Dr. Tiffany Cotterman on the Science of Learning: A Five-Phase Framework That Moved CES by 2 Points in 10 Minutes

Dr. Tiffany Cotterman --- VP of Customer Experience and learning science researcher --- took the stage at CCW Executive Exchange Austin 2026 with a clear message: the biggest problems in corporate training aren't budget or technology. They're assumptions, cognitive overload, and lack of engagement. And there's a research-backed framework to fix all three without spending a dime.

Drawing from her career --- which started as a weapons instructor in the Air Force before moving to reservation sales at American Airlines --- Dr. Cotterman walked through a five-phase instructional framework developed from her own research that has driven measurable performance gains across multiple clients and verticals.

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The Three Persistent Problems in Corporate Training

Year after year, the Association of Talent Development tracks the same top challenges in corporate training worldwide. Dr. Cotterman highlighted the three that refuse to go away:

1. Assumptions about prior knowledge --- Training assumes all learners arrive with the same baseline knowledge, ready to access new content
2. Cognitive overload --- Slides packed with text and marathon instruction sessions that exceed what the brain can process
3. Lack of engagement --- Sit-and-get training where learners aren't actively involved

"How many of you have ever been in a training where it's death by PowerPoint? You can see thousands of words on the slide. That's not how our brains work."

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The Five-Phase Learning Framework

Dr. Cotterman shared a framework grounded in her learning science research that addresses each of those challenges directly. The results are consistent regardless of content vertical or client.

Phase 1: Activate Prior Knowledge

Research shows that when adults can tap into prior knowledge, learning increases by 20%. Rather than assume learners have this foundation, the framework deliberately creates it.

For an empathy lesson, Dr. Cotterman described immersing agents in an intentionally frustrating user experience --- broken links, non-functioning materials, tasks designed to fail. The agents experience inconvenience firsthand before connecting it to the customer's emotional state.

"I'm not going to assume that my learners have that prior knowledge, because I know that research shows me that when adults can tap into prior knowledge, the learning increases by 20%. I'm not going to leave that on the table."

Phase 2: Direct Instruction (10 Minutes Max)

This is where the cognitive load research kicks in. Direct instruction should never exceed 10 minutes --- that's all the brain can handle before engagement drops.

In the empathy example, this phase connects the frustrating experience agents just had to what customers feel when they call in. The instruction is brief, focused, and emotionally anchored.

Phase 3: Exploration

Learners work with real call-driver scenarios, identifying customer emotions in each one. The key insight: you can't train an agent for every possible scenario, but you can train them to connect with the underlying emotion.

"I cannot train every agent for every single scenario. However, I can train an agent to connect with the emotion."

Phase 4: Application

Agents move from recognizing emotions to building responses. They review client resources, identify how to meet the customer's need for convenience, and practice constructing confident, empathetic responses.

Phase 5: Reflection and Teach-Back

This is the phase most training programs skip --- and it's arguably the most important. When learners teach back what they've learned, content moves from short-term to long-term memory.

"The metacognitive process --- when we provide opportunities for learners to teach back, we have moved the training and the learning from short-term to long-term memory."

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The Data: Confidence and CES Impact

Dr. Cotterman tracked both qualitative and quantitative outcomes before and after implementing the framework.

Learner confidence scores (scale of 1-5):

Production impact:

• Applied the same strategies to existing production agents
• 5-day implementation: 2 minutes per day, 10 minutes total
• Result: 2 percentage point increase in CES scores
• Consistent across multiple clients and verticals

"Just a 5-day implementation. Two minutes per day for 5 days. That's a total of 10 minutes. We saw a 2 percentage point increase in CES. This isn't just one line of business. We saw this across the organization."

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Drip Feed Learning: Microlearning in Production

Only 20% of job knowledge comes from formal training. Only 1% of the work week is dedicated to skill development. Dr. Cotterman addressed this gap with what learning science calls a drip feed campaign --- consistent skill development in small doses.

The implementation: a choice board where each option links to a microlearning of two minutes or less. Agents choose which module to complete each day, providing autonomy within structured parameters.

"I can't pull my agent off the phone for a 30-minute workshop, but I sure can for two minutes and see an impact."

The autonomy element matters. Research shows that meeting the basic psychological need for autonomy increases feelings of competence. Agents chose when to learn --- Dr. Cotterman chose what they learned.

She also highlighted the inefficiency of traditional workshops for struggling agents: if an agent only needs three minutes of a 30-minute workshop, and that content falls at the end, the training time is wasted.

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Extending to Leadership Development

The same drip feed approach was applied to leadership development. Leaders received formal training followed by weekly microlearning doses --- slightly longer than agent modules since leaders aren't on the phone continuously.

The team also created avatar-based content tailored to their agent demographic (ages 20-27 in the eastern Caribbean). Agents named the avatars and built customer skills profiles for each one, adding a gamification element that drove engagement.

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The Power of Positive Language

One practical example showed how data from customer surveys drove a targeted microlearning intervention. The word "easy" appeared frequently in positive customer feedback, so the team created a 100-second video teaching agents to weave the word into their conversations naturally.

Phrases like "to keep things easy for you" and "I'm working to make this as easy as it can be" leverage a psychological trigger --- customers who hear "easy" are more likely to feel positive about their experience and rate it higher on surveys.

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AI Needs Learning Science Behind It

Dr. Cotterman closed with a message about AI in customer experience. She described consulting with an AI company whose product displayed customer transcripts on one side and knowledge-base articles on the other, with suggested responses.

Her feedback: take it further. If agents are being trained on empathy, highlight the keywords in the customer transcript that signal escalation --- in red, so agents see color before they process words.

"Nobody has time to read all the words that are coming up. That's distraction. That's cognitive overload. Highlight the phrases in red. It's going to flag my agent because they're going to see color faster than they're going to see words."

The core message: technology and learning science must work together. AI without the science of how people learn leaves performance on the table.

"When you merge the science with the technology, that's where you're going to see the performance increase. You cannot do one without the other."

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Resources

Dr. Cotterman shared a resource library with additional research and strategies on the science of learning in CX environments. Access the resources here.