Let’s talk about three of the challenges you’re likely experiencing if you maintain a contact center in 2023.
- improving training (both in terms of speed and quality)
- ramp time
- attrition (which is historically high)
If you talk with a supplier, the answer is always, “Buy a new product! We can solve all your problems!” Maybe they can, but budgets are real and leadership doesn’t always approve cool solutions that automate workflows and improve customer experience. So, let’s talk about free steps you can take to improve training, ramp time and attrition.
- Develop a comprehensive onboarding program | Most companies don’t do this. New agents are often thrown directly into the fire and they have to sink or swim. That’s not a real onboarding program. Your agents should receive training on company policies, systems, products and services. You’ll also want to ensure that agents understand their roles, expecations and responsibilities from day one, rather than hoping they glean this information in the trenches.
- Use simulations and role-playing exercises | I know this one sounds lame, but it’s extremely helpful if you give agents the ability to get repetition with fielding customer interactions. This better equips the agent with the skills needed to handle difficult situations confidently. In customer experience, our resources often learn best by doing.
- Offer ongoing training and coaching | Agents must continue to develop their skills, because processes, products and services always evolve. Also, we want to prioritize the constant improvement of customer experience. These coaching sessions also create time for agents to receive feedback and support. Ongoing training allows agents to continously improve their performance and scale into new roles within the business.
- Provide opportunities for career advancement | Agents do not want to remain agents forever. I know what you’re thinking. There’s one agent who loves it and they’ve been in the contact center for twenty years. Might I submit that this is an outlier. Granting agents a clear path to building their career will only reduce attrition. In order to do this, you must outline the skills and experience that your organization requires in order to scale. Remember - clear paths for advancement results in motivated agents.
- Create a positive work environment | Can we be real? Contact Centers are hard places to create positive work environments. It’s a hard job. It can be stressful. A positive work environment takes work by leadership; it will not magically appear. You can create this type of environment by rewarding good performance, provide opportunities for social interaction, and create a healthy work/life balance. Happy agents increase your retention rates.
- Learning Management Systems (LMS) | You can manage and deliver training from one source. This allows you to generate and assign campaigns, while tracking the progress of agents. This training can also be delivered on-deman. Associating this training with a rewards-based system can also be helpful.
- Instructor-Lead Training | This component can also be virtual, video-based or in-person. A mixture of these services allows agents to answer questions, provide feedback and create engaging learning experiences.
- Knowledge Management Systems | Organizations often store helpful data that agents need to do their job in multiple locations that lack structure and organization. This leaves your agents scrambling to find content while your customer grows more frustrated by the second. If this sounds like you, KMS could be the answer. Knowledge management systems can help agents to access relevant information quickly and easily. These systems can include searchable databases, FAQs, and other resources that provide agents with the information they need to serve customers effectively.
- Unified Agent Desktop | Application sprawl is real. We often ask agents to manage so many apps that it reduces their productivity and harms the customer experience. A unified agent desktop is a software application that provides contact center agents with a single interface to access all the tools and resources they need to serve customers effectively. It integrates various systems and applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, knowledge bases, call scripting tools, and communication channels, into a single interface.
- Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) | For a complete summary, you can check this article I wrote on CCaaS. It’s possible that your current tool, whether it’s a premise-based contact center solution or a stack of products you’ve cobbled together, is harming your business. I said what I said. It’s possible to fear change so much that you harm your customer experience and agent retention suffers. The most imporant data that your company owns is your customer data. CCaaS allows you to maximize this data and improve efficiencies.
Overall, contact centers can improve training, ramp time, and attrition with agents by investing in their agents' development, providing ongoing training and coaching, and creating a positive work environment. By doing so, they can reduce turnover rates, improve agent performance, and provide a better customer experience.
If you’d like to discuss how your can build contact centers of the future, please give me a shout!
