New-hire training on most floors follows the same arc. Two days of product sheets. A morning of role play with a senior who is also trying to hit their own target. Then a live list. The person's first angry customer is a real one, and they are learning on somebody you paid to acquire.
Voice practice puts a step in between. An AI customer calls your person on the same screen they use for real calls, by voice, with a made-up account and a script. It rings nobody real, and it never counts in call reports.
What a practice call feels like
Your new caller presses Practise and picks a customer. Say it is a borrower who insists the EMI has already been paid. The call arrives on the Workspace screen, in their Main language unless they pick another. The record on screen is made up. They talk, they get interrupted, they use the controls they will use on Monday.
While it runs, they show as Busy, Practice, which is counted with breaks and never as time on calls. The outcome they record stays with the practice call, and it never reaches a contact or a report. A practice stops at 12 minutes.
Afterwards they can ask for a grade on your staff scorecard. Managers see the practice calls and the grades, read only.
Setting up a batch
- Give access first. A manager gives each person Practice calls in Team Members. Nobody has it until it is turned on, the owner included.
- Set calls a day in Settings, Hand-over. It is a daily limit per person, under your plan's own limit for the workspace.
- Pick your customers. You get the Simulation Lab's customers that fit practising with a person, plus your own.
- Write your own customer for the thing your floor gets wrong most. Use a real complaint from last month.
A plan for a five-day batch might look like this. Day one, a friendly customer, just to learn the screen. Day two, a customer with lots of questions, so they learn where the record is. Day three, a stalling customer. Day four, an angry one. Day five, the hardest one you have written, and then a grade reviewed with a trainer.
How to use the grades
Practice has its own column, and it never counts in Call QA's numbers or a pass rate. A coaching note drawn from it is marked Practice. Tell your batch this. People practise honestly when they know a bad attempt won't follow them.
Grades are useful for seeing movement over a week. They are less useful as a final exam. The grade is the AI's reading of a transcript, on a call with an AI customer, and your trainer should still listen to a few before signing anyone off. If you want a person's practice recorded for that, practice audio, when recorded, is kept 30 days. After 180 days a practice call keeps its grade but not its words.
What to do with the seniors
This does not remove the senior from training. It removes the part that seniors run out of patience for, which is the same difficult customer played for the ninth time. Keep them for the debrief: listen to a practice call together, and ask what the caller could have said at the turning point. Trainers get a practice partner that does not tire, and they still do the teaching.
It also works for people already on the floor. A team moving onto a new product or a new campaign can rehearse before the list opens. When QA keeps flagging a certain step, a practice customer written around that step gives people something to do about it.
Practice for people, the Lab for agents
The two draw on the same customers and are easy to mix up. The Simulation Lab rehearses your AI, in text. Voice practice is your person, by voice, on the Workspace.
Limits to know
- It is off for everyone until you give it to someone. People who only manage Call QA see Team practice, read only, and cannot practise.
- An AI customer is a good sparring partner, and it is still an AI. It will not sound exactly like a tired shopkeeper in Nagpur on a bad line.
- Practice comes with the Workspace, so it needs a plan that includes that. It isn't on the free trial.
- Each minute beyond the practice minutes your plan includes is charged. Start says whether there is a charge today. Grading a practice is charged as one call graded. The pricing page has the figures.
When to send them to real calls
Decide this ahead of time, and base it on something you can see. For example: three practice calls graded above your bar on the hardest customer, a trainer has listened to one, and they have made ten supervised calls with someone listening. Then give them a small list. For the first week on real calls, keep a supervisor within reach of Whisper, and have them keep pressing Ask for help.
For the wider picture of getting someone onto the screen, see a telecaller's first week.