It is a widely held belief the world over that good luck occurs in business when preparedness meets opportunity. And as with so many things, preparedness often begins with a proper education.
If you operate a call center are you going to release new agents on your valued customers before educating them, or is it best to make sure they are properly trained?
While call center training certainly has changed in recent, becoming more sophisticated as better tools come into the environment, companies like Ulysses Learning still stick to fundamentals in learning while offering innovative ways of keeping clients on the cutting edge.
One of the ways is through the North Carolina-based company’s ServiceMentor. Although the objectives vary, the corps principals of teaching remain the same.
For starters, ServiceMentor features simulation-based e-Learning that helps a company’s reps learn complex customer service skills in a safe, simulated environment. The simulation-based e-Learning portion of ServiceMentor accounts for 80 percent of the training time and is expertly blended with facilitated exercises, which help your reps further develop and reinforce skills, according to the company.
ServiceMentor is designed to prepare reps to achieve numerous goals including:
- Efficiently and effectively take control of the call, even when customers are angry or upset.
- Quickly and clearly identify what customers really need.
- Offer meaningful solutions that best fit customers' needs...and your business' needs; and end calls leaving customers feeling good about your rep and organization, resulting in first-call resolution.
At the heart of this program there are several strategies employed that are brought together to form the overall program. First, is The Call Strategy service model that applies behavioral psychology to help your reps accurately predict customer behavior and develop the skills to effectively take control of and manage their calls.
In addition, the Learner's Experience features simulation-based e-Learning that helps your reps learn complex customer service skills in a safe, simulated environment. The simulation-based e-Learning portion of ServiceMentor accounts for 80 percent of the training time and is expertly blended with facilitated exercises, which help your reps further develop and reinforce skills.
Ulysses' 80/20 blend of simulation-based e-Learning with facilitated exercises has been validated through extensive research, client results and ongoing analysis and refinement, and contains the optimum mix of training methodologies proven to develop complex customer service skills.
ServiceMentor is often completed over a series of 4, 3-hour sessions; other variations are also possible.
Ulysses Learning says the proof is in the results and provides numbers to back that up. With ServiceMentor, and CoachingMentor for Service, call centers can reduce escalated calls by 25 percent or more, while reps develop skills to take control of calls and effectively handle customer emotion.
In addition, there will be a decrease in callbacks by at least 25 percent. This is achieved as reps develop skills to ask the right questions and identify what customers really want, resulting in more customers whose needs are handled on the first call.
The program also is designed to improve average handle time up to 10 seconds or longer, as a result reps become more proficient in using The Call Strategy, they become more efficient, keeping the call on track.
The overall effort improves average quality monitoring scores up to 30 percent, says the company. As employees renew skills, reps perform better and more confident resulting in smoother calls, while increasing customer satisfaction.
Click here to learn more about Ulysses' proven implementation process.
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is The Compelling ROI Benefits of Contact Center Quality and Performance Management Technologies, brought to you by Voice Print International (News - Alert).
Tim Gray is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Tim’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Tim Gray
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