6 Tips for Training Your Call Center Agents

Remember that the competency of your call center agents can influence the success of your company. Keeping them stagnant, unrefreshed and thirsting for new ideas will only hinder excellency and will promote mediocrity.

Do you want to keep expanding your agents’ knowledge, skills and capabilities? Then you should be committed to training them frequently.

Training is a good investment that ensures growth within your company where you can see the results manifest tenfold.

Listed below are 6 great tips for training your customer service agents:

1. Mentor

The best form of training is mentoring.

In his TEDx talk, Tai Lopez explained the law of 33%. He says that a third of your time must be spent with people you can mentor and another third for those that can mentor you.

Unfortunately, a study conducted by Intradiem discovered that 80% of executives thought that their supervisors were not competent enough to coach call center agents.

Executives should realize the importance of mentoring. In order to implement competency from top to bottom, top management heads should devote a third of their time in training and mentoring supervisors for the cycle to continue down to the agents.

2. Differentiate low and high performers

Training is not a golden bullet that can hit all types of needs. Some call center agents will need a different type of training program apart from others.

One way of going about this is to identify your low and high performing agents. Set them apart and design a program for each. You can even be specific for low performers by identifying the key areas that need to be improved.

3. Introduce new ideas

As long as the world keeps spinning, new ideas will never die out.

Your company must be committed to learning best practices in the field and discovering new ideas from experts. Attend seminars or hire an organizational consultant that can bring in fresh takes that you might not know of yet.

Outsourcing is also a great way for acquiring new ideas for your company since external resources can help you see things in different perspectives.

4. Structured programs

In training, consistency and structure are factors that need to be considered. However, over 50% of call center supervisors fail to structure their programs.

Performance must be standardized, so in order to do this create a criteria or use metrics that you can implement to objectify your training goals.

5. Involve the customers

Training is a good avenue to re-evaluate your goals.

Remember what you’re here for—the customers. 

Gather all customer complaints, ratings and feedbacks, then interpret the data to get a better look at how customers perceive your services.

Even if the ratings are good, don’t be complacent! Continue to diversify your strategies because the customers’ needs are constantly evolving.

6. Follow up after training

The effectiveness of training will not reach its optimal level unless you see actual results. That is why your goals must be practical and attainable.

Try dividing your training sessions to target specific and actionable goals. After this, evaluate your employees in the workplace to see if they accomplished the objectives.

Conclusion

Maintain a working culture that centers on continuously evolving and improving is the best way to get the most out of your agents. Be committed to training and your company will definitely rise to the top!

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