
- Reframing the Role: Used the 6 Box Model to help agents approach frustrated callers as an audience to engage rather than simply a ticket to close.
- Co-Creating Best Practices: Facilitated workshops where agents documented proven techniques, creating a shared communication resource and language for coaching and development.
Results
A more consistent customer experience. Agents across products and departments developed a common language and shared standard for communication and development.
Expertise became retrievable. Effective practices moved out of individual heads and into a resource the team could use, build on, and pass to new agents.
Stronger connection and leadership development. Participants co-created a new culture of mutual support that they naturally extended to clients. The customer support function became so effective that it grew into a valuable source for internal promotion.
The work continued. The client continued the program independently and later brought Connection Lab back to design a company-wide customer service off-site.
“This program allowed me to get to know team members in a way that daily work never allowed. This work changed how we show up every day.”
— Workshop participant
Why It Worked
Customer service scripts can be limiting - understanding that users wanted to feel seen and heard changed how agents solved problems.
The expertise was already in the building. Connection Lab created the conditions for agents to learn from one another, giving them a shared language and a practical, repeatable methodology for turning individual experience into customer service best practices.
The result was stronger peer connection, more consistent customer service, and a foundation for lasting change.
