• Contact Center Outsourcing
• Articles

Today's Challenge: Keep New Hires Engaged

By TMCnet Staff

It’s a vexing issue for managers in call centers everywhere: How do you train your new people without turning them off to the very job you’ve hired them for?

In today’s fast-paced, take-no-prisoners world, everyone’s attention span is shrinking. With the Internet and social media literally at most people’s fingertips, very few folks have the time or patience to sit through a number of eight-hour days learning how to handle callers.

But the main problem lies in the difference between what the trainer thinks their job is, and what the employers believes they’re there to learn. The disconnect is glaring.

In a recent blog post, JaNae Forshee -- senior WFO practice manager at cloud contact center leader inContact – addressed this very issue and offered some concrete steps to make the process flow more smoothly, and hopefully ensure that new hires can quickly get up to speed. Forshee listed four suggestions to help move things along:

Turn the classroom into a learning “playground:” “Adult learners need to be stimulated and entertained in order to absorb and retain the knowledge required to dazzle customers,” she wrote. “That’s why the best training supplements classroom instruction with interactive games, contests, role-plays, and call simulations.” Forshee refers to such training as “enterTRAINment.”

Change your ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach: “Programs should draw on the experience of those who can enhance training by playing to those strengths of people in the classroom,” Forshee says. “Encourage veteran trainees to share their insights and service success secrets, or by pairing them up with a true rookie during training exercises.”

Bring the job to the training room: Forshee recommends taking some time to integrate the actual work involved into the classroom. “Allow time for learners to ‘job shadow’ based on the topics you’re covering in the classroom,” she suggests. “You can easily provide a worksheet or game on things to look for, listen for, and watch while they are seeing their job in action.”

Remember job expectations: Training programs are really product, process, and system boot camp. Says Forshee: “The curriculum is designed to teach employees what products they are supporting; how to use those products; how to troubleshoot the products and; how to understand the systems and processes that support them.”

In short, training new hires can be successful once you throw out the “playbook” and treat them all as partners. After all, isn’t that the hoped-for goal?