From frustration to retention: How TLS cut turnover by 36% with just-in-time enablement

# of Employees

200

Industry

Telecommunication

Website

The problem

When Stephanie Thomson, VP of Brand Delivery at TLS, walked into the DevLearn conference in 2021, she wasn’t looking for a new tool. She had, in her words, “given up” on finding a solution for her team’s 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 Spekit. 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® don’t just answer phones—they manage customer support, schedule appointments, process claims, and navigate a maze of client-specific CRMs.

And here’s the kicker: each brand uses a different CRM.

“Our clients are all within FirstService, but every single one of them uses a different system,” Thomson explains. “So, if you’re a new hire at TLS, you’re not just learning one tool—you’re learning multiple tools, each with different workflows, different fields, and different processes.”

For new employees, this meant an overwhelming training period and a long ramp to efficiency.

“I think we had nine different systems a person had to use just to do their job,” Thomson recalls. “That’s a lot of learning up front. And we know people forget half of what they learn within a week.”

Before Spekit, training looked something like this:

Onboarding sessions filled with dense manuals and documentation.
Reference documents buried in SharePoint—often out-of-date or hard to find.
Team members asking each other for help, a method that worked until TLS went fully remote.

“When we moved to remote work, the usual way of getting quick answers—turning to the person next to you—disappeared,” says Thomson. “Suddenly, everyone was on their own, trying to remember everything from training or digging through emails for answers.”

The result? Frustrated employees, costly mistakes, and high turnover.

The solution

Just-in-Time Enablement That Moves With the Work

When Thomson first saw Spekit at DevLearn 2021, she knew instantly: this was it.

“I wasn’t even actively looking for a solution at the time,” she admits. “But when I saw the demo, it was like a light had shone on Spekit. I just knew.”

Unlike traditional learning management systems or documentation tools, Spekit wouldn’t require employees to stop what they were doing to look up answers. Instead, it would surface critical information in the moment, right where they were working.

“It’s like a skin that fits around all the different programs we use,” Thomson explains. “The information doesn’t move when they scroll. It’s just there—always accessible, always up to date.”

But Spekit didn’t just solve training—it solved communication, too.

For industries like property restoration, where natural disasters create sudden spikes in customer calls, information changes daily.

“During events like the Texas freeze or hurricanes, our team needs updates constantly,” Thomson says. “Spekit’s Spotlight feature lets us push critical updates directly to our teams without them having to dig through emails.”

“They weren’t reading their emails,” she continues. “And frankly, I don’t blame them. Who has time to read 50 emails before starting their shift? Spekit made sure they got the right information at the right time—no searching required.”

The results

Lower Turnover, Faster Training, and a More Agile Business

The results speak for themselves.

After implementing Spekit, TLS reduced turnover among MomentMakers® by 36% in just one year—an unheard-of improvement in an industry notorious for high attrition.

“In 2021, our turnover was really high,” Thomson recalls. “Then, in 2022, we started making changes. And by the end of 2023, our turnover rate had dropped to 20%. That’s a 36% improvement.”

Turnover wasn’t the only thing that changed. Training time shrank. Employees ramped up faster. Mistakes decreased.

And then, there was the impact on TLS’s tiny training team.

“Our training and development department is one person,” Thomson says. “If we didn’t have Spekit, we would have needed to hire at least two more people or spend a ton of money on external training materials.”

Instead, that one person could instantly update processes across the entire organization with a few clicks.

And for Thomson personally, Spekit has become her daily go-to.

“When a client asks about a process, I don’t have to dig through SharePoint for a Word doc anymore,” she says. “I can just pull it up in Spekit or send them a link. It’s that easy.”

A Vendor That Feels Like a Partner

Ask Thomson about working with Spekit’s team, and she lights up.

“It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s not work,” she says. “I love talking to Jen. I love getting updates on new features. And the annual Spekit awards? Those are awesome.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of vendors,” she continues. “Most of them are… fine. But Spekit? It’s a breath of fresh air.”

What Would Life Be Like Without Spekit?

When asked this question, Thomson doesn’t hesitate.

“It would be really hard,” she says. “I don’t know what we would do.”

But she doesn’t just mean harder from a training perspective—she means it would slow down the entire business.

“Spekit didn’t just make training easier. It gave us time to explore new possibilities,” she explains. “It freed up our mental space. It made us more creative in other areas of the business.”

And perhaps most importantly? It changed what employees expected from their tools.

“Spekit is one of the few software applications we use that gets zero complaints,” Thomson says. “It just works. It’s intuitive. And it makes people’s jobs easier. That’s not something I can say about every tool.”

She laughs. “Whenever I log into Microsoft anything, I just think, ‘Ugh.’ But with Spekit? It’s a breath of fresh air.”

In-the-Moment Knowledge That Sticks

At the end of the day, Thomson says, Spekit is “in-the-moment knowledge”—the kind that makes work seamless.

“If you’re entering customer information and you don’t know what a field is for, Spekit is right there,” she says. “You click on it, and you get the answer. No searching, no guessing. Just knowledge, exactly when and where you need it.”

For TLS, that small shift has added up to big changes—happier employees, more efficient processes, and a more agile business.

And to think—it all started with an octopus.

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