When a call center is onboarding a new agent, they general go through all of the scripts, rules and regulations. However, many companies don’t give new employees the proper training on customer focus. In her recent article, Becca Van Nederynen discusses the significance of including customer satisfaction as a company value in the onboarding process. If the new employee learns about the company values and the significance of customer value right away, their mentality will be better prepared to deliver a great customer experience. The article gives three onboarding techniques to ensure a customer-first mentality in new employees.
1) Put new hires in your customers’ shoes
The article gives an example of a popular quilt supplies company that requires every new employee to learn how to make a quilt in their first month of onboarding. The new employees will learn and understand what a person goes through while making a quilt and what materials and techniques are necessary to successfully make a quilt. The reason for this is simple: the employees will be able to relate more easily to customers and provide genuine and sympathetic interactions. Obviously, not every company may be equipped to provide this level of training to onboarding new employees, but the basic point is still possible. Include onboarding classes that explain your company’s customers and provide insight into who they are and why your service or product is important to them.
2) Start every employee on customer support
Have new employees, no matter what their positions or job levels are, start their career at your company within a custom support role. Practically speaking, you can’t hire an accountant and have them spend months without doing the role you hired them for, but you can implement this onboarding process in small increments. For example, you can have the employee spend their first week splitting time between learning their new position and working within a customer support to help them learn the value of the customer before fully going into their intended role.
3) Provide coaching and homework assignments
Learning a company’s product/service and how to discuss the product/service with the customer challenges new employees. One way to ease this development is by utilizing coaches within the company to help answer questions. Veteran leadership is a great way to help put new employees at ease while giving them proper instruction on how to deliver advanced customer experience. In addition to coaching, you can give your employees “homework” during their onboarding process. This can be filling out sheets of paper like you’d do in a school setting, but a more practical type of homework would be using or learning about the company’s product/service to gain familiarity with it.
These are just a few examples of how to onboard new employees. Companies vary, but the ultimate goal should be the same: train the new employee to have customer empathy. A customer service representative, or any other role, can be trained thoroughly on company policies, rules, regulations, and technology, but none of that matters if they aren’t connecting with the customers and providing a great customer experience.
This blog post was based on a CustomerThink article. To read the original article, please click the link below:
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