Splendid Customer Service that leaves a stimulating impression on customers with the feel of satisfaction and ramp up your sales is only possible when you have well trained your call center agents. Always do remember one thing, you’ll invariably need to train your call center agent even if you hire a profound agent who seems to be fit perfect in your call center. Training is the fundamental rule of any organization but here lies the question, have you trained your call center agents well enough? We usually come across with the situations where we see agents getting rough time with manager because of their messed up performance but before putting the entire blame on them, do consider one thing that if they lacked because of inadequate training?
Let’s take a look at the things you need to do in order to train your call center agents.
Give orientation, a fresh light start
Starting the training session right off the bat can be overwhelming so always give a fresh light start to your call center trainees and let them adjust to their surroundings. Begin your first training session with an overview about company, basic policies and target markets. Have them visit the working area and introduce the trainees to staff. Let them see how their seniors work so that they might become zealous to join their seniors and prove their abilities. Do ask call center trainees if they have already been told about break hours, paydays and leaves policy and if they are not provided with such information then brief them about it.
Educate your call center agents about your system
Your call center agents should have comprehensive understanding of your business, products and call center operations. Give a detailed session on your system and show them the software that is being used in your call center. Provide training slides and show them the working on multimedia.
Software Training Modules
This is the most important step of training where you can either build a great team or deficient team. Most of the call centers give passive training by letting the call center agents silently watch their seniors for days. However this practice deadly needs to be revised. Instead of making your trainees sleep during their Watch period, shorten the period of watch and let them watch the working of their senior call center agents for a day and starting from the next day, give training modules and practice scenarios so that they may get the idea of real-time situation.
Create training program and review it constantly
Create a proper training program for call center agents and include all steps with the time limit. Include multimedia presentation and videos for the training session. Make a timetable in your call center training program and review it every day, plus check the things that have been done and prepare for the next.
Build friendly and learning environment
An austere and antisocial work environment always drive your employees further away from you and snatch their gusto of learning. Can you expect a trainee to ask a question in a strict environment? No! Build a friendly learning environment where every trainee would be welcomed to ask questions. And to maintain a friendly learning environment where honorifics are still present with the zeal of learning.
Train Individually and constantly evaluate their performance
Don’t just teach and evaluate everything in bulk but pay attention to each and every call center agent. Ask each trainee questions and give them scenarios to handle in order to evaluate their performance. Give more training practices to those who lack in knowledge.
Explain the importance of Schedule Adherence
As schedule adherence always impact call centers badly so do explain your trainees the importance of it. Make a special session with some of the employees from Workforce Management and have them explain the KPIs and how they can hit their KPI benchmarks.
Bring Top agents to training room
Most of the contact centers omit this thing considering as not required but little do they know the impact of it on trainees. By bringing out the top call center agents and letting your trainees meet them in person can bring a newly found motivation in your trainees and would leave them with inspiration and that alone can make them perform better.
Provide call handling practices
If you think that call handling practices aren’t needed and just letting them watch their senior call center agents take calls is enough for them to learn then you are dead wrong! A situation that one sees and a situation that one goes through is entirely a different game. Provide them instruction sheets about call handling and let them practice answering calls by making them practice among themselves. Let them know the quota of calls and how the call results and information will be recorded by the agents.
The performance of your call center agents always impacts the success of your call center and because of it, you need to implement an efficient call center agent training program to ensure quality customer service. And one last thing for you to keep in mind is:
Training is a never-ending process!
