Call Center Management Featured Article
Tips for Successfully Onboarding Call Center Agents
Onboarding customer service agents is perhaps one of the most important tasks for any call center. The call center industry has one of the highest turnover rates of any job category, averaging between 30 and 45 percent. Choosing the right candidates for the job and ensuring they are properly onboarded, trained and coached is the key to reducing that churn and ensuring a contact center is running as optimally and efficiently as possible.
One of the first steps a call center can take to ensure successful onboarding is proper agent training on company policies and procedures. Agents must understand the nuances of how to interact with clients and which responses they should provide to customers depending on the circumstances. They should also be versed in crisis management and know when calls should be escalated to a manager or superior. Ensuring agents are properly trained also facilitates a positive and empowered corporate culture in the call center.
New agents also need to be versed on customer needs. Regardless of the type of business they are supporting, call center agents should have strong communication skills and also be accomplished at listening to customers' questions and needs. They also need to be empathetic to customer issues and work toward a resolution and positive customer interaction at all costs.
Another important factor in agent onboarding and retention success is ensuring workers are well trained on technology tools and software. That includes everything from how to properly route calls to assigning tickets and closing them out when an issue is resolved. Many call centers are also integrating
AI and automation, which can be extremely beneficial in providing history and context to human agents.
Call center managers can also create a knowledge base and/or a FAQ page to help agents more easily and quickly resolve issues. Having a large amount of information in a central and easily accessed location is a major benefit for agents, and especially new ones. Managers can also run a test customer service session to help new agents practice and become familiar with technology and customer interactions. Practice sessions can easily pinpoint weak areas that agents may need to work on as well as gaps in knowledge or problems working with technology.
Finally, in addition to managers evaluating agents' performances, new agents should be able to evaluate their own performance. This type of self-evaluation empowers new agents and helps them to set goals for themselves as they progress. Agents can also evaluate their co-workers' performances and provide feedback about colleagues' particular strengths and skills.
Edited by Luke Bellos