People don’t remember everything. In a recent article, Anand Subramaniam states that humans retain less than 5% of information a month after learning it.
Contact center agents are not immune to this reality. As a result, outsourced customer service consistency can vary from agent to agent depending on how solid their training was when they were onboarded.
Subramaniam also notes that traditional training isn’t always effective with younger generations. The solution to this dilemma, according to the article, is to provide real-time guidance to agents when they’re on customer service calls.
This can be achieved through Artificial Intelligence bots that provide help during the calls. It can also be achieved through supervisors making themselves available to give agents advice and by stepping in to help during challenging calls.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the article, please click here!
Is Your Contact Center’s Agent Training Strategy Working?
Contact center life can be hectic and agents need to be onboarded as soon as possible. We all have ideal approaches we’d like to train new agents, but the reality of the business is often far different than our goals.
There’s no perfect training system for new contact center agents, but if your CSAT scores and other important indicators are falling, it may be a sign that you need to make some changes. One question to ask yourself is, “Is my agent training working?”
Maybe the things you’re teaching new employees are tried and true tactics, but they’re just not sticking in the agents’ minds once it’s time for theory to get put into practice. If that’s the case, then you don’t need to re-evaluate what you’re teaching, but how you’re teaching it.
Adults learn differently than kids, so traditional classroom-style training modules most likely won’t make an impression on new hires. It’s important to provide context along with the information (e.g., “Why is this the strategy we use and why is it important for success?”).
People learn best when they know the “why” information and can put it in context with their real-life experiences. In addition, they should be shown how they will be better employees by using these tactics and strategies and what they can achieve by using them.
If you provide real-world examples and bring in guest speakers for training sessions, you will make the information relatable and practical. Finally, it’s crucial to make the learning experience interactive with on-the-job elements. This gives the new agents experience before they ever sit in their workstation, and the repetition will make the information stick in their minds stronger than simply being taught and quizzed.
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