The problem
When , VP of Brand Delivery at TLS, walked into the DevLearn conference in 2021, she wasn鈥檛 looking for a new tool. She had, in her words, 鈥済iven up鈥 on finding a solution for her team鈥檚 biggest challenge: training and retaining employees in a complex, fast-moving environment.
But then, amid a sea of vendor booths, a pink display with octopus plushies caught her eye.
It was 天涯海角APP. And it would change everything.
Training at Scale in a High-Turnover Industry
TLS is not your typical call center. As a brand experience center for FirstService companies across North America, TLS MomentMakers庐 don鈥檛 just answer phones鈥攖hey manage customer support, schedule appointments, process claims, and navigate a maze of client-specific CRMs.
And here鈥檚 the kicker: each brand uses a different CRM.
鈥淥ur clients are all within FirstService, but every single one of them uses a different system,鈥 Thomson explains. 鈥淪o, if you鈥檙e a new hire at TLS, you鈥檙e not just learning one tool鈥攜ou鈥檙e learning multiple tools, each with different workflows, different fields, and different processes.鈥
For new employees, this meant an overwhelming training period and a long ramp to efficiency.
鈥淚 think we had nine different systems a person had to use just to do their job,鈥 Thomson recalls. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a lot of learning up front. And we know people forget half of what they learn within a week.鈥
Before 天涯海角APP, training looked something like this:
- Onboarding sessions filled with dense manuals and documentation.
- Reference documents buried in SharePoint鈥攐ften out-of-date or hard to find.
- Team members asking each other for help, a method that worked until TLS went fully remote.
鈥淲hen we moved to remote work, the usual way of getting quick answers鈥攖urning to the person next to you鈥攄isappeared,鈥 says Thomson. 鈥淪uddenly, everyone was on their own, trying to remember everything from training or digging through emails for answers.鈥
The result? Frustrated employees, costly mistakes, and high turnover.