Improve call center agent onboarding with the Agent Impact Score

Ashley Sava

July 27, 2020

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When it comes to call center agent onboarding, getting new agents up to speed as effectively and efficiently as possible is crucial. Enter the Agent Impact Score, a composite index that can be used to measure the quality of agent performance and track how different agents are handling difficult customer situations.

Coach behaviors that tie to commercial outcomes

AIS is an AI algorithm and a TEI derivative that gives managers the ability to measure the effort level for 100 percent of customer interactions. Managers can then take these insights to help coach their call center reps up to their ultimate performance. One of the things that makes the Agent Impact Score extraordinarily valuable is that it is isolated to controllable agent factors that are tied to actual commercial outcomes. This powerful training tool is unique in that individual agent behaviors are separated from overall customer effort. This makes onboarding new reps a more seamless and productive process.

Make training count during call center agent onboarding

A Fortune 500 insurance company is using AIS to better the onboarding and training experience in their call center. They wanted a way to separate specific variables attributable to the agent within the interaction itself while excluding customer-related issues that often are uncontrollable factors for agents. They implemented the Agent Impact Score as a solution to help them embed new behaviors during onboarding and increase the amount of information their reps were absorbing during the coaching process.

Coaches often struggle to authenticate the practice sessions they hold with new reps as the reps can feel the techniques managers use are just "going through the motions". When conducting role-playing as behavior practice, for example, the behaviors the managers teach sometimes don’t feel real enough to their agents. After implementing the Agent Impact Score, specific examples that demonstrate behaviors corresponding to good and bad AIS scores guide the reps toward a stronger absorption of concepts as real interactions are presented. AIS looks for specific examples where demonstrated behavior is happening and how the responses correlate to good and bad scores. Get familiar with using AIS for QA here.

Coach new reps on behaviors that hold water

Traditional QA programs are perceived by many agents as overly penal as results are based on non-representative samples. Because of ineffectual sample sizes and bias, reps spend tons of time and energy in various appeals processes, especially in businesses where reps are paid based on these ratings. These dated programs generally drive disengagement as they fail to meaningfully change business outcomes as criteria is set based on untested assumptions around experiential drivers. After all, aligning agent performance to business outcomes is what really counts. AIS enables organizations to unlock details on how the specific contributions agents make are tied to business outcomes, overcoming many of the challenges with traditional QA scorecard approaches to performance management. Check out our Agent Impact Score webinar to get a more in-depth look.

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Want better call center agent onboarding? Look no further

When it comes to quality assurance, the agents you are onboarding should be coached on behaviors rooted in better CX. Learn the drivers of a good and bad Agent Impact Score today to upgrade your call center agent onboarding process.

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