For the next six hours, the instructor, using the computer screen as blackboard, teaches the customer service representatives everything from handling angry callers to enrolling new members. You've got to train your workers, of course, but it's awfully expensive and time consuming to fly them around to sit, dazed, in an overheated classroom. Cyberclasses to the rescue. Aetna, in the forefront, has trained more than 3,000 employees on-line since November 1997 and expects to triple that number by end of next year. Office Depot, Fidelity, Chrysler, American Airlines, Sony and Nortel all train employees via the Web.
Companies report big cost savings.
That's the good news. We visited Aetna to find out. Aetna's move into cybertraining was spurred by crisis. The company decided in late 1996 to disperse its service representatives out of headquarters into regional offices. That meant hiring 800 employees and overhauling work assignments for 400 others.