1. Start staff learning before they arrive
A pre-induction learning portal is proving to be an excellent tool to dramatically improve engagement and productivity of new staff from their very first day.
Up to ten hours of learning covering product knowledge, compliance topics, as well as sales simulations, have led to staff arriving confident and competent. This has reduced induction training by one week and measurably improved sales and customer service performance.
2. Teach agents how to create an emotional connection with customers
Building upon the core psychology of communication “it is not what you say, it is how you say it”. This reinforces an emotional connection with customers. Training staff to create this emotional connection with the customer makes for memorable customer experience.
This emotional connection can also be achieved by using empathy statements that help to improve agent-customer rapport and by teaching agents to use positive words, whilst avoiding negative language, such as “no”.
3. Use a quality framework to pinpoint individual training needs
Being able to pinpoint the training needs for each individual member of your team can ensure that you are on course to having well-rounded agents in the call centre.
Many operations are already using call and email assessments to check the quality of interactions, and a quality framework will allow you to schedule and track agent development activities. This can be done through a variety of coaching, eLearning and group training methods.
4. Use free online tools
Popular video-sharing websites such as YouTube are a cost-effective and brilliant way to keep your call centre training sessions interactive, fun and engaging. These websites offer a wide variety of free video footage – everything from humorous clips showing the top ten ‘call centre disasters’ to more serious footage demonstrating examples of high-quality customer service techniques.
These videos act as a great discussion starter for training sessions. Staff can be given time to find their own examples of good and bad practice and share their learning with the team.
Online video clips can also help to inspire other, more classic, training techniques such as role-play.
Managers can show examples of poor customer service from YouTube and ask staff to role-play the way they think the call should have been dealt with.