A client story from the United States
How America’s largest driving school found a support team that stays
Coastline Academy runs driving schools across seven states with more than 650 employees. When customer demand outgrew the coverage its support department could hold, it brought in Talent Match Africa as a second team.
The professionals who arrived matched the brief from the very first shortlist, steadied the markets that were running short staffed, and are all still in the role today.
The Brief
A second team for the busiest markets
Coastline Academy exists to eradicate car crashes by helping people become safe, confident drivers for life, and its Tier 1 customer support and sales department is the front door to that mission. As the department matured and customer demand kept climbing, coverage began thinning in the markets carrying the heaviest volume. What the business needed at that point was resilience rather than raw headcount.
The company set out to find a second support partner that could balance volume across markets and provide redundancy whenever demand spiked or coverage thinned. Coastline had worked with remote teams before, so the standard it applied to any new partner was set by experience rather than curiosity.
“The TMA staff are thorough, dedicated, and are integral to our operations and are embedded in our team’s culture.
They do not sit adjacent to our employees; they sit amongst them.“
Charles, Customer Support and Sales,
Coastline Academy
How the team was built
See how the first shortlist arrived already matching what Coastline had asked for.
Everything started with Coastline’s ideal candidate profile, interrogated properly so it covered the judgement and communication the role needed rather than a list of tools and years.
Candidates were then headhunted against that profile and assessed on technical capability alongside English proficiency and cultural alignment, which is the part that decides whether somebody thrives inside a busy department.
The first shortlist arrived already matching the profile, which meant Coastline skipped the calibration cycle that usually sits between signing a partner and seeing anybody worth interviewing.
From there, Talent Match Africa handled contracts, equipment and onboarding, and the team took up its work from office hubs with backup power and backup internet. Ongoing support, mentoring and a deliberate employee satisfaction strategy sit inside the service rather than beside it, which is what keeps a team like this one in place.
What made the difference
The right people on the first shortlist
Talent Match Africa delivered candidates who matched Coastline’s ideal candidate profile from the very first slate, which is rarer than it sounds in a category where early shortlists are usually a negotiation.
The department could act on that first list rather than correcting it, and the hours a hiring manager normally spends screening people who were never going to fit stayed inside the department where they were needed.
- No calibration cycle: usable candidates arrived on the first slate rather than the third.
- No volume over fit: the shortlists stayed short, relevant and worth reading.
- No lost weeks: the department kept the screening time it did not have to spare.
People who are still in the role
Coastline’s Talent Match Africa team has had zero attrition, which Charles attributes directly to the working environment and the employee satisfaction strategy that sit inside the model.
Continuity of that kind quietly changes the arithmetic of the whole arrangement, because every hour of product training, systems training and cultural onboarding the department has invested is still working on the floor and compounding rather than walking out the door.
For context, average staff turnover at call centres in India and the Philippines sits at around 60 percent a year, which is the number most support leaders have learned to plan around. Coastline has not had to plan around it.
A partner that reads the business
What Charles describes is an understanding of the business at a strategic level rather than a task level, which is what allows a support team to make sensible decisions in the moments a script does not cover.
That understanding is the difference between people who follow instructions accurately and people who protect the brand while they do it, and it is the reason Coastline describes the relationship as a partnership rather than a supplier arrangement.
What changed for the department
The clearest measure of what changed is where the pressure went. Three results came out of the engagement, and the third one is the result Coastline had not planned for.
Coverage | 7 States
Understaffed markets stabilised
The team absorbed the capacity gaps in the markets that were hurting most, and coverage steadied across the channels the department is measured on.
What changed
Revenue | Recovered as coverage steadied
Service levels | Improved across channels
Overflow | Absorbed without pressure on the existing team
Retention | Zero attrition
The result that compounds
Not one person has left since the team started, so every hour of training the department has invested is still on the floor.
What changed
Rehiring | None required to date
Training | Stays inside the department
Category norm | 60% turnover at Indian and Philippines call centres
Ownership | Brand ambassadors
The result nobody planned for
The professionals began representing the brand rather than processing requests on its behalf, which is the part Charles says genuinely surprised them.
What changed
Customer journey | Guided from first enquiry to booking
Culture | Embedded in the department, not adjacent to it
In his words | “eagerness to be brand ambassadors for us every day”
Advice from the client
What Coastline would tell another operations leader
Asked what actually made this work, Charles points at decisions that belonged to Coastline rather than to Talent Match Africa, which is worth sitting with for a moment if you are weighing up a partner of your own. Two of those decisions were taken before the first shortlist ever arrived, and a third shaped everything that followed it.
His view of how the relationship has run since is short and unambiguous, which is that from the executive team through to the day-to-day supervisors, the responsiveness and service delivery are unmatched.
Be clear about the profile, not the job title.
Charles’s first instruction to anyone evaluating Talent Match Africa is to be clear about your ideal candidate profile expectations, because everything downstream depends on how honestly that profile has been written.
Then let go of the search.
His second is to let the TMA team do the hard work of finding them, which is precisely the work a stretched department has no hours left to do properly.
Treat it as a partnership rather than a vendor arrangement.
His third is the one he puts most weight on, because in his experience a partner who is invested in your company’s success will take you considerably further than a supplier who is filling a brief.
Live chat
Real time help at the moment a prospective customer is deciding, which is the point where hesitation is most expensive.
Internal Slack
Support for Coastline’s own people, which is the clearest sign that the team is working inside the department rather than alongside it.
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