Tips for Making Agent Training More Engaging

In the contact center, agent training used to be a dull affair for everyone involved. There was classroom training. There was on-the-job training with a manager standing over the agent’s shoulder. There was trial-and-error, which was perilous for customers. While all of these things may exist today, technology has made the job of training agents – and the experience for agents – a little more pleasant.

For starters, it’s important to remember that agent training shouldn’t be something that happens once and never again for the agent. It’s an ongoing process that should include boosts to soft skills, refreshers for product knowledge and sales and support techniques and ongoing skills acquisitions. The goal isn’t “butts on seats,” it’s the creation of a team of skilled agents that customers feel confident and satisfied in interacting with.

Following are some tips that can help agent training go a little more smoothly and feel a bit more interesting.

Vary the training. If agents aren’t engaged with your training process, they’re never going to want to learn. See if you can’t make it a bit more fun with a gamified solution, or some simulation exercises, so that agents remain interested in learning the skills they need to do their jobs well.

Make it qualitative and quantitative. Agents will feel better about training – and be more engaged with it – if they can see their progress.  Reward jobs well done and new skills achieved, and provide extra help for tasks that are proving to be more difficult to grasp. Be sure to praise the top achievers and positively encourage the rest.

Consider mentoring. Skilled, established agents are a great source of knowledge for newbies. Pair veteran agents with trainees so the former can share their experience, and the latter can ask questions or request advice they might not wish to ask their direct managers.

Precisely target your ongoing training. Not every skill and task require the same amount of attention when it comes to continuing training. If there’s a particularly tricky skill that many agents are having trouble mastering, you’ll want to spend more of your efforts there. Voice analysis features in contact center solutions can help identify the biggest trouble spots.

Provide incentives. A little competition is no bad thing, so if your contact center is organized into teams, introduce a little healthy competition – and a reward to strive for – to see a fast boost in performance.

Edited by Maurice Nagle