Accelerating Readiness in Automotive CX: Award-Winning Results

This year, Percepta’s redesigned Induction program earned two top honors: a Gold Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Learning Strategy and a Bronze Stevie Award for Training Program of the Year. These awards recognize more than instructional innovation. They reflect a bold rethinking of how agents are prepared for the complexity and pace of today’s automotive experience.

But the real story goes beyond awards. In a fast-moving, customer-driven industry, readiness isn’t just about content. It’s about balancing flexibility and building new hire confidence. And the redesigned Induction, or new hire onboarding, program doesn’t just streamline training. It builds critical thinkers who can adapt in real time.

In the article below, Victoria Brooker, Percepta's Global Instructional Design Manager for Launches and Initiatives and a former customer service advisor, shares how her team reimagined agent onboarding from the ground up. Over her 12-year journey with Percepta, Vicky has gone from the front lines to leading a global team across five countries. Her story is one of scale, strategy, and people-first leadership that balances the needs of the learner with the demands of the business.

Rebuilding Readiness: Designing for the Pace and Complexity of Automotive CX

I’ve been working in training for the automotive industry for 11 years, and in that time, the customer experience landscape has evolved, and continues to evolve, rapidly. Today, contact centre agents are expected to handle increasingly complex, emotionally nuanced, and technically specific interactions.

One clear example is connected vehicle technology. The total addressable market for connected features is projected to grow from $0.8 billion in 2023 to $568 billion by 2035. Future vehicles could offer more than 300 connected features — that’s a lot of new information to learn. Supporting today’s vehicles is starting to feel less like customer service and more like working a tech support desk.

If I, as an instructional designer, find it challenging to stay on top of all these changes, imagine what that feels like for the frontline agent. They're expected to recall every update in real time, present themselves as the expert, and build trust with each customer interaction.

That’s why the most important thing we can do as a support function is stay agile. Not just in how we design training, but in how we build learners who can think and adapt on their own. Because being effective in this space means more than just knowing the answers. It means being able to find them. It means equipping agents to use tools like the Knowledge Base in real time, apply critical thinking, and have the curiosity and confidence to figure things out.

Streamlining for Scale

How we rebuilt onboarding to move faster and train smarter

In the past, instructional design at Percepta was handled locally. That created flexibility, but it also meant we were often reacting to new requests instead of designing strategically. Content became fragmented and redundant. Curriculums became “Frankensteined” together, every new piece bolted on, creating bloated programs that crammed too much content into a limited training time.

So, we made a shift from local execution to a centralised model. That gave us something powerful: global consistency with local relevance. We could uphold high standards across the board while still honouring regional nuances that matter. It allowed us to be more proactive in our design, more intentional in our learning pathways, and ultimately, more effective as partners to Ops.

It also gave us room to think beyond the training event to build learning paths that prepare agents to flex across programs. As forecasting needs shift, we now have a stronger bench of agents who can pivot where they’re needed most. From there, we streamlined the Induction program itself:

• Two separate curricula became one
• 255 modules were reduced to 63
• The program became format-flexible, built for both in-person and virtual delivery
• Trainers became more deployable across sites
• Instructional Designers were freed from constant patchwork updates to focus on deeper, higher-impact work

That restructure wasn’t just operational. It was strategic — built on a core belief that training isn’t just about knowledge transfer. It’s about enabling readiness at scale.

Measuring the Impact

What we delivered — and why it won

This wasn’t just an instructional challenge. It was a strategic one.

To truly support operations, we needed a new model for learning; one that developed critical thinkers, scaled globally, and delivered measurable business outcomes. That’s where Active Learning came in.

The new program was built on CR+FREEDOM, an evolved version of Roger Schank’s goal-based learning principles, which we updated for today’s automotive CX landscape. The model integrates:

• C – Community: Peer collaboration and shared problem-solving
• R – Reflection: Metacognitive awareness to track confidence and growth
• FREEDOM: Failure, Expectation, Reasoning, Emotionality, Exploration, Doing, Observation, Motivation

Rather than defaulting to passive lectures, we shifted to real-world scenarios, hands-on practice, and authentic assessments that tested actual application of skills. We trained agents how to think, not just what to say.

The induction training results showed the impact:

• 13% reduction in AHT within the first 30 days
• 56% increase in Knowledge Base usage, improving resource navigation and self-sufficiency
• 78% Customer Satisfaction, proving that efficiency didn't come at the cost of experience
• Agents are now reaching AHT goals in under 120 days - more than 50% faster than the previous average of 240.

We also reduced redundancy in our materials by pointing learners directly to the Knowledge Base instead of duplicating process content. That made the program easier to maintain and allowed ISDs to focus on higher-value work.

Ultimately, this approach created learners who were more curious, more independent, and better able to solve problems in the moment with less reliance on support teams and more confidence in their own capabilities.

With strong internal alignment, measurable impact, and a scalable design model, the new Induction program went on to win:

• 🥇 Gold Medal for Best Learning Strategy from Brandon Hall Group
• 🥉 Bronze Award for Training Program of the Year from The Stevie® Awards

But more importantly, it proved that training isn’t just a cost centre. It’s a strategic enabler of operational excellence, customer confidence, and future-ready talent.

And we’re just getting started. As the industry continues to evolve, so will we — designing programs that not only keep up with change but help drive it.

We’re so proud of our Learning Delivery and Instructional Design teams — both earning their first major awards this year! These wins recognize the incredible talent, strategy, and care behind the training experiences we create every day.

Thank you for everything you do to support our people, our clients, and the future of automotive CX.