Call Center Management Featured Article
Consider Agent Mentoring in the Contact Center to Supplement Formal Training
While different contact centers have different practices, when it comes to training, most of them follow a familiar pattern: a few weeks of classroom training, some hand-on experiences under the eye of a manager or supervisor, and the agent is on his or her own, with the exception of a little evaluation and coaching at review times, or if a need for remedial training is identified.
Smart companies, however, know that the training process should be ongoing, and that one of the best ways to accomplish this is by offering contact center employees a place to turn to with questions or concerns.
“Support and encouragement can be just as important as proper training,” blogged Monet Software’s CEO Chuck Ciarlo recently. “Unfortunately, coaches and managers don’t always have time to provide this personalized attention to every agent, particularly in larger contact centers.”
It’s worth making time for this critical process. A mentoring program in which an experienced agent is matched up to a newer agent can help achieve a number of goals. It can boost employee retention, since the experienced agent will feel more valued and the new agent won’t feel left to his or her own devices. It can help produce better quality agents faster, which leads to improved customer and operations outcomes. It can also take pressure off already over-busy managers and supervisors, freeing them up to actually do their jobs.
So where to start with a mentoring program? Ciarlo advises contact centers create a workable plan before they begin.
“If you can recruit enough agents to start mentoring, define the goals and limitations of the program,” he writes. “Should regular meetings between mentor and agent be scheduled? How often? Do you want the mentor to serve primarily as a support system, or a trainer as well?”
The mentor-rookie relationship need not be only face-to-face. It can be nurtured via instant messaging or short phone calls. Ciarlo points out that because these meetings are agent-to-agent, without a manager or trainer present, they should be more informal. This informality can actually help boost the value of the relationship.
“New agents are more likely to speak their mind to someone performing the same job, and that doesn’t have the authority to discipline or fire them,” he writes. “This is only possible if a trust and mutual respect develops, and with the right mentors this will happen naturally over time.”
Agent mentoring is one those valuable operations the call center doesn’t often find an opportunity to take advantage of: a program that has little cost, in time or in money, but can reap enormous benefits and rewards.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi