Electronic learning (e-learning) has opened up a whole new world of opportunity for contact center trainers and those in charge of performance management and coaching. Having the ability to approach training, thorough performance management and coaching techniques such as e-learning technologies means staid, old, inflexible methods can be relegated to the annals of contact center history.

Given today’s weak economic conditions paired with strong enterprise emphasis on customer experience, it is more imperative than ever that training, performance management and coaching of contact center agents be performed in the most cost-effective, expeditious and results-oriented way possible.

Recognizing this, contact center solutions company Envision offers workforce optimization tools under its Envision Centricity platform that integrate an e-learning solution, called Envision eLearning, which can also serve as a standalone solution. eLearning provides supervisors with the necessary tools to create and deliver personalized training, while allowing agents to receive training directly at their desktops.

In essence, it’s as if each agent is getting a personal trainer, performance manager and coach at his or her personal site. This is made possible by eLearning in a number of ways that trainers may not have thought of before.For instance, video authoring, which enables supervisors to quickly create training videos that can contain a voice recording and screen capture of any application, web page or document, is one of the tools eLearning provides to present agent training. 

Supervisors can also streamline the creation and delivery of personalized agent training by using right-time coaching to send videos, computer-based training (CBT) presentations, as well as custom and third-party training directly to agents. They can also take advantage of customer interactions and evaluations derived from Envision Quality Monitoring and use them as an adjunct to training, performance management and coaching.

Envision says that while eLearning was designed to work with Envision Quality Monitoring, it can also be used with other monitoring systems. Of course, eLearning changes the dynamic of traditional training, performance management and coaching methodology, and because no one likes to be surprised when their routine is altered, the eLearning solution alerts agents on their desktop screens that new training is arriving.

Traditionalists who might be alarmed that eLearning will completely supplant their tried and true methods need not worry. Adoption of e-learning technology doesn’t necessarily mean traditional in-person performance management and coaching efforts should be abandoned. On the contrary, e-learning can be used to augment these efforts.

In fact, one of the ways Envision’s eLearning makes that easy is with a learning management system (LMS). It allows trainers to create training content libraries, store the content and deliver and track it so training programs can be set up for specific requirements and events (new hires, procedure instructions, new campaign directions, etc.) or to augment in-person training and performance management and coaching whenever the need presents itself.

Once an eLearning system is put in place those in charge of training and performance management and coaching should rapidly realize agent performance improvement which will show in their provision of a better customer experience, something that along with reduced training costs brought about by eLearning, should definitely impress enterprise management.