The Contact Center Express – A Call Center Today Magazine

We’ve compiled a list of the top 9 commonly-held opinions agents have about their employers. This is based on our work, nationwide, and you can probably add a few doozies yourself. Let’s explore the list together and then we will offer proven suggestions to help you do something about it!

Call Center Agents

1. Recognize that first-level supervisors have little decision-making capability.
2. Expect their compensation to change for the worse.
3. Desire a comfortable, appealing workspace
4. Want to work somewhere that has a proven track record
5. Want growth and adaptability
6. Want fair resolutions to disagreements
7. Want ongoing, high quality training
8. Hope their managers will act prudently, not just react to situations
9. Want fair, empathic managers

What you can do about it

1. Create committees or teams to address agents’ concerns. Volunteer-based training teams, compensation teams, and quality scores teams will help surface issues and ensure communication.
2. Encourage and create a communication process for agents to express their concerns or offer suggestions. Use web-forms and anonymous email addresses to solicit comments and feedback. Just because you ask for feedback and suggestions doesn’t mean you’re going to act on every suggestion. Make sure your people understand that. But truly listening to people and keeping your finger on the pulse goes a long way toward employee engagement.
3. Use focus groups and roundtables to dig deeper into subjects that require attention. Invite selected agents to meet and talk; give them a forum.
4. Do surveys. Use the web and traditional survey formats to get inside your agents’ heads. You need to know what they’re thinking and feeling.

We know that highly engaged agents contribute more – often much more – than less engaged agents in terms of client loyalty, client profitability, and enhanced shareholder returns. It’s obvious that training is a key driver of agent engagement. We’re taking a pledge in 2012 that training won’t be a self-proclaimed expert flipping through PowerPoint slides boring agents into a coma.

Training has to be more important than that. In fact, according to 2011 training industry data, organizations spent $171.5 billion – almost $46 billion more than in 2009 – on employee learning and development in 2010. But no matter how many billions are dedicated to training, only by linking learning initiatives to company goals and strategies will those dollars translate into sustainability, which is a strong competitive advantage for all organizations.

What value does the learning function provide the business? When learning is tightly aligned with the business’s priorities, both the learning team and stakeholders can readily articulate the learning function’s value proposition.

So try this exercise with your C-level executives and front line managers. Ask them the question, “What value does the learning function provide the business?” Or use your own language to ask the question; every organization is different. Make it a conversation, heck – take somebody out for lunch and have an actual discussion. Can you get everyone to agree on the value that the learning function provides the business?

After you get your feedback you have to go into marketing mode. Depending on how many people agree on the value that training provides, you’ll have your work cut out for you. You either have to get others on board, or you may have to change perception. In either case, start by crafting a succinct message that says exactly how the training / learning function contributes to the call center business. Use real language and examples call center supervisors relate to. The first step to showing the value of a call center training program is to create a program that has organizational value. More on that soon…

Agents want clear, explicit, fair rules to guide their performance. For management the hardest part of laying the ground rules is that the rules may not be clear to the people who actually work with them: the agents. To clarify the rules, hold meetings, send emails, make posters, etc. You can’t over communicate when the rules are new. All channels of communication must be open so there is NO ambiguity in terms of expectations. It is also important that management regularly asks for questions and use good communication techniques like paraphrasing and mirroring to check for understanding. Regularly asking “Am I being clear?” is a good habit to get into when you’re rolling out new rules. Management must also leave their doors open to future questions should complications arise.

In addition to clear rules, it also must be clear to agents who will answer their questions, and address their problems and concerns. In most call centers, agents report to a supervisor. If the supervisor is out on a particular day, who will they be referred to? It’s imporant that agents communicate clearly with their floor supervisors, and not skip to the upper echelons of managmeent. The reason call centers implement a chain of command is to allow time and space for everyone to do their jobs. A supervisor’s job is to manage his or her call center team. Upper management then manages the supervisors. This is how the channel of communication works and agents must be clear on this point.

In 2012 we are going to go back to the basics to re-learn training fundamentals.

Call Center Today is often asked to improve call center staff performance. When we analyze any given situation in which the employee is “underperforming” there are often additional circumstances that contribute to underperformance. Corporate resources and support are important factors, as are follow through and manager involvement. In other words, it’s not always the employee’s “fault”.

To design the right performance improvement solution, it’s important to implement a training needs analysis first. If you skip the preliminary analysis and jump directly into a training solution, you will be left wondering why your training didn’t fix the problem or improve performance, etc.

Training Needs Analysis doesn’t always have to be a formal, extensive process. But some time must be dedicated to analyzing the resources and support learners have. Also a clear understanding of the training objectives is critical. Before you even prescribe a training solution, are you sure that you know the exact outcome you’re looking for? How will you know whether your training is successful unless you know exactly what attitude, skill, knowledge or behavior you’re training for? Your thoughts??

For those of us who really like the call center, and respect the agents and customers we call, outbound telephone sales is magical.  Whether B-C or B-B, it is terrific to help customers reach their goals.  And, when done well, the telephone can become an organized, nurturing and warm experience for customers and agents.

The process, of course, starts with the management team.  So below, Call Center Today has compiled the key avenues that managers need to explore in order to craft the right outbound telephone strategy.  In turn, these are the programs which makes agents spectacular in outbound telephone selling.  For decades, business has been initiated, fostered, even completed, on the telephone.  Here are keys from the call center managers side of things – how the call center managers need to approach the process.

1.   Scripting

2.  Sales / Service Effectiveness Training

3.  Influence from Team Managers – Perception of Accomplishment

4.  The Strategy to Outbound:  Hunters and Nurturers 

5.  The Learning Academy

6.  Compensation Plan  

7.  Understanding Data and the audience

8.  Developing a touch program to manage customers and prospects more efficiently

9.  The quality program – understanding customer and agent behaviors and training to improve

10.  Hiring the right agents and on-boarding them well

On-going blog postings will profile each of these 10 programs.  Imagine that each program is a “bucket” all its own.  And in the bucket are dozens of platforms, programs, training modules, ideas, and benchmarks to make that program in the bucket successful. In particular, how you hire agents, manage them, train them and teach call center agents to enjoy the relationship with customers in the outbound sales environment is critical. It is as much about the process of engagement on the phone as it is about the process of completing a telephone sales.

For more information, or to discuss consulting programs with Call Center Today, email us at Training@CallCenterToday.com. Or visit us at www.CallCenterToday.com.  Or call 888-835-5326 x111.

When I present a new training program, I first explore extensively the challenges of technology, because I want new agents to recognize their own thought patterns and fears.  I encourage them not to be afraid of technology, because technology exists to assist agents in their daily jobs.

I remind them that technology is a learned skill and reiterate that if management wanted technically proficient artists, they would have hired from the IT or MIS departments. I stress that agents have the tendency to panic over the challenges of technology, thereby failing to learn the programs at hand.

After I have explained the technological basics to my agents, and provided them with a reference manual regarding these tools, I then advise them to concentrate on the other, more important aspects of the job.

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New agents should focus on the core aspects of the job that they will be performing day-in and day-out (not fretting about the technology they’ll be using).  Some of the aspects of the job warranting particular emphasis are:

1.                 Has the agent learned the characteristics of the product?

2.                 Is the agent ready to successfully communicate with customers and sell the product over the telephone?

3.                 Does the agent have the potential to become a well-rounded, positive employee?

4.                 Will the agent contribute to the well-being and success of the call center or department?

5.                 Does the agent understand the standards he is expected to meet?

“The more opinions you have, the less you see.”

- Wim Wenders

All call center managers will agree that the challenges of new-hire training are daunting. New agents see dozens of faces, become acclimated into a fresh company structure, learn a unique program, and are trained on strange computer equipment. They are asked to understand the culture of the organization, and to immerse themselves in the daily gossip and routines of the office, as they get to know others in the office and choose new friends.

A new agent must learn the policies and procedures of his company, grapple with sales and communications training pertinent to the program, and become comfortable with the work hours of the job. It all can be very challenging, and if the agent fails to execute even one or two aspects of the job extremely well, the agent will be set back in his objective to earn money and find success and comfort long term.

Recently, a new challenge has developed for agents going through initial training…

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Here are a few steps call center supervisors must take to ensure their new agents become acclimated to their new environment.

1.                 Pair each new agent with a veteran agent.

2.                 Encourage new agents to monitor veteran agents before starting their jobs, and periodically during the shift.

3.                 Stay away from the new agent in the beginning so they can find comfort without being concerned about their supervisor’s responses.

4.                 Provide feedback and monitoring updates frequently.

5.                 Teach presentation stances.

6.                 Keep new agents positive.

7.                 Explain failure.

8.                 Don’t assume the new agent knows what you know.

9.                 Appoint veteran agents as team captains.