One of the best things that any business can do is be on the lookout for new innovations that can help it be more successful and efficient. Even if a business is working at peak performance, that doesn’t mean they can afford to stop looking for ways to make things run more smoothly.
That’s especially true in IT support, where keeping up with new developments is a must. In an IT call center support situation, that can often mean bringing in new software to keep things up to date within the center.
Though a manager might be reluctant to bring in new software if the current system is running smoothly, there can be important benefits to upgrading your technology now rather than waiting. Here are some key benefits that might be available to your call center with an increased investment in better software.
Better perception
It might sound odd, but making improvements in your call center technology can help to improve its perception, both from inside the company and outside. The more willing a center is to stay current on technology, the better equipped they’ll be to deal with whatever IT issues a client base is having.
That willingness to improve will reflect well on your call center, even from within. Your employees might be impressed by how far you’re willing to go to stay at the top of your game.
More reliable metrics
The better your call center software is, the more easily your managers can make vital decisions about where the center’s resources are being directed, and how to make changes that will keep things running smoothly.
Analytics can create a virtual mountain of data for your supervisors to dig through. The better your software is, the easier it will be for them to do so quickly and efficiently. And the more they can figure out what the numbers really mean, the more tools you have to make improvements.
Increased productivity
Once your employees have a better way to record and document information about each call they take, they’ll be better able to address any IT issues that their callers might have. With the improvements that have come along in call center software over the last few years, it’s easier than ever for various departments to send and receive information about a client’s IT issues, making it much more likely that the problem can be solved more quickly.
In other words, the more information you have about a client’s issue, the better, and there are new innovations in call center software all the time; why not make sure you’re as up-to-date as possible?
Better equipped employees
The more tools you have for your employees to use, the more likely they are to improve within their positions, forming a key part of a successful organization. Newer, more flexible and adaptable software can empower an IT support employee to solve problems on their own, or collaborate with other members of your company to come up with solutions.
Either way, these employees will become more skilled when they can work with better technology.
Improved customer service
Of course, the point of all of this is to provide better service to your clients, whether they’re within a company or are out there in the marketplace. That’s what call center software is designed to do. Yes, it can break down your analytics more succinctly, and yes it can help make your employees more able to solve problems and become more skilled and empowered, but the ultimate goal is a happier, more satisfied customer base.
That’s an advantage that improved software can provide any call center, and it’s one that’s within your grasp. If all the other reasons for software upgrades don’t ring true for you, this one absolutely should: If you have a chance to provide your clients with better service, why wouldn’t you take advantage of that opportunity? Why not do so before your competition does?
To learn more about improving your customer service, read our post “How Emotional Intelligence Training Can Improve Your Call Center’s Customer Service.”
Managing a busy call center can be an incredibly challenging job, and it often might seem like, with all of the non-stop changes and innovations coming to the industry, it’s impossible to find the right guide for a manager who needs some tips or just a little help.
But as it turns out, there’s a healthy market of call center-related books for a manager or supervisor to choose from, and even the ones that might have been published before the recent trend towards automation might have something to offer.
Here’s a list of books that every call center manager can benefit from.
The Call Center Handbook: The Complete Guide to Starting, Running and Improving Your Call Center (5th Edition), by Keith Dawson.
Dawson’s seminal book was published back in 1996, but if you’re a new call center manager or an experienced member of the industry, it’s indispensable. It takes a basic but helpful approach, talking about important strategies for creating a successful call center, keep the everyday operations of the call center as efficient as it can be and focusing on key chances to improve performance in various areas.
In other words, it might be older than most of the other books on this list, but it might also be the best one for any call center manager to read.
As a manager, you know better than anyone that a satisfied employee is a productive one. And yet, employee satisfaction is an oft-overlooked factor when it comes to creating a successful call center. This book was created to help you remedy that; the authors have made a helpful guide aimed at keeping your workers happy and making them as productive as a possible.
As we alluded to with the previous entry, your employees are the most important ingredient for success. And that success begins in the training process. Any good manager should know how to recruit and prepare the best workforce possible, which leads to less turnover and more production goals being met.
Call Center Recruiting And New-Hire Training brings these different processes into focus, helping you to establish a plan to bring in the best people, prepare them as completely as possible and reward them for their successes.
Perhaps one of the best ways to ensure a successful and efficient call center is to create a culture within the company that promotes both. This book discusses how best to speak to employees and relate to them in a way that reinforces a culture of success.
It covered everything from real-life examples to developing the best performance skills, with a focus on ethics that some guides often ignore.
One of the more recently-published books on this list, this book makes the case that keeping an eye on the numbers is the best way to ensure a successful call center. Kerzner’s book looks at everything from from Net Promoter Scores to Service Level targets, and argues that metrics and KPIs are probably among the best tools at your disposal when it comes to improving performance.
But rather than simply stating its case, the book also gives you advice on how to look at the numbers, giving you a deeper understanding of what they mean. Statistics aren’t as exciting as strategies to make employees happier, but in an increasingly results-driven marketplace, they could be the most important thing to focus on.
The general public doesn’t often think of contact center work as particularly stressful.
However, customer service can be an extremely stressful profession. Contact center employees have to deal with any number of possible stressors, from angry customers, to ineffective training, to staying on top of new policies or procedures that may have just been put into place.
Add to that the focus on meeting quotas and ever-evolving technology and training, and it’s easy to see why your employees might need to blow off some steam. But how can you relieve your employees’ tension while making sure they remain focused on their work?
Here are a few tips for helping your contact center workers deal with on-the-job stress.
Effective evaluation
Feedback and conversation are essential for the health of any staff, but in a contact center situation, they might be even more vital.
Talk to your employees to gauge the stress-level among them. Take a look around the center to see if you can pick up any signs of what might be causing frustration or burnout among the employees.
The first step in solving any problem is understanding it, and speaking to or observing your workers can help create that understanding. And speaking of understanding…
Figure out where the stress is coming from
Are there confusing policies or procedures that are causing headaches for your staff? Are they spread too thin? Is there an issue with the workspace itself or with specific employees towards each other? Is your schedule too taxing, or are your quotas unrealistic?
Often, the biggest cause of stress can cause more stress in other areas. Figuring out what your main problems are and creating a plan to fix, or at least modify, those factors depends on diagnosing the problem correctly.
Making your plan
A plan, even in a rough draft form, is a concrete way to begin relieving stress on your employees. Even if it takes revision or time to implement, the fact that you’re attempting to make changes will likely resonate strongly with the people working for you.
Goals and expectations
Do you have specific outcomes in mind for the various phases of your stress-relief plan? The more a workforce knows about where you’re headed, the more comfortable they will be with the process.
Are you looking at less turnover or higher job satisfaction? They aren’t always the same thing; burnout is a lot more severe than irritation, so make sure your goals are related to your most severe employee-stress problems.
Encourage support and social interaction
What can you do outside of the call center to foster a friendlier atmosphere inside of it? Do you need more employee events, or holiday parties, or a less formal feel around the workplace?
As we mentioned before, you’re not always going to be able to eliminate the most stressful parts of an employee’s job, so it might benefit you to look at increasing morale in different ways. It’s not just about a great incentive plan; it’s about creating an atmosphere that makes people want to come to work every day.
Planning fun events or social gatherings outside the office might be good way to do that.
It’s important to remember that despite the increasing role of workforce optimization technology, your employees are still the most important factor in your call center’s success. The happier they are, the longer you’ll be able to keep them around, and that will make your center running efficiently.
Public safety is an ever-changing subject with so many different iterations that it’s hard to keep up. It’s important that all of these different elements work in concert with one another, so we offer a range of topics that stand alone but are interconnected at the same time.
But we’re by no means the only place to go for blogs that educate and inform those in public safety about new developments in the field.
There are other sites out there that provide excellent blogs on various public safety topics, and we’ve created a list of the some of the ones we think are the best below. Happy reading!
Police - The Law Enforcement Magazine
If you’re a police officer, particularly one who heads a department, this is one of the best resources available. Policemag.com is one of the most regularly-updated blogs around, and the topics cover just about anything you can think of.
You’ll find entries on new technology, diversity, new weapons, patrol tips, SWAT team-related innovations, potential career paths, general training and developments in police vehicles.
There’s also a “Breaking News” section, a list of public-safety podcasts and photo galleries of various police forces around the country. It’s a must-read for anyone in the law-enforcement community.
Chicago Communications
Despite their regional focus, ChiComm consistently posts highly relevant blogs for all of us in the business, covering everything from new communication products, to the latest cutting-edge equipment, to adapting your agency to those fresh innovations while remaining effective and efficient. They even have a large selection of eBooks for catching up on relevant topics and training.
LexisNexis Public Safety Briefing Room
For decader, LexisNexis has been one of the most trusted sources of legal and journalistic documents, keeping an unmatched database of public records and information.
Their Public Safety Briefing Room provides a similar treasure trove of resources that will aid public safety workers in keeping current on industry trends, new policies and practices and analysis that can help the decision-making process for agencies all over the country.
In addition to data-heavy blogs written by members of their staff, LexisNexis also offer material from current and retired public safety professionals. In terms of sheer volume and breadth of material, their blogs are hard to beat.
Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Blogs
One of the best and most direct blog sites available to public safety workers, the APCO blogs, available on PS Connect, tell it like it is in no uncertain terms, and the largely concern themselves with the day-to-day issues and solutions of running an agency responsible for protecting the public.
Topics include workplace-centric missives on stopping “workplace drama” and interviews with various high-ranking officials, along with posts and solution-heavy essays from the officials and executives in the public safety field.
Some of these posts are even offered as audio tracks, an innovation that many sites don’t offer.
This Just In: The Blog of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council
Another of the most often-updated blog sites on the net, these blogs often focus primarily on FirstNet and their efforts towards interconnected operations all over the country.
They also have one of the most impressive blog archives in the industry, with entries available as far back as April of 2013. This extensive history allows the reader to view different trends and developments in technology and equipment as they occurred.
These are just a few of the resources available on the Internet for a public safety agency or individual employees, and they all offer different advantages and opportunities for further education and training. They should all be taken advantage of by those in the business of protecting the public.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a great way to focus your contact center on improvement by using the data that you generate every day. The idea is that you use several KPIs to measure different parts of your performance—call time, agent turnover rate, or first contact resolution, for example. By monitoring and measuring these KPIs, you can see exactly where you need to improve, and chart a course to do so.
But how do you know which KPIs to focus on? The problem is that if you spread yourself too thin when it comes to KPIs—if you’re evaluating too many at once—then you’re not going to see much change in any of them. Deciding that you’re going to measure and aim to improve every aspect of your contact center at once isn’t realistic, but how do you know which KPIs
will be most useful for your contact center?
The answer to this question really involves knowing your contact center well, and having a firm view of where you want to improve things. Let’s say your contact center is being overwhelmed by calls, and you want to not only reduce the amount of time that your agents spend on the phone, but you also want to reduce the number of calls entirely. In this case, you could focus on KPIs like average time on hold and percentage of calls blocked when there isn’t an agent available. But you could also monitor the nature of the event that led to the call, or the web page that was visited directly before the call. With those KPIs, you can get a better sense of why customers give up on solving the issue themselves and instead make a call. You could potentially find a flaw in your FAQ or Help pages, as well.
If your goal is to improve the service that your agents are giving customers, then you may want to focus on KPIs like abandoned calls, call resolution, customer satisfaction, and the amount of time spent speaking with customers. Once you begin measuring your agents’ performance in these metrics, you may come to a better understanding of what causes problems with customer service. You’ll also be able to see whether certain agents are causing a problem, or whether the entire process that you have set up is actually the issue.
You could also focus on your agent turnover rate, as constantly retraining new agents is both costly and inefficient. Keeping track of trends in the reasons for agent turnover will help you acknowledge if there is something that management can do to lower the turnover rate.
Deciding what KPIs to use can be a tricky choice, but it really comes down to a decision about where you want to improve your call center. The decision to measure a specific metric is the first step towards improving it. If you’d like to learn more about KPIs that your contact center might want to use, then read our article, “The Contact Center KPIs That You Should be Tracking.”
Think for a moment about how important it is to see the person you’re talking to in order to understand what they’re trying to say. The look on their face or their body language can clue you into what they really mean, even if their words are telling you something different.
Now imagine sitting at a desk and listening to someone’s voice. What tools do you have to judge their emotional state other than their words and their tone of voice?
Understanding customers is a vital part of a successful call center, and sometimes it takes a little extra training to make sure an agent is able to gain that understanding.
That’s where Emotional Intelligence comes in. The textbook definition of Emotional Intelligence, or EI, is this: “The ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others.”
And it’s immediately obvious why a concept like that could be vital to the success of a call center agent. The more you know about how to read or perceive a customer’s emotions, the better you’re going to be able to provide great customer service, thus satisfying the caller and the company your call center works for.
Good customer service at a call center is not just about dealing with calls in a timely manner and keeping up with documentation of the calls. It’s about making sure the customer’s issue was resolved. And to do that, an agent must consider the customer’s emotional state when speaking with them.
One of the typical first steps in EI training is to have agents think not about the customer’s voice, but how they themselves sound during a call. Does the agent have a harsh or ambivalent tone? Do they sound unsympathetic? That could be a turn-off immediately for anyone calling in with an issue.
Oftentimes in EI training, the next step is to have the employee go through some call simulations to examine their reactions, or even to speak into a mirror and take note of their tone, expression and body language. Keeping these things in mind when speaking with a customer can help the agent seem more sympathetic and lead to a greater level of understanding for the caller.
Another important part of EI training is teaching agents how to deal with stress or irritation without passing those emotions on to the caller. By talking about the science of what causes these reactions in the brain, agents can learn to better control them.
Once the science is a little clearer, EI trainers can move into strategies to respond to pressure, stress, tension and anxiety. By molding these strategies to an individual agent, a trainer can make certain that the goal of remaining calm, attentive and professional is within reach for every employee, regardless of the amount of experience they have at a call center.
EI also focuses on identifying patterns within an agent’s behavior than can either be nurtured for more effective performance or curbed before they cause a problem. The more ingrained the positive patterns become, the less likely an agent is to forget or disregard them.
The next step in the training process is all about judgment, and how to suspend it when speaking with a customer. Eliminating any sort of preexisting ideas about a caller or their situation is an excellent way for an agent to put themselves in the caller’s shoes, and that’s the point that a helpful dialogue between customer and agent can begin.
Once an agent has become skilled at reading and managing their own emotions, and doing so with their callers, it’s often a logical progression for them to begin coaching others in the call center on how to do so. This way, EI training can become a continuous cycle, with trained agents instructing others on how to step outside of their own experiences and patterns and learn to be more receptive and understanding to their callers.
It’s virtually impossible to overstate how precious time can be in an emergency situation, especially the time between when an emergency is called in and when public safety workers arrive. Be it a fire, a search and rescue mission or a hunt for a fugitive, every second is precious.
But time isn’t the only thing that can change the outcome of an emergency. Data is important, too. Every public safety worker needs as much information as a 911 dispatcher can give them about an emergency situation.
That data can be culled from many different sources by PSAP workers. There’s geographic information systems, wireless communications, global positioning systems, and a full range of public safety software solutions, among others. These can be used in many ways.
Here are just a few of the ways that better call data can improve the outcome of any emergency.
Reducing the potential for emergency vehicle crashes
According to a 2015 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over the 20 years between 1994 and 2014, there were an average of 4,500 ambulance crashes per year across the United States.
Many of them were due to traffic congestion, an unavoidable part of driving on city roads or highways. However, for public safety workers and the PSAP personnel supporting them, this problem doesn’t have to be unavoidable. A dispatcher can guide an ambulance driver through or around areas of heavy traffic if they have accurate traffic data compiled through GPS.
The best thing for any emergency victim is if the people dispatched to help them get there quickly and safely. Knowing the best, safest route to an emergency is one big way to make sure both of those things happen.
Better response time
A couple of years ago in Jersey City, NJ, a concentrated effort was made to bring better data analytics to the city’s emergency dispatch call centers.
After doing so, the average emergency response time in the city dropped from almost nine minutes to under six. Imagine how many lives that might have saved? A similar experiment was done shortly afterwards in San Francisco with similar results.
It’s a common-sense equation: The more data a PSAP can analyze and disseminate to emergency service providers, the more quickly and efficiently they can do their jobs, and thus lives are saved.
Cost reduction
Yes, there might be a significant expense upfront to better outfit PSAPs to analyze data, but the savings in the long run, both in human and financial terms, are too hard to ignore. Think about the man-hours that could be saved if the police department, fire department, and EMS workers were able to do their jobs more quickly and efficiently.
Think of those 4,500 ambulance crashes, and the amount of repairs that had to be done - not to mention hospitalization for the EMS workers. What if better data could help a city, county or township avoid a large portion of that cost?
Better knowledge that can save lives
This is perhaps the most important use of data in an emergency situation: Sending public safety workers into a potentially dangerous scenario with as much information as possible.
In a natural disaster, those workers should have as much information as possible about the weather conditions still in a given area.
In a fugitive hunt, they should have as precise a description as possible of the criminal and what vehicle he or she might be driving. They should know as specifically as possible where he or she might be headed, or what general direction they might be going in.
This is vital information not just for the safety of the public safety workers who are putting their lives on the line, but for that of every person between them and the disaster or emergency, as well.
To learn more about how technology can save lives, read our post “How Technology is Keeping Public Safety Workers and Citizens Safe.”
Every important job has standards, and that’s certainly true of the positions of emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator and emergency telecommunicator. It’s a critical occupation in which an employee has to work quickly and efficiently with decisive action, because lives are quite literally on the line.
In short, it’s not a job for everyone. But when a public safety organization needs a new emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator/telecommunicator, what do they look for? What are some of the key factors they take into account before hiring?
One good way to find out is simply to look at the employment ads for dispatcher/telecommunicators. In a brief job description, you can generally figure out what it takes to do this job right. Here are some tips from real-life emergency-dispatcher/telecommunicator-wanted ads.
The basic skills
In virtually all cases, an emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator will need a high school diploma or GED. They will need to be proficient in Windows-based computer systems and have effective written and verbal communication skills.
They must be able to use maps and other geographical reference materials to make sure the police or EMS services are getting where they need to go.
The appropriate responses
There are certain situations where an emergency telecommunicator doesn’t just answer urgent calls; they answer non-emergency and administrative calls, as well. In situations like this, a good telecommunicator will know how to respond to each call based on its importance.
Prioritizing calls is a vital skill for someone in this field, and it has to be a skill that one can learn quickly. The training will be provided, obviously, but instinct and common sense play their roles, as well.
Coordination
A good emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator will become skilled in working with other agencies, citizens or businesses to gather the important information needed or to give the necessary instructions. Teamwork in emergency situations is a must for any dispatcher/telecommunicator.
Training and certification
The diploma or GED you’re required to have is just the beginning of the process. In an emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator position there will be constant training and further education that are required to stay up to date on all the new protocols and technologies that come along. Media and call recorders, Next Generation 911, FirstNet – these are all important public safety technologies that emergency dispatcher/telecommunicators have to be knowledgeable about and comfortable with.
Given the rate at which technology can change over years, months or even weeks, it’s important to be prepared to evolve within the dispatcher/telecommunicator position as needed. It’s not just about the hours you put in taking calls; it’s about what you do in addition to that role that could help you excel.
Medical terminology
Speaking of education, an emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator will very likely need some basic medical knowledge to do their job well. It’s not that you need to have the same amount of information as a doctor or nurse or EMS worker, but there will be some terms and conditions you’ll need to be familiar with to better communicate with people in those fields.
The more a dispatcher/telecommunicator can tell an EMS worker, firefighter or police officer about the condition of someone in danger, the better prepared they’ll be to help in any given emergency situation.
Flexibility
A good emergency dispatch worker is one that’s flexible when it comes to scheduling. This isn’t the typical 9-to-5 job, because life-threatening situations occur 24 hours a day. Anyone who steps into this position is going to need to be able to work nights, weekends and holidays, depending on what the call center requires.
They’ll also need to be on-call for large-scale emergencies and willing to work overtime if it’s needed. It’s certainly not the typical occupation, to be sure, and some sacrifices simply have to be made if one is working in this field.
So why put in all that work? Well, in addition to the higher-than-average pay that a typical emergency dispatcher/telecommunicator can make (averaging around $20 an hour or more, before overtime), this is a chance to truly do some real good in your community.
In what other job can you honestly say that you save lives by answering the phone?
Risk is part of the job for many, if not all, public safety workers - but unnecessary risk should never be. Keeping those workers safe in the event of a natural disaster so that they can then keep the public safe is crucial, and agencies should seek the best possible ways to do so. Luckily, we live in an era when technology can be a big help to all those in the public safety field.
There are new programs, services and apps being developed every day to help in the cause of public safety, and the innovations seem to be endless. Here are just a few of the ways that new technology can keep you, and the public, safe during a natural disaster, mass casualty event, or other major catastrophe.
The KOVA Emergency Alert Notification System (KEANS)
KEANS can communicate with multiple agencies in multiple locations, as well as business partners and public address systems like loudspeakers and bullhorns all at the same time. This can save time, resources and lives.
In the KEANS system, dedicated circuits, fixed endpoints, and even public address systems are constantly monitored. The easy-to-read dashboard displays all available endpoints with green indicators, which allows operators to see the condition of the fixed components and know that the system is operating properly.
The Facebook “I’m Safe” app
This app is automatically activated if a large amount of people in an affected area post about a natural disaster or other event. Once the feature is activated, it prompts the user to go to a Safety Check area that will let friends and loved ones know that you’re safe.
Even better, you have the option with the app to invite other friends to join, helping people stay connected should a natural disaster occur.
American Red Cross mobile apps
The Red Cross offers a comprehensive collection of apps that can be invaluable during a natural disaster, including first aid instructions (for humans and pets), an emergency app that allows you to monitor 35 different Severe Weather Alert systems, and individual apps that track hurricane, tornado, flood, earthquake and wildfire watches and warnings.
The Natural Disaster Monitor for Android
This app, available from the Google Play store, monitors the latest natural disasters, including volcanoes, earthquakes, cyclones, floods and tsunamis and displays them as color coded icons in a list, and on a Google Maps backdrop; the color of the icons indicates the alert level: red, orange and green.
Wearable tech & sensors
One of the most interesting developments in safety preparedness technology, and one that’s admittedly a few years from being fully functional and accepted, is the idea of wearable indicators, within your clothing, that will pinpoint your location in the event of a natural disaster.
And while wearable tech can help locate survivors, similar sensors can help firefighters contain small fires faster, and notify neighbors quickly.
The In-Case-Of-Emergency (ICE) app
If you’re injured or unconscious in a disaster event, this is a downloadable form that lists your medical information for any doctors or nurses who may be attending to you. There’s even an option to make your phone unlockable to access the form or make it your default lock-screen image.
Life 360
This is another communication app similar to the Facebook “I’m Safe” feature, but it’s more personally connected to your close friends and family. It sets up a personal network so you can send messages, share locations and check in every so often so you family knows where you are. It also allows you to send messages to everyone in your network at once.
You’re even able to look at a map to see where the people you love are, and if need be you can add photos of yourself or your family to that map.
SirenGPS
This might be one of the best apps for public safety workers. It enhances emergency communication, management and response by connecting everyone in a community to first responders, and by allowing first responders to communicate with each other, all on a single platform.
If you’re looking for public safety technology that can make daily life safer for your public safety workers and citizens alike, take a look at our public safety software solutions.
Contact center work can be rewarding because it’s such a great test of quick-thinking, multi-tasking and customer service. Finding an employee who excels at all of those things can be challenging, however, and contact center work can often be the first job of a young person who’s just entered the workforce.
So the challenge is to create a training program that helps these new workers learn the ins and outs of contact center work without becoming overwhelmed or discouraged during the training process.
Here are some tips for creating a training program that will both prepare and encourage your new employees to excel at your contact center.
Introductions Are Key
It might seem obvious, but often, with such a large amount of information, policies and procedures to get through in training, the act of simply introducing the existing team to your new employees can get lost by the wayside.
The more familiar a new employee is with your contact center team, the more comfortable he or she will be communicating with them.
And it’s also helpful to establish a more family-like atmosphere, which can make a new employee feel a lot less unsure or out of place at their new job.
Keeping To The Schedule
We’re not necessarily talking about a training schedule in this case. We’re talking about teaching your new employees that following a schedule once they’re working in the contact center is vital.
Part of what a high-functioning center does is handle calls quickly and efficiently. Customer service is important, but so is getting the right amount of calls taken care of.
Often, the technical aspects of a contact center job, along with the customer service requirements, take precedence, but leaving out the part of the job that concerns keeping to a tight schedule could add more pressure to an employee’s average day later on.
Bringing In The Best Performers
Every contact center has employees that perform above and beyond their job requirements, and they can serve as the best possible example for new employees.
Bringing in those high-level performers will not only give your new hires a chance to learn what these employees do to stay ahead of the curve, but it can also give them a chance to ask questions in a less time-sensitive environment.
Wouldn’t you prefer having an employee ask about how to handle a certain kind of call in the training room instead of the contact center floor?
Make It About Relationships
One of the best ways to avoid making a customer-contact center employee interaction hostile is to present that interaction as the building of a relationship. Yes, the odds are pretty good that, if the caller question or issue is resolved, the employee probably won’t be speaking to them again, but the time they’re on the phone together can most definitely be a relationship, however brief.
The employee should try to think of a conversation with a client as a chance to create a good bond between the business you’re representing and themselves. Thinking of it as a potential good relationship is a great way to do that.
Individuality Counts
If possible, it might be best to coach each new employee individually. This might not always not be possible, but it could be the best way to figure out what each employee’s strengths and weaknesses are.
It can also allow you to tailor an effective training program for that specific employee that works for them based on their level of education, how complex this particular contact center work will be, and the different management strategies that might be involved.
This Is A Recording
Rather than fictional scenarios, it might be a good idea to play actual calls, both good and bad, for your trainees. Few things will teach a new hire how to act, and how not to act, more quickly than listening to a live, real situation rather than a simulation.
Verint Media Recorder is an excellent tool for helping trainees learn, as it allows users to search and playback calls easily. Supervisors can select calls based on specific criteria, making it easy to train new employees on particular scenarios.
To learn more about developing effective contact center training, read “Emotions and Empathy Training for Contact Center Agents.”
