Best Practices in Virtual Contact Center Agent Training

Written by KOVA Corp

Often your call center agents are literally the voice of your company. For this reason, it’s important to make sure they are trained properly and in accordance with the standards that are acceptable in your company. Following best practices for contact center training can help ensure you provide the ultimate training experience for your employees, which means you’ll benefit from productive, efficient, and attentive employees.

Plan your contact center agent training by asking yourself what you hope your employees will get out of it. This will help make sure your employees have the relevant information they need. Here are some best practices in virtual contact center agent training to make sure you’re investing in the right kind of customer service training.

Consider different learning styles

Everyone learns differently, so it’s important to provide a variety of ways for your employees to learn what they need to know. In a virtual environment, you have options like live video, audio only, question and answer forums, and chat, just to name a few.

Provide opportunities for practice

Many people learn best by doing, so providing opportunities for your employees to practice what they are learning - even before they start working in your contact center - will only help them do their jobs better. Create problems the employees need to solve using actual work systems and techniques. Be sure to provide feedback so employees know how they can improve, as well as what they are doing right.

Get social

Getting social is all about collaboration. When possible, encourage your employees to work together to solve problems. This includes using things like online chat, social media, conference calls, and face-to-face conversations if possible. It’s important for employees to help each other by answering questions and sharing insights.

Workplace scenario role play

In order for agents to get used to the tasks required to perform their jobs, it’s best to simulate on-the-job experiences. Agents can do this by working in virtual teams to solve a problem collectively, each taking on a different role in the scenario.

Reinforce learning

In order to encourage agents to take an active role in their learning, it’s important to evaluate employee performance regularly and provide opportunities and encouragement for agents to learn. Each agent should be considered based on their individual learner progress, as well as class participation.

Considering employee learning styles, providing lots of opportunities for practice, encouraging collaboration, role playing, and reinforcing learning will help make your contact center training more efficient and effective.

If you’re working on streamlining the rest of your contact center operations, the Verint Media Recorder Workforce Optimization Suite might be right for your organization. This video will explain how Workforce Optimization works and how it could benefit your contact center.

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