How Live Oak Bank Built an Efficient Training Program with Posh Simulator

For Josh Goldstein, director of Live Oak Bank’s contact center, overseeing both quality assurance and agent training posed some logistical challenges. Whenever he spotted a knowledge gap, fixing it meant pulling agents off the floor, assembling a group, coordinating schedules, and running live role-play sessions that disrupted the entire team. It worked but was time-intensive and hard to measure success at scale.

Then Live Oak started working with Posh.

A Smarter Way to Train

Josh and his team didn't just adopt Posh’s Simulator training tool, they ran with it. They built out a library of customer avatars modeled after real personality types, populated with fictional data so agents could practice against realistic scenarios. “Jimi Hendrix” shows up as the cool, laid-back caller. “Jimmy Buffett” brings coastal communication energy. The avatars aren't just functional, they're fun, and that matters when you're trying to keep trainees engaged through a three-to-four-week onboarding program.

The positive impact was immediate. Live Oak reduced its reliance on large group sessions and schedule disruptions, while maintaining manager oversight and QA review throughout the training process. “The efficiency gains speak for themselves. We've been able to do more with the same team: smarter training, faster ramp time, and a measurable impact on quality,” says Josh.

Building Confidence Before the First Call

Live Oak's onboarding process guides new agents through shadowing, computer work, and observation before they ever touch a live call. But even after all that, the nerves on day one are real.

Simulator changed that equation. Now, before new agents hit the phones, Karel Mullen, client experience manager at Live Oak Bank, can run them through easy customers and hard customers, measuring them against Live Oak's own QA standards in real time. They get to perform the job, feel what it's like to handle a difficult caller, work through a tricky account question, recover from a mistake, without any of it being real.

By the time they pick up a live call, the nerves are gone.

According to Karel, “Our agents come to the phones more prepared and more confident than ever before.”

The Numbers Back It Up

Before Simulator, it was difficult to pinpoint where new agents needed support until they were already on the phones. Now, gaps surface early, giving the team the opportunity to address them before a new hire ever takes a live call, which has fundamentally changed how Live Oak approaches training and development. 

That kind of data matters at Live Oak. "In a contact center, what you can't measure, you can't improve. Simulator gave us the foundation we needed, which was real data, tied to real performance, from day one. And for us, performance has one definition: every customer who calls deserves an exceptional experience, every single time," says Josh.

What's Next

Live Oak is already rolling Simulator out to digital chat agents, with plans to explore using it for ongoing coaching. When QA flags a recurring gap in an agent's performance, Josh can build a scenario specifically designed to prompt that behavior, turning individual coaching into a targeted, repeatable process.

Josh’s advice for other financial institutions considering Posh’s Simulator? “If you're running a contact center and you haven't looked at what a tool like Simulator can do for your team's efficiency, start there. The impact on how we train, how we develop new talent and how we use our people's time has been significant.”