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SubscribeOver the past decade, customer service has changed from a cost center focused on TATs to a revenue center in modern companies. Contact centers are not just a touchpoint but a source of value creation.
Offering experiences that help build long-lasting, revenue-creating customer stickiness demands more than fast issue-resolution. Now it is about ensuring frictionless experiences with every customer-facing conversation.
And for that, your sales teams need call center training best practices to handle those calls in a manner that makes customers feel heard and appreciated.
(Did you know almost half of the call centers spend 6-12 weeks coaching and recruiting new employees?)
What is Call Center Training?
Call center training includes the resources and time your business invests in coaching customer-facing representatives on bettering communication techniques and effectively using digital tools and solutions during every call.
The end objective is to arm your call center teams with the necessary skill-sets to deliver impeccable customer experience and close more deals. Upselling/cross-selling, after-sales support, and product/service knowledge base are some critical areas call center training programs cover.
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Why Invest in Training of Agents?
Call and contact center training helps in improving agents’ effectiveness in the sales and support domains. It grooms the performance of agents, both new and old. As a result, efficient call center training helps to achieve the following:
- Increase personal interaction
- Provide clients with a quick solution
- Ensure skillful handling of critical issues
- Grab sales opportunities
- Deliver quality service
Below are 11 call center training tips and best practices to ensure your agents can deliver a positive customer experience.
Call Center Agent Training Best Practices
1. Practise Buddy System
James Bullard, the founder of Sound Fro strongly says, “Buddy sytem is probably one of the oldest and most typical techniques known to call center trainers. Nonetheless, its effectiveness makes it stand out and secure an evergreen reputation when it comes to call center training.
Buddy system is a great way to help new recruits in the onboarding process and help them get the hang of the company culture and system with ease. Furthermore, it is a great way to promote the concept of mentoring among employees.
Lastly, practicing buddy system could serve as solid guidance to new workers, especially when they need someone to turn to if they need to ask a question about their tasks as a call center agent.”
2. Increase Employee Engagement With Sessions
The pieces of call center training sessions are more than human conversations. Your training should not be just handing over a training file. Instead, discuss experiences in the form of training workflows or product videos.
After every training session, hold a weekly performance review session. This session should be more of a fun process with one-on-one interaction. This increases employee engagement.
Finally, monthly meetings should be organized. Here, you discuss the loopholes and encourage the good performers. If there are any loose ends, constructive criticism is a good idea to put things back on track.
3. Set Up a Training Module With an Agenda
As Jamie Sheepway, the Director of Service & Coaching at ShopPros believes, “When it comes to training in a call-center environment, there must be a step by step process. I start by having a new representative shadow my seasoned reps for a half day. The rest of that day is discussions with my Trainer (or me) about the day-to-day, processes, expectations, etc.
Day 2 is software – learn the CRM, Phone system, Tracing Program. Day 3 is practicing the scripts on the phone by calling me or my team. We do fake training calls 20-30 times until the new rep is comfortable. From there, it is off to the races with client calls!
Now, all of this is useless if the next step is not taken: Daily coaching for the first 3 months. Here, my training lead pulls a call at random and grade/discuss it with the new rep. This is done daily for 3 months. Then, it goes down to twice a week. Repetition and consistency are the key!”
4. Ensure Proper Assignments & Task Ownership
As managers or supervisors, you need to ensure that every new agent is assigned a task. For sales teams, teach your agents proper lead segregation and strategies to resolve tickets quickly.
Your call center training must include discussion about proper assignment rules, both for emails and calls. Agents must be aware of their shifts, functions, etc.
5. Process Improvement- call monitoring, whispering, and barging
Call monitoring is a savior when it comes to agent training. Its biggest advantage is that you can listen to the live calls of your agents without the clients knowing about it.
What’s more to listening to live calls? Managers can also whisper some information to the agent on the live call to help them – without the caller knowing it.
Furthermore, if your agent forgets to mention feature details, latest offers, or hesitates over the call, mentors can barge in to turn the tables around. In the end, all of this leads to quick solutions and happy customers.
6. Call Center Etiquette
Call center etiquette forms an integral part of both sales and support training. Hence, train your sales reps to be professional as well as empathetic with clients.
Your sales agent must have an in-depth understanding of your complete list of products and services along with ongoing offers. Moreover, they should skillfully communicate to build trust and rapport. People buy from brands that they can trust.
A common practice is that agents must predefine wait times when putting clients on hold. Longer wait times may cause customers to hang up, leading to negative experiences.
For support agents, train them to be patient listeners and genuine speakers. Teach them tactics to win customers by first stepping into their shoes. Keep a handy list of empathy statements that pacify customers.
7. Use Call Recordings for Improvisation
Call recording has been instrumental in not only holding the agents accountable but also for training purposes. Insights from call recordings(like the merits and faults) can be discussed to train and improvise on customer-agent interactions.
With call recordings, you can evaluate the best practices for quality service and growth in sales. Your agents get to know about unique customer needs. You can thus optimize the workshops or training for the newly joined agents.
Support agents can thus know about the right compliant behavior to be kept during calls. Whereas sales agents can learn how to identify sales opportunities.
8. Explain the Importance of KPIs and Metrics
Decide which among the numerous customer service metrics aptly indicate impressive customer service. Your team will definitely grow in due course. And then, you will urgently require consistent progress management.
The key to the proper assessment is the right set of key performance indicators or KPIs.
For support agents or success teams, educate them about quality metrics. The most important being First Response Time, Average Resolution Time, Customer Ticket Volume as well as Average Handling Time. Learn more about these and many other metrics from the customer support metrics blog post.
Educate sales agents about conversion rates and talk to ratios.
Did you know that talk-to-listen ratio guidelines suggest that sales agents should not speak more than 65% of the duration of any ongoing conversation?
9. Empower Agents with Software and Tools
Document the pain points so that the newly hired agents have something to begin with. It should be like the basic guidelines or notes to be followed.
However, the material and documentation just serve the theoretical purpose. Include certain software or online training modules in your call center training, that make the training more interactive.
10. Gain Knowledge About Customers
Call center agents should be customer-obsessed. They should be eager to know about the end-users. Train your contact center agents to know more about the customer’s technological background. They should have knowledge about the prospect’s interests and past purchase history.
Knowing about customers helps in both sales and service. In sales, it is only after knowing the background that they can highlight their software or special offers to close the deal.
Having a business phone system that integrates with other business tools and CRM will ensure that agents have proper information about the customers. CRM integrations remove all manual work of agents and keep them updated with client profiles and purchases.
Recommended Read: VoIP Integration With CRM: Everything You Need to Know
11. Incentivize Upon Achieving Goals
Atta Ur Rehman, Content Marketer at Gigworker puts forth a practical example, “Like Charlie Munger said, “show me the incentives, and I will show you the outcome”. Offering incentives on a regular basis upon completing a task to your agents is an efficiency booster.
Providing e-gifts or bonuses or even a chance of promotion will increase the will in agents to reach the target benefitting both the company and the customer. No matter what the goal or task is, agents will learn the art of how to perfectly execute it.
A study found that “incentive programs produce an average of 44% increase in performance”.”
12. Give the Training Program a Fun Twist
Sales agents might encounter unexpected scenarios while addressing customers. For such situations, you should prepare sales reps through role-playing exercises to help them understand how to deal with different customers or clients.
First, pick a customer-agent call from the previous recordings that could have been better and roleplay it. Then, add fun to the exercise by putting yourself in your agents’ shoes and making them the customer.
For instance, you can act like a frustrated or distressed customer while the representative tries to find on-the-fly solutions to help you thoughtfully. Then, show the agent what they should have done/said in that scenario. This will help your sales rep better assess and respond to various customer queries.
13. Set Clear Learning Objectives
Without objectives to work for, sales teams can feel stranded in their job with no place to go. Setting clear learning goals with abundant training options will make your call center reps feel more motivated to flourish in their roles.
Case in point, a goal like “After this program, you will double your chances of converting a lead” will influence agents more to take the course.
Pair those objectives with frequent training, boosting agent engagement and performance.
Of course, whatever learning goals you set, make sure they are realistic and attainable.
14. Provide Hyper-relevant Coaching
Tailor your call center training program by creating a stack of relevant training resources – how-to guides, video courses, and mini-courses – for your sales teams to pick from.
These resources should cover topics relevant to your agents, like how to use CRM software effectively, how to handle inbound calls, and how to build a rapport with customers.
That way, you can focus on individual agents and help them overcome their current issues by offering them personalized course materials.
15. Share Timely (and Constructive) Feedback
Agents will not know whether they are on top of their goals unless you give them input.
Start giving feedback to your reps by sharing their positives and negatives.
Highlight where they have improved lately or have been continuously doing well. As such, your sales agents will feel valued and be more receptive to what comes next.
After sharing the negative remarks, end the session on a high note by underscoring their strengths. This will motivate your agent and is up to improve.
16. Include Top Performers in Training as Mentors
Involving best-performing agents in refresher coaching programs is another wise addition to call center training best practices.
They can share their expertise and become role models for newcomers. Besides, employee training does not end in the classroom. Even after onboarding, trainees will require help from somebody with immense experience.
Making top performers – or adaptors – a part of call center training accelerates employee induction, reduces staff turnover, improves employee engagement, and streamlines succession planning.
17. Keep the Training Ongoing
This is one of the most important call center training tips.
Never treat call center training as a one-time affair. Your sales reps must keep up with emerging tools and evolving customer sensibilities and preferences.
Hence, regularly update your training modules as per the latest industry trends as well as within the context of your business’s offerings.
A fluid call center coaching program will help your sales reps deliver flawless customer experience and avoid undue pressure.
Achieve Peak Sales Productivity With Actionable Insights
Turn your Sales Reps into Sales “Rockstars”
Call center training is not a “nice-to-have” but a “must-have.”
The quality of support that customers get is linearly proportional to the call center training techniques you teach your employees for their professional upskilling.
Similarly, training can embark sales reps on a growth journey, empowering them with the skills to close more deals.
Use these 17 call center training best practices discussed above to teach your agents the nuances of running a helpful, friendly, and rewarding phone call with customers or prospects. That way, they can make every sales and support interaction positive — and eventually accelerate business growth.
