How Call Accounting Can Help Call Center Training
November 13, 2013
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
The agents in your call center are trained to handle customer requests and deliver on performance expectations. Are they also familiar with the processes you have in place to demonstrate the proper approach to customer care? Do you rely on call accounting, recording and reporting solutions to train them according to quality deliverables? If not, you’re missing out on key opportunities to leverage quality data for improvement.
The ideal situation is always to train call center operators through the use of real world best practice call material. In other words, the best way to show your agents how to respond on a call is to use a real call. Likewise, if you have a recorded call that demonstrates what NOT to do – this call is just as useful. The concept centers on best practices and if you can demonstrate them through call accounting, you’ve accomplished half the battle.
A post on ISI (News - Alert) Telemanagement Solutions, Inc.’s website demonstrates the perfect example. Consider industries such as medical, pharmaceutical, financial services, hospital products and information technology. The sales forces focused on these calls tend to follow standard approaches to products and services, and the market opportunities are fairly consistent across the board. The variation comes in the form of call center agents. If you record the calls of your top performing agents to be used to guide those who are struggling, you’ll be better positioned to improve performance.
If you’re worried about laws preventing you from silent recordings or don’t want to interrupt the flow of the call to alert the customer, it is possible to capture only the voice of the agent on the line. This can still be useful in training sessions – you can even turn it into a game where agents try to complete the other end of the conversation. The point is to learn what works and what doesn’t – the result of the call can give you that much needed information.
Call accounting using recordings is also a great way to learn whether or not your agents are leveraging key opportunities when on the phone. Agents should be taking advantage of upsell opportunities, but maybe they aren’t skilled at identifying key signals or lack the necessary product knowledge. This is a great way to identify those shortfalls and adjust as needed.
Training your call center staff for excellence is not an easy task, but it can be much simpler when you use the assets you already have in place. Your top performers provide the best baseline for improving call handling. Take advantage of their expertise and knowledge without interrupting the call.
Edited by Blaise McNamee