7 Effective Call Center Training Tips You Can Implement Easily

00:00Hi, guys. Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down contact center technology on the podcast time and time again. Now, it's time for me to help you with your challenges. As your contact center technology advisor through our new company, Expivia Digital, I can help you with things like CCaaS selection, any type of AI implementation, and nice studio and integration services. It's the same honest advice you hear on the geek applied specifically to your operation. Visit ExpiviaDigital.com to get started. That's ExpiviaDigital.com. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, the call center and contact center podcast. We try to give you some actionable items to take back in your contact center, improve the overall quality, improve your agent experience, hopefully improve your customer experience as well. My name is Tom Laird. I'm the CEO here at Expivia Interaction Marketing. Expivia is a 650 seat call center outsourcing organization located here in the States in Northwestern Pennsylvania.

00:56How's everybody doing? I have a lot to talk about today and I got some exciting news for those of you who are really into the podcast and into the content that we're putting out and also I love today's episode. We're going to talk about some call center agent training tips to be able to educate your reps and that you can easily implement. So nothing that's crazy, nothing that you need software for, but things that you should be thinking about when you're educating your associates. But before I do this, I want your opinion and I need some feedback. If I have ever been able to add any value to you whatsoever, and I really don't ask for anything, this won't cost you anything, all I'm asking for is your opinion on this and what you think. So please, please hit me up on either Twitter or LinkedIn, especially LinkedIn.

01:46I mean, I'm kind of on there all the time. And let me know if, first of all, if you think that this would add value to you or to your organization and also tell me what you think is a fair rate for this, right? How much you think would be fair to pay for this? So this is my concept. [pricing remark omitted] So what I want to do is kind of change your perception on that. I want to do an NFT project that is just for the utility.

02:37It's just for things that you're getting. There's going to be no rarity to these tokens. really just going to be one token and it's going to be called an advice from a call center geek access pass and you're going to buy this NFT or this access pass and with it here's the things that you're going to get now I'm only going to do we're debating between 30 and 50 of these 50 is the most we will sell I will never sell anymore because I don't think I could have the time to put into it to give the value that this will take to do. So this is kind of what I'm thinking, right? So if you purchase this token, right, you will get a 15 minute video call with me four times a year with anyone from your team or for your entire team for the next three years, right? So that is 12 times that you'll get 15 minutes and you know that's going to go over 15 minutes. Calls with me on any topic that you want. You'll get a 30 minute training session for your team on any topic of your choice.

03:39I don't care if there's a thousand people, there could be ten people, there could be just you and somebody else. You get a 30 minute training session as well. That's for your team. You can pick a topic of your choice. We'll have two group, ask me anything webinars a year for the next three years. So again, we'll do this twice a year and we'll do an hour, two hours and it's really any questions you have. take some questions before, take questions during, but just to have a, and they'll be everybody in the group, so these 30 to 50 token holders. So I think that will generate some really cool conversation as well. For private webinars with some influencers, customer experience professionals, that will just be for token holders, we'll try to get some of the best of the best to do private webinars and AMAs with just the group, these 30 to 50, they will range from anywhere from customer experience professionals to contact center operators.

04:39One holder, so one of these 30 to 50 token holders will get two tickets to VCon, which is Gary Vaynerchuk's conference. [pricing remark omitted] The other thing that I think is kind of unique is I wanted to talk to this group and come up with two new ebooks and with a topic that's chosen by the group. So whatever we think is really important, I will start writing some things. I'd love to have you guys start to contribute and us to kind of make this kind of book just for the token holders and create it for the token holders. And maybe if it's really good and we vote and say hey, let's let everybody have it everybody can have it too but I think that that'll be a unique kind of thing that we can do together. The cool thing about this as well is that these are NFTs. So let's say you get most of these these kind of utilities are good for three years. Let's say you get through the first year and you you know move your job or you get out of the contact center and you go sell cars or you know you become a programmer. You can sell that token right and if I'm adding as much value as I think I can I am hopeful that not only can you get your money back but make money on actually selling of the token because I am so hopeful that word is going to get out that how awesome this is and how much value that this is creating for people. The other things there's a couple more like kind of smaller things right SMS texting access I've done a very poor job with my SMS texting community so I think I'm going to revamp that to make it just for these token holders so that there can be a little bit more back and forth and I can give you guys some real content that is just for this group.

06:34For token holders, every single year we'll be able to come on the podcast so that's over 10%, 15% of all the token holders will be able to come onto the podcast, do an episode, talk about your organization, talk about your team, talk about some of the things that you're doing really cool in your call center. You'll get free merchandise so everybody will get a t-shirt and hoodie and then we'll will give up to five copies of the book as well. So I think that's a lot of value, right? If you can think of anything else that you guys would want, talk to me, but this is a way to get access to me. I feel so bad, I have so many of you asking me questions and sometimes it takes me so long to get back to you because there's just been so many of them, which is so awesome and I don't wanna stop that.

07:23I still want regular podcast listeners keep sending me stuff. But you know for this specific group, this is going to take priority these 30 to 50 individuals that have purchased the access pass and really you'll have access to me anytime you want for any question that you need, for any help that you might need with your team. You know I will definitely I'll be there to support and to help and to do everything I can. So again most of these are for this is basically a three-year pass and then we'll figure out what what we're gonna do after that, if it's successful, but something to kind of check out. This should be coming in the next couple months, but I'd love some feedback on what you guys think. [pricing remark omitted]

08:13So you pay for it once, you get it for three years, your company can pay for it, you can pay for it. If you don't like it, you can sell it, anybody wants to buy it, it's off your hands and you can make your money back or at least hopefully make some money too as well. Okay, that was my big kind of exciting thing to explain to you guys. Again, love to hear some feedback on it. Let's talk about today's episode which I think will add a ton of value to everybody. Seven effective call center training tips that you can implement extremely easily. You guys know that I don't like to say that we train and I know I've been saying it even in this podcast but we internally, we don't say that we're training our associates, we say that we're educating them. We used to work with MB&A before the Bank of America merger back in the day and they said that you train animals and you educate humans and that always kind of stuck with me, right?

09:07So again, we're educating our associates into some of these things. So this is something that I think that you can implement these things, especially in your initial onboarding and create some modules that kind of go down this path to help, right? Number one is forget about the actual screens, the where to go, we're not talking about that, right? So when you have an associate who's sitting there looking to train, so many of us are so focused on, okay, pull this up, put your username and password in. The first screen is gonna be all the information that you're gonna need. you scroll down, this is your script, like we focus too much on that and we get away from the actual customer experience. So I think that stuff should be day three, day four, day five, second week stuff. The first week should be all the things that we're kind of talking about here in the next, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes.

10:04The number one is focus on major contact center skills. Young people, millennials, even me. I put myself in that group too. I use my cell phone all the time. I am texting all the time. Luckily, I think I'm communicating probably a little bit more than most and whether it's on the podcast or doing webinars or I'm speaking. But a lot of people aren't, right? They're stuck on their phones and they're just texting and they're losing some of those skills. So one of the skills to really reinforce in training is clear communication. Teach them how to express themselves clearly without you know any ambiguity while making sure that they they can just interact with customers on a human level right that they don't sound like robots that they're not using slang that they're not using any unnecessary technical language slang is a huge thing right we have a making sure that you know there's you're not talking to like your friend that lives next door or you're out at the club or at the bar with right but you're talking to a customer. Granted every single company has a little bit different culture when it comes to that so maybe for your culture some slang is okay but for the most part that slang needs to be kind of approved by you not just something like your reps are talking about. The other thing that we don't do is we do fake empathy and we're not saying we meaning me here but the industry as a whole we do fake empathy right but we need to make sure that we're actually putting ourselves into the shoes of the customer, right?

11:43Making sure that we actually really do understand kind of some of the pain that they're hearing. And that's really hard when you're taking call after call, after call, after call, right? And you become immune to a lot of that stuff. So that becomes a skill that really needs to be taught. And also the other thing that we really wanna do and when you're thinking your training of your education and your training manuals, right? Is how to resolve complaints on the first call. Making sure that, again, we're not just using our education to show what screens and where to go to fix things, but to really drill down on those top 10 or 15 issues that constantly these associates are gonna hear. And how do they resolve them? And are you giving them the tools to resolve them on that first call? Because a lot of times, we are not given, meaning as a BPO, we are not giving all the tools that maybe the internal center has, which means we have to send emails, or we have to transfer calls, or we have to do callbacks.

12:42Those are things that I try as much as we can when we onboard to make sure that with a client that we get out of the way and they have a trust factor that we can finish calls. Number two is, kind of goes right with that, is equip your agents with sufficient knowledge about the product, right? Right? Make sure that you're going deeper into what the product is, what the company is, especially for us, like, you know, being a BPO, we talk a lot about the company, the history. We wanna know who the CEO is right now. Are they a private company? Are they a public company? Everything that we can do so that, again, we wanna be, we wanna envelop ourselves in the culture of the organization. And I think that that's really important when you have an internal contact center, too. Make them feel like they are a part of what's going on.

13:33Make sure that they have all the knowledge that they know about the history of your organization. and think that that stuff's really, really important. And it's kind of like an unwritten coolness when they're able to talk about those types of things and it shows a customer how really enveloped that rep is to your organization. Number three is make sure that you have KPIs for every training session, right? How do you know how effective your contact center training is if you don't measure performance? All right, so we need to create measurable targets for your agents after each kind of module or after each thing that we're educating upon. All right, so that could be just a three or five or 10 or 15 question quiz. Make sure that we're kind of benchmarking it. Make sure that as we're going through our education that everybody's with us. And this is one way that we can be like, hey, you know what, Janie or Susie or Jimmy here, he needs to go and maybe get a little bit of extra help because it's just taking him a little bit longer to kind of grasp some of the concepts that we're doing.

14:35Number four, make the training sessions practical, make them easy to implement, right? So many of this can be having our educators, our trainers understand the concepts of what's going on and just assuming that our reps do too. Let me give you an example. My coach, high school basketball, and by the way, we're right now the number one team in the state in Pennsylvania in 4A, pretty fired up about that I also coach first and second grade basketball with my son at this little Y the league that we have and you know I take things for granted in first and second grade grade such as when we're getting a rebound at practice I said guys go get a rebound but little kids looked at me and said what's a rebound when I said guys make a chess pass they're like I don't know what a trespass is, right?

15:33So there's certain things that we have to make sure that show a frustration level with our reps. When we kind of just assume that they know, they know certain things, I don't think you gotta double down to a ridiculous level. But make sure that your trainers understand that if you have a brand new associate that's never been on the phones before, A different level of education than somebody who's, you know, maybe been through three or four different centers, you've been doing customer service their entire life. life, especially when it comes to KPIs. When you talk about hey, hey, you're AHT and you're SLA and you're ASA and you're throwing out all that stuff, make sure that you take the time to really understand that. Have a full class just on terminology and those types of things. All right, number five, foster continuous improvement. Learning is a continuous process.

16:28So here at, we do weekly education where we pull our associates off each program, not on the about empathy, we're talking about those types of the things that is constantly being reinforced, we are looking at sentiment scores and seeing what groups really need to really work on that and we will do some maybe more in-depth type of coaching when it comes to that. If we see that our agent sentiment sentiment scores are going down that we are not using proper word usage that our tone is a little bit off and a little role play that absolute living heck out of it which I think is like the number one tool that I could say to make sure that you're utilizing is role play, giving your reps to do better through the extra education or the coaching that you're and giving. You're not there to just beat them up and tell them that they're doing a bad job. Alright and number seven I think is really important too is map a clear path for your agents to succeed, to grow. You know having- having a growth path for your agents gives gives a defined structure right to your contact center training program. It It says if you guys do these types of things you can be it kind of gives them that carrot at the at the end Of maybe some of the pain of going through this process of education training Show them how you know somebody who really does well in this training training, show them some of those reps that are just your class A, just killing it, doing a great job.

19:18Have them come back and talk about how good this training was, right? Make sure that you're reinforcing with the so and then give them a path forward that they can see if they kind of and go through this, where they're going to be at a the end. I think that's a really important piece of this that is a really good tip to utilize some of the agents that you have that have that can come back to these new guys and

[Gap 19:42–20:07: no reliable transcription]

20:07I have more on it. If you go to my LinkedIn, my Tom Laird LinkedIn on it. on LinkedIn. I have a full article that I wrote on it, so if you want to kind of get that in writing, maybe I'll just throw a link to that too in the show notes. But again, thank you guys very much and I'll talk to you next week.