Hello

I would like to know how other call centre professionals train their agents to take calls. I am not looking for intellectual property or anything, just methodology. We have our agents take calls in a progressive manner, starting w/ just the greeting, then practicing logging or troubleshooting, and finally taking the whole call. They are sitting w/ a tenured agent during this process and can have them take over the call at any point. I am not sure if this is the best way to do this. It takes resources and time and you can't rely on what type of calls are coming in.

Could I get feedback from other professionals? Besides roleplaying and listening to the calls in the classroom, how do you prepare your agents to take those calls?

Thanks and good day.

Good day Paula, welcome to CCV, I hope to see you around.

I think you really are already doing a lot of the basics when it comes to training a person to take calls. While I realize that Y-connecting (jacking, whatever) does take some resources I believe it is a requirment.

One other thing I have found helpful in the past is to do reaslistic roleplaying, half the training class calls the other half and pretends they are a customer.

you can't rely on what type of calls are coming in.

Isn't that a good thing? You want your agent to be trained on any possible kind of call that they are supposed to handle.

Firstly I'd recommend you do a training needs analysis,

What level of skill/knowledge do you require?
What level are recruits at and how will you bridge the gap?

Then design the training, taking into account differing learning styles, costs, timescales and operational impact.

Then deliver the training and finally evaluate its success against your objectives.

That's it in a nutshell. Without doing that you'll never be able to prove its successful, cost effective or the degree of its success to management.

Oh, but before you do that you need to address recruitment issues and set and decide on the standards amd measurement techniques of said skills you are looking to recruit.

If you've got rubbish going in you'll get rubbish coming out. Training cant solve everything - especially poor recruitment practices.

and updated - you need to distinguish your people as inbound/outbound and train accordingly - Successful Sales Manager's Guide to Business Telephone Sales

Nine Training Elements for New People
1: Introduction and assimilation into company and our values
2: Product Knowledge (the main points – overview) 80/20
3: Operational Tips – how to use the gear efficiently – accurately
4: Telephone Communication Skills – all about the voice
5: Telephone Sales Skills – A.I.C.A and W.I.I.F.M
6: Customer Service Skills – Backup skills
7: Motivation – how can you motivate yourself
8: The Call Objective – different types – different approaches
9: Planned Calls – feedback on voice and technique- using scripts
(heavy focus on introduction statements)

This helped out piped the people in.