Change is important. Change leads to evolution. And evolving makes it possible to be able to survive and thrive. It challenges you not only to leave behind your comfort zone, but to overcome difficulties with an invincible spirit.
As the cliché goes, change is the spice of life. But more than often, we neglect changes. We fight hard to overcome all that can push us and challenge our set expectations and boundaries. One such industry where the variables involved are too many in a purely customer centric domain – Call Centers.
In a typical call center, everyone enjoys working in their fixed slot of shifts and your employees would try and resist the temptation to set their own bar very high. This will consequently hamper their productivity and put you in an uneasy spot. The best way to fight this resistance is by conducting call center training on a timely basis.
Frequent call center trainings will cover all the loopholes which prevent your employees from performing and delivering their absolute best. Call center training will not only take into account the ‘voice’ and ‘face’ of your brand, but also enhance skills of everyone on floor, from your work force management team to quality assurance officers.
Call center agents often receive timely sessions and trainings to help overcome all productivity barriers. During which as a manager, you often miss that other staff members are also equally important when it comes to evaluating the overall success count. Here’s a little attempt to streamline call center training process with these tips.
1. Quality train your quality check officers
Your quality check officers or quality analysts will also need some training tips from time to time. If they have been following a certain set of strategies for too long, it can and it will become obsolete after some time. If their quality check parameters are starting to have no or limited results on agents, it is time to brush up their skills.
2. Clarify roles in separate workflow sheets
Your agents know that they are expected to answer calls, give chat support, respond to emails, along with a host of other activities. What about the other members of the staff? Are they absolutely clear in their heads that they are expected to keep a record of daily activities? Maintain a tally? Or need to take initiatives which are an essential part of their key role objectives.It can happen more than often that you have missed out on opportunities to clearly mark their work expectations.
3. Involve your workforce management team
Workforce management team or widely referred to as WFM team is often the most hated department in a call center. They are the ones who keep a record of your schedule adherence, your break calculators, make you do graveyard shifts, or don’t give you consecutive week offs. However, this is all a part of their job description. They need to keep the call center up and running 24/7. This often makes them feel a little left out, it can be a healthy exercise if your WFM team is made an active part of all call center trainings. This can guarantee more engagement and productivity.
4. Knowledge is power
Books are a man’s best friend. To boost your call center staff knowledge, you can pile up a collection of influential people’s books and reference DVD’s to help your employees overcome all barriers and boost their knowledge when they are unoccupied. This can be a really interesting and innovative approach to power your call center training schedule.
5. Innovative ways to train
Training doesn’t necessarily have to be a monotonous routine. It doesn’t need to be conducted in a typical classroom. It is about enhancing the skills of your skilled workforce in any positive manner possible. This can happen via many different mediums, which can include fun activities, games, video showcases. etc. It can also add some element of fun and impart great skills among your call center staff, such as teamwork and the importance of trusting colleagues.
6. Online training sessions
There will be instances when not all of your employees would be available to be actively involved in training sessions. In such situations, you can give them an option to opt for online training simulations. This way they can also be aware of the latest trends and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
7. Effort recognition & Incentives
Your sales team will have a specified incentive plan in order to keep their morale up. A similar setup needs to be put in place for other departments as well. This will motivate them more to excel and out-perform their set standards. During training sessions, emphasise upon the fact their efforts will not go unnoticed and will be rewarded accordingly.
8. Opt for more practical and hands-on module
Most your employees are seasoned professionals. It can get a bit monotonous if you are only imparting theoretical knowledge to them. Instead, you can opt for a more hands-on approach. It is essential to provide live demonstrations of the new tools, products, services, etc. This will keep their tempo up and they will me more engaged during training sessions.
I sincerely hope that these tips will help you overcome all barriers and have even better statistics to boost about. If you have more insights to add, let us know in the comments section.
