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December 4 - Could gamification be the silver bullet to your agents’ motivation? Here’s how evaluagent recommends getting started: Identify what motivates your team.  Understand what drives your agents and design rewards that align with those interests for the best chance of success. Create fair and inclusive mechanics.  Ensure all agents have an equal chance to win, and that your game elements cater to different skill levels. Monitor and adjust regularly.  Regularly review the effectiveness of your gamification strategy and make necessary tweaks to keep the program engaging. Integrate with existing processes.  Seamlessly integrate gamification into your existing workflows and processes to ensure a smooth transition (we can help!). As long as you take a considered approach, you should see agent engagement soar! This week's tip is provided by Chris Mounce of evaluagent. He can be reached at chris.mounce@evaluagent.com.    About evaluagent At evaluagent, we believe that Every Conversation Counts. For over 10 years, [...]

November 27 - Did you attend the annual QATC Annual Conference in September and want to make sure that you can attend again next year?  Consider asking for time in an upcoming staff meeting with your stakeholders (e.g., the people who approved your expenses) to share your QATC experience.  If you really want their continued buy in, don’t just run through a bunch of bullet points of all the things you learned – instead, put it in action! Present an action plan of how you plan to incorporate your new knowledge into the QA or training program.  Sending employees to a conference is an investment for any organization, so show your stakeholders what they are getting in return!  The format can vary depending on your needs, but consider dividing up your action plan into immediate and longer term items. This week’s tip is provided by QATC Member Adam Brown of Western [...]

November 20 - We have a 3-in-1 bonus for you!  Here are three scoring tips for new evaluators: 1: Listen to/read the interaction without scoring.  By taking the time to review interactions comprehensively first, you reduce pressure and ensure fair and consistent evaluations. 2: Take it one line item at a time.  Focusing on one item at a time minimizes fatigue, confusion, and stress caused by long lists of interactions. Multitasking isn’t the goal here. 3: Collaboration is key.  Effective communication and discussion helps keep things consistent and fair. Do this through official calibration sessions, as well as sharing your knowledge more informally, too! You can get overwhelmed with quotas to hit and lots of interactions to score, but keep it focused and you’ll be well on your way to delivering meaningful evaluations. This week's tip is provided by Chris Mounce of evaluagent. He can be reached at chris.mounce@evaluagent.com.     About evaluagent At evaluagent, [...]

November 13 - Quality assurance and coaching are crucial components of a successful call center operation. They help ensure that our agents provide excellent service and meet performance standards. Here are some tips I’d like to submit for effective call center quality assurance and coaching: Establish Clear Quality Standards:Define the specific criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs) that agents should meet, such as first call resolution, customer satisfaction, call adherence, operational requirements and compliance with company policies. Use Call Monitoring:Regularly monitor calls to evaluate agents' performance. Ensure that monitoring is consistent and unbiased. Score Calls Objectively:Be consistent and objective in your evaluations. Provide Timely Feedback:Highlight both positive and negative aspects of their performance. Constructive criticism is valuable for growth. Offer Training and Development:This could include additional product knowledge, communication skills, navigation concerns or problem-solving techniques. Share Best Practices:Encourage agents to share successful strategies and approaches with their peers. Create a culture [...]

 November 6 - As much as 9.5% of a business's revenue is at risk due to poor customer experience (CX). It is vital to prioritize customer and agent satisfaction to improve customer experience metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS). However, agents' own satisfaction plays a significant role in customer delight or dismay. Disengaged agents offer worse service which results in a high-effort customer experience three times as often as with engaged agents. Pay Attention to Agent Experience A contact center that is managing continual turnover can't deliver outstanding customer service because inexperienced agents are less likely to create the experience that customers desire. Disengaged reps also make customers work harder to resolve issues. To reduce churn and boost revenue, create a contact center environment that agents want to stay in by offering remote work, flexible scheduling, communication, and development opportunities. Leverage AI in Quality Management AI can [...]

October 30 - Many times in training agents in the contact center, we focus heavily on the end customer service skills, and rightfully so.  We should also not forget that our internal associations and groups are key to providing an excellent customer experience and we should utilize the same service skills to enhance the relationships and build loyalty and partnerships. Always providing good information, following up appropriately and professionally, and treating internal groups like we would want to be treated helps foster a collaborative environment and ultimately benefits not only the customer, but the company as well.  Training everyone in the organization on enhancing relationships beyond just the end customer enables us to see all sides of the equation. We sometimes take for granted that every internal group has the same drivers and needs as we do, but in fact, we have to work on the relationships to build that "one [...]

October 23 - The final tip in our series on Coaching will address deepening the coaching relationship.  Once you have started on a coaching journey with someone, developing communication is a two-way street. At the beginning of your relationship, if the individual is new to their role, there may be a need for some directive conversation. As they gain confidence, it’s important to continue to build their investment in the coaching conversation and help them to self-diagnose. One way of engaging them in the conversation is to ask these questions: What do you think? What am I missing? These questions not only engage your employee, but also open the dialogue for them to diagnose the root cause of what may be blocking their progress.

October 16 - For the second tip in our Coaching series, we will focus on how to expand your coaching relationship.  After a coaching relationship is established, at some point the conversation can become stale. Take advantage of this situation by asking the coachee to coach YOU. Here are some ideas to try: Have them watch you do their job and coach you Communicate something you’re working on and ask for their observations Try out some verbiage: “What would you think if I said X?” Coaching is a two-way conversation. This approach increases your permission to coach the employee.

October 9 - Coaching is a really important part of the job for all call center leaders.  The tips for the next three weeks will focus on this topic. Establishing a coaching relationship takes time and the ability to build trust.  This is something that we should work on continuously to build the relationships with agents in our organization. Some ways to build trust include: Inspiring Trust by Sharing: All of us have examples of when we said the wrong thing, or did something less well than we would have liked. Trust is an essential part of a coaching relationship. Share these instances where appropriate: “This was not my finest hour…” It conveys to your employee that you are human, and that mistakes are not fatal. Lean in to the Pause: Often an inflection point in learning occurs in a conversation at the point where the coachee is quiet or appears [...]

October 2 - We have been focusing on feedback the past few weeks.  Sometimes just a few changes in language can make a big difference when you are coaching agents. To minimize the risk of doing more harm than good when giving constructive criticism, make these vocabulary adjustments: Substitute ineffective for bad. Telling people they’ve made bad decisions or done bad things can make them feel stupid and inferior. Instead, explain why their choices may prove ineffective and what they can do to achieve a better outcome. Substitute often/seldom for always/never. Avoid using extreme terms even when dealing with chronic problems. The most persistently tardy workers occasionally arrive on time and the most reliable employees sometimes mess up. If you accuse people of always or never doing something, they may become defensive and point out exceptions to the rule. Or they may decide the situation is hopeless and stop trying to [...]

September 25 - Last week’s tip focused on giving and receiving feedback.  Here are a couple of other tips to help in this process of giving “plusses” and “deltas”: Tip 1:  Use value/impact language.  If you must focus on a specific mistake, try not to use blame language.  Instead of saying, “you did this horrible thing,” focus on a part where everyone agrees on –  say, a specific behavior – and then talk about the impact of that behavior.  “When you do this, it can cause that.”  Or better yet, just focus on values.  “At our company, we try to consider the long term relationship we have with a customer.” Tip 2:  Ask questions.  If you need to give some quick feedback or are focusing on a specific incident rather than general feedback, you can still let people speak for themselves by asking questions.  Instead of saying, “you should have given [...]

September 18 - Nobody likes getting lectured.  Nobody likes thinking they’ve done something wrong.  By making feedback a continuous, normal process you can help your team to hear your feedback and be better equipped to take your suggestions.  You might even get some good feedback yourself! Tip 1:  Focus on growth, not on mistakes.  Speak in terms of “plusses,” or things that worked well, and “deltas,” or things that can be improved.  (Delta is the mathematical symbol for change).  Avoid talking about mistakes, negatives, things that happened poorly.  Rephrase those thoughts into ideas about what a rep can improve upon. Tip 2:  Be specific.  When giving plusses, being specific helps a person to know you are genuine, and that you are paying attention not only when they make mistakes.  When giving deltas, being specific about room for improvement makes it easier to take your feedback.  Being specific also means not giving [...]

September 11 - Realistically some of our agents like to talk more than others. Most agents understand that an interactive engagement should go from the personal to business to personal with the focus on business, but how do you handle the CSR who continuously has the highest AHT because he/she wants to make every customer a friend? The best approach is to handle this one-on-one with the agents from a purely business perspective: Most call centers have a very good idea of the cost of each call -- break it down very granularly. Each minute costs us dollars. Have the agent listen to the call with the focus on the business. Have the agent time the business part of the call and the personal side of the call. Clearly when the personal side of the call is close to equal or longer, there is a concern. Every customer wants to be [...]

September 4 - How do AI and Automation help Quality Management (QM)? Fifty-eight percent (58%) of contact centers plan to invest in an AI solution to monitor agent performance and automate quality scoring.* Automation is a software-directed action based on a set of predefined rules created by humans. Automation removes manual tasks that often aren’t a productive use of a human’s time. Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machine learning. AI analyzes complex data sets and makes recommendations or takes action based on what it learns. It continually evolves to create increasingly better results. AI solutions remove the complexity of working with large data sets and reveal insights humans can then use to do their work more efficiently. Customers are more fickle than ever — making QM more important than ever. AI and automation can help Quality Analysts be more efficient in their work. Automate routine checks: AI can detect whether or [...]

August 28 - The time has come to prepare for year end reporting, the perfect opportunity to share insights related to your department’s accomplishments. It’s essential to recognize that the value of quality in a contact center goes beyond just agent scores. Documenting accomplishments and showcasing the broader impact of the Quality Assurance (QA) team's efforts is crucial for presenting a comprehensive picture of the team's contribution to the organization. Here are some key points to consider as you prepare your year-end accomplishments: Holistic Performance Measurement: While agent scores are important, they are just a part of the overall customer experience. QA teams should demonstrate their ability to identify and address factors that might impact customer experience beyond agent interactions. This includes areas like product performance, website functionality, and other processes that can influence or cause friction for customers. Early Detection of Issues: QA plays a crucial role in early issue [...]

August 21 - Oftentimes we miss opportunities to ensure our teams are growing and learning throughout the year. This can lead to boredom and burnout, even for those "B" players on your team. Take time to create personal development plans for each teammate and ensure they are owning it but with your direct support. If individuals do not have a long-term career goal/objective, identify ways to encourage learning that enables them to expand their skill set within their current role. Consider stretch project opportunities, job shadowing, on-line learning, webinars, and books in areas they have interest in. This investment can pay dividends over time with morale on your team and enable you to start to build internal bench strength. Have you registered for the QATC Annual Conference yet? Don't miss out on this exciting event designed specifically for Quality Assurance and Training professionals! Register today for the 2023 Quality Assurance & Training [...]

August 14 - Your contact center has the power to transform customer problems into loyalty-building positive interactions. Customer data and insights are everywhere, but it can be challenging to find the best way to make sense of them and put them to good use. Focus on what data to identify and how to uncover customer insights to create stellar customer experiences. Three Key Steps: Understand the Customer Journey Use the Power of Customer Sentiment Analysis Personalize the Customer Experience Understanding the Customer Journey This means understanding what and how your customers use each of your channels to solve their issues. Keep in mind younger audiences tend to initially turn to outside resources, and tend to trust those third-party channels as much as your company-owned channels. Investigate whether or not customers are getting hung up and take steps to smooth out their journey. What kinds of questions or issues are being surfaced [...]

August 7 - Have you ever thought about using a group of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to expedite training? But are you worried that this may not be the best way to do this? If you answered yes to both, it’s understandable. Subject Matter Expert (SME) literally means one who is expert in a certain area. It does not mean one can teach or train that skill. Training is a unique skill set unto itself. However, in call centers promotions are often given to agents to positions such as Team Leads, Trainers, Analysts, Coaches, and Supervisors. There is one truth though -- just because an agent can take calls, that does not mean they will automatically make a good trainer or lead or analyst. But if an agent has high quality scores, good caller satisfaction, and strong first contact resolution, likely they know the job, and the subject well. This agent [...]

July 31 - It is important not just to recognize desirable performance, but to reward it in some way so that it will be repeated.  Designing and administering an effective reward program is critical to your call center employees’ ongoing performance improvement. Rewards fall into two categories:  1) natural reinforcers, such as thanks for customers or the internal satisfaction of solving a problem; or 2) “created” reinforcement, which is made up of social reinforcers and tangible reinforcers.  Simple words of appreciation are samples of social reinforcers, while other reinforcers are tangible items that are given to the employee as a reward for desired behavior. A tangible reward should be unique and relevant to each employee, so that is viewed as a positive consequence, rather than neutral or negative.  You will want to ask each employee what would be viewed as a positive, neutral, or negative consequence – don’t assume that just [...]

July 24 - Do you ever wonder why some of your employees come out of a training program and just simply don’t seem to get it?  Do some of the trainees seem to assimilate all the information just fine, but others seem like they were never even in the class? The problem may not be in the intelligence levels or the classroom efforts of the trainees, but in the way the training is designed and presented.  It’s important that your training programs are designed to engage and stimulate all types of students and learning styles. An important consideration in developing call center training programs is to understand how adults learn.  The concept of adult learning theory suggests that we learn differently as adults than we did as children in school.  Some characteristics of adult learners are: Adults need to be able to integrate new ideas with what they already know. Adults [...]

July 17 - The discussions continue about the best ways to communicate and coach in today's virtual environment.  Many times, we tend to focus our virtual coaching in the areas of agent performance, i.e., AHT, Sales, Adherence, Attendance, Accuracy.  While these are all important and needed, we must understand that there are other areas of coaching opportunities that should be included to help develop and maintain engaged, positive and balanced employees. Communicating and coaching employees on their well-being, stress concerns, career development, and contact center culture is extremely important to develop well-rounded and engaged employees.  If we don’t take opportunities to develop the relationship of coaching beyond performance areas, we run the risk of employees seeing coaching as “just another way to tell me I’m not doing something right.”  They tend to shut down over time and not contribute to the process of continuous improvement. As the Field of Dreams movie said, “Build [...]

July 10 - Employees – and leaders – working remotely still need training.  As we make the transition to online learning, we need to “transform” our content, not just “convert” it.  For example, it’s not as easy as taking your PowerPoint slides from your classroom course, putting it in an online platform, and lecturing to those slides.  Here are some tips for online learning: Create pre-work.  A certain percentage of the classroom materials can be converted to pre-work done prior to any virtual learning.  This is normally “foundational” content (i.e., overviews of a process, product information, etc…). Have learners read with a purpose in mind; for example, “Read this article and answer the following questions.” Put the impetus for learning on the learners.  Give them a problem, give them access to the knowledge and information needed, and then do a debrief and provide additional insights. Utilize built-in online collaboration tools.  For [...]

July 3 -  I don’t know about you, but my job is rapid-fire.  Everywhere I look there is something I could do.  I can’t possibly get it all done.  Actually, I don’t feel like doing some of it.  Besides, some of these tasks or activities would require me to get more training.  I’m sure your job is similar.  How do we decide what to do or not do? Here are some ideas.  There are three tests of time:  Test of Necessity, Test of Appropriateness, and the Test of Efficiency.  And they should be applied in that order. The Test of Necessity is stopping yourself before doing a task and asking, “Is this really necessary or not?”  If you don’t do it, will your customer notice, will your competition notice, will your coworker notice, or will your job performance suffer? If not, then don’t do it.  If, however, it is necessary, then [...]

June 26 - Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). The holy grail of contact centers. Our operational metrics, our training curriculum, and marketing campaigns are designed to align with this ubiquitous bottom line success factor. But what makes a customer happy with your service today may no longer be reflected in what you are measuring in your quality programs. Which begs the question, should it? The question here is not should our quality programs measure customer satisfaction; certainly not. Instead, the question is should our quality programs attempt to measure the behaviors that support customer satisfaction. Absolutely, they should! So then, where does your program stand in moving the CSAT needle? Does your program begin with the end in mind? Consider your organizational goals for customer satisfaction. What do you collectively strive to achieve? Is it timely service delivery, accurate accounting, confidentiality and discretion, quality products and or a combination of these and other services [...]

June 19 - Do you ever wonder why some of your employees come out of a training program and just simply don’t seem to get it?  Do some of the trainees seem to assimilate all the information just fine, but others seem like they were never even in the class? The problem may not be in the intelligence levels or the classroom efforts of the trainees, but in the way the training is designed and presented.  It’s important that your training programs are designed to engage and stimulate all types of students and learning styles. An important consideration in developing call center training programs is to understand how adults learn.  The concept of adult learning theory suggests that we learn differently as adults than we did as children in school.  Some characteristics of adult learners are: Adults need to be able to integrate new ideas with what they already know. Adults [...]

June 12 - Is your Training team ever spread thin?  Do you often rely on your support staff, management or your top Customer Service Performers to assist in training, side-by-sides, peer support, and small group sessions? We recently had small group sessions with our support staff and management to take a moment and revisit Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Bloom's taxonomy is a set of hierarchical models used for classification of educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. It is frequently used to structure curriculum learning objectives, assessments and activities.  The models were named after Benjamin Bloom, who chaired the committee of educators that devised the taxonomy. He also edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals.     These sessions helped us share information to assist them by: Sharing reminders and awareness of adult learning principles. Making sure we don’t just stop at the Applying section of [...]

June 5 - Do you want to know how to create reports and dashboards that really make an impact? Reporting is super important, no doubt about it. If you're not delivering accurate, timely, and effective reports, all the hard work you put into figuring out key metrics, KPIs, and evaluation forms become futile. But here's the thing, if no one actually sees your reports, how can you prove the value of all that quality monitoring? So, here's what you got to do: Step 1: Identify the intended recipients of the reports. Back in the day, only top-level management got their hands on those quality assurance reports. It was mainly because those reports were like a foreign language to anyone other than the most experienced folks in the contact center. But times have changed, friends. We now have specialized team members handling quality auditing, coaching, and operational management and data analytics. So, [...]

May 29 - We are always “managing by the numbers” in a contact center, and there are dozens of metrics associated with front-line performance.  Agents may get feedback on their average handle time (AHT), after-call work (ACW) percentages, average speed of answer (ASA), quality scores, and adherence numbers, just to name a few.  But do they know what these numbers (and acronyms) really mean? It is a good practice to have definitions of all the terms used in performance management explained to agents in the new hire training but also available to them in your knowledge management tool or company intranet.  Make sure the agents know the terms, what the numbers mean, how they are measured, and the relevance of each number to the bigger team picture and the performance of the center as whole.  Note that QATC has a glossary of contact center terms in our members-only Library that can [...]

May 22 - We recently had a group of New Hires that transitioned from the training classroom to taking calls.  We found taking 30 minutes at the end of each day during the first week in their new role as a debrief assists in supporting & weaning them from the classroom to taking calls 100% of the time. This practice along with individual Quality sessions weekly was very helpful to the group as they transitioned from training. The Wins: The group gets to touch base and see each other again on the cameras. We can cover any class trends we see on the calls reviewed. It builds strong call flow and service behaviors from the start. We can touch base to see how they are feeling, especially while we are working remotely from home. We can answer any questions they may have. This tip provided by QATC Board Member Michelle Chevalier [...]

May 8 - The strongest driver of engagement isn’t poor fit or complex work. By far the biggest predictor, according to a Gartner study, was a lack of clarity in the agent’s role and goals — agents were 90% more likely to disengage if they didn’t understand what they were supposed to prioritize and work toward. Here are a few areas the contact center managers and leaders can build engaged, high-performing teams. Training makes agents feel more competent and everyone likes to feel good at what they do. Employees of all generations have shown themselves to be adept at learning online. To further engagement, ensure you’re offering agents personalized training during initial onboarding and ongoing development. Coaching empowers agents to know what they can do to improve and how to achieve it. For young adults just entering the workforce, upskilling is an important factor when evaluating a job. Agent engagement and [...]

May 1 - Since the pandemic and the rush for many to move associates out to remote working, we were forced to re-look at how we manage and coach employees in the new “norm.”  Now that some time has gone by, we want to refresh ourselves with some “best practices” for coaching in the remote environment.  Here are some points to remember: Value the person first Manage your own state of mind – Be Constructive Listen to understand & Involve them in the solution Have consistent check-ins Align the goals – both employee and organizational Use Webcams & Share Screens Remember their career development Give affirmations and compliments Avoid multi-tasking Use a Coaching Guide to Plan Also, by focusing on behaviors, both positive and not-so-positive, you can develop a clear plan/path to sustaining improvement and truly developing the individual. Note:  This week’s tip is provided by QATC Board Member Todd Gladden [...]

April 24 -   We are always looking for ways that our 100% remote staff can stay connected and get to know our new employees. We have added what we call “This is Me” lessons to the training program. Each new employee is asked to create a lesson in our LMS to share information about themselves – where they’re from, hobbies, favorites, family, community activities, etc. They include images or videos to make them fun. They know they only have to share what they’re comfortable sharing. It’s a great way for everyone to get to know each other and find connections. The lessons are stored in the LMS and anyone can go read someone else’s lesson at any time. Note:  This week’s tip is provided by QATC Board Member Debbie Short.  She may be reached at shortfamily@comcast.net.    

April 17 - Salutations are so common we often forget they are there. Words like sincerely, or thank you, or yours truly. We just have these messages at the closing of communication. Then in the age of social media and text we have one-liners that we use as taglines that became the salutations. Somewhere along the way, I started saying, “Stay Amazing.” I’m not sure when, or exactly what specifically prompted it, but it became my closing line on a lot of posts, texts, or just on conversations, notes, or e-mails. When someone once asked me why I used it, my reply was as encouragement, because people often don’t think they are, or recognize the fact that they accomplished as much as they have, or are as important as they are. This applies to Quality and Training Professionals. They are amazing. They need to stay that way. What makes them amazing? Think about how they [...]

April 10 - Most contact centers are tracking tried-and-true KPIs, many of which are based on voice interactions and not the array of digital channels customers flock to today. Using enhanced KPIs to analyze your customer sentiment will reveal more actionable insights than the traditional Customer Satisfaction rating or Net Promoter Score. You’ll gain greater visibility into why customers are contacting you so you can resolve issues faster — wherever the problem lies. By fixing problems or avoiding them altogether, you’ll be able to increase customer retention. Customer Complaint Volumes - Measure the volume of customer complaints, but take it a step further by segmenting them to find a suitable resolution. Use tags to identify complaints and their causes, uncovering the true voice of your customers. Largest Interaction Drivers - This KPI tracks why people are reaching out to your business and is aided by tagging as well. It can easily [...]

April 1 - One-on-one feedback is critical to reinforce desirable behaviors being demonstrated by your staff.  Employees need to know what to repeat and what not to do again and recognized behavior is repeated behavior.  Try to catch them doing something right and recognize it as soon as possible since the more time that passes between the behavior and the recognition, the less effective the feedback. If you’re waiting on perfect performance to recognize, you may be waiting a long time. Sometimes we need to recognize initiative as well as the final end result.  Recognizing improvements along the way will help reinforce behaviors that you want to see repeated and the employee will make continual progress toward the ultimate goal. Use different means to recognize. Always do one-on-one, but in addition provide the recognition in writing sometimes.  And while one-on-one is nice to build the relationship between agent and supervisory, it’s [...]

March 27 - So you are offering your customers digital channels like chat, email, SMS, and social media, now what? Offering these channels also means your processes need a digital makeover behind the scenes. Spreadsheets and manual processes can’t handle the complexities of staffing digital channels. Issues like scheduling for concurrent volumes and forecasting to provide the experience customers expect in each channel are just too much for old-fashioned methods. So, where can you start? Focus on these key areas to initiate your digital transformation for your key processes: Scheduling, forecasting, and capacity planning are prime targets for digital transformation. Get agents in the right channels. Stay on budget with accurate staffing by considering concurrency, multi-channel interactions, and service level management. Reduce manager time spent on manual efforts related to reporting, capacity planning, scheduling, forecasting, and QM research and follow-up. Modernize Training and Coaching considering whether your team is remote, hybrid, [...]

March 20 - Do you judge your trainers’ performance on how the learners evaluate the training? If so, do you have them fill out one evaluation at the end of the entire training period or one after each module of training? If you go with one after each module, be sure that the evaluation reflects the learning intended with each module. We used one generic form for all modules and found that after a while, the learners didn’t even read the statements. They just went down the list and circled all 5s or all 3s (even though some should have been N/As) without truly giving a lot of thought to their answers. The repetition kept them from giving the quality of the training careful thought. I found the most helpful part of the evaluation was the comment section BUT more often than not, all we got were the quick and easy [...]

March 13 - Training should not end when the new-hire training program is over.  While orientation and new-hire training should be sufficient to get new employees on the phones and performing at a satisfactory level, it should never be the end of their training. All staff need regular, ongoing training and coaching to perform at their best. Many of the principles learned in the early days of training need to be reinforced several times to take hold. Even if the staff learn customer service basics during new-hire training, they may not yet have enough of a context to fully understand how to apply it all yet.  Therefore, it’s vitally important that once they’ve been on the phones for a while, you reinforce the critical elements and techniques of providing great service. Just as you would have refresher training for a new product development or upgrade, you’ll want to have refresher training [...]

March 6 - You can’t coach unless you have defined standards of performance.  A supervisor can’t possibly sit down to coach without having clear definitions about what good performance looks and sounds like.   Your call center needs to have a road map of detailed definitions of competencies, defined all the way down to specific measurable behaviors that can be observed. For example, most call centers would agree that a desirable competency is to be able to demonstrate call control techniques that balance quality and service provision with length of call.  The observable, measurable behaviors would be the specific call control techniques learned in a training class that keep talkative callers on track but still allow for the discovery of customer needs and ample time for presentation of solutions and needed information. Part of the work in defining these standards is creating a definition large enough to allow for and even encourage [...]

February 27 - Once a year, at our contact center sales conference, we recognize every new hire for the past year. We share what they’ve accomplished (could be sales totals or QA scores just to name a couple), and we share a fun superlative for each one to showcase their personality or a fun contribution they made while in training (Most Contagious Smile or Most Likely to Take Work Home or Most Likely to Answer the Phone with an Impersonation). What is so fun about the superlatives is that they are most meaningful within each new hire training group because many of them wouldn’t be understood unless you went through the training with that person. So, this is an example that doesn’t cost anything but means a lot to the new hires to realize they are valued and that their work is noticed. Note:  This week’s tip is provided by QATC [...]

February 20 - For much of the world, COVID expedited digital transformation for many businesses.  Consumers found ways to do business online or through chats and emails amid the pandemic and don’t appear to be turning back.  Customers are moving away from voice and toward the online channels that are easiest for them. Businesses are investing heavily in mobile apps, customer communities, and discussion forums while holding steady in online chat, knowledge bases, and social media. Businesses are shifting away from voice support to dedicate time to these emerging channels. So how can you decide which digital channels are best fit for integration into your contact center? Consider these three things to start. Where are your customers today? According to a 2020 Google/Forrester survey, consumers are moving to channels that provide the fastest response. Channel preferences can also tend to be generational, with Millennials and Gen Zers preferring chat, but only [...]

February 13 - Consider having everyone who is participating in a calibration session score the call in advance of the session and give them a deadline to have their forms turned in. Between that deadline and the session, have one of the QA analysts create a scoring summary. This summary will indicate which items the participants did not agree on 100%. And for those items, the summary will also indicate who scored what. Then before the calibration session, each participant is given a copy of the summary with their answers highlighted and are asked to review the call again to determine if they would change their score or decide to defend their score in the calibration session. This really cuts down on those items where one participant might have scored differently because they simply checked the wrong score. Those are quickly handled so more time can be spent on the items [...]

February 6 - Take the opportunity each morning to review material covered the previous day. And review so the learners are the ones doing most of the talking. Ask open-ended questions that will spark discussion to get them started. Have them take turns telling you three things they learned the day before, each learner required to give you something different. Use a game to double as a mini assessment like a crossword puzzle or matching game. Check their answers by having them take turns sharing their answers with the rest of the group. Show images in a PowerPoint and have them explain what they represent. For example, we have a symbol that indicates a product is available for our automatic shipment program, church denomination symbols, icons that represent various features, etc. By using images, we speak to the visual learning style and mix up the way we review. Have each trainee [...]

January 30 - One of my favorite things about hockey is that they track assists—not just for the last player to have touched the puck before the scorer, but the one before that too. Players can score an unassisted goal. They can even score with just one assist. But some 80 percent of goals were touched at least twice before the puck went into the net. In other words, there is rarely a goal without an assist.  So how does this apply in business? Often, we are good about celebrating the individual highlights. But often we aren’t as good at celebrating those who helped. We all need to get better at celebrating the support we get from others, those who do their jobs every day so we can do ours. Are we seeing and recognizing the people who make goals possible? Often these folks are in the back of the house. [...]

January 23 - Over the last couple of years, the role of the support team has become more important than ever. Customer support has taken a front seat in the contactless contact center world, shifting the focus from customer growth to customer retention. With more recent economic events, customer experience leaders are being recognized for the critical role they play in customer retention as a business strategy and brought into leadership discussions to guide the organization. So, how can CX leaders ensure their organizations are hearing the voice of the customer and the voice of the support teams? Encourage senior leadership to think of customer support not as a cost but as a revenue-generating function. Customer support teams are hearing firsthand about customer issues. Amplify your team’s voice by translating the CS team’s feedback into the business vernacular used by senior management. This ensures senior management is listening and will understand [...]

January 16 - In our QA world so much of what we do is focused on supporting and recognizing the agents and front line supervisors and managers.  At times, that leaves our very own QA auditors and specialists team overlooked! Remember to give just as much care, attention, and thought to your QA team.   They care about their performance, too! Most take great pride in their work and care so much. They spend a considerable amount of time developing thoughtful feedback to assist agents in delivering a great experience for the customer. Recognize and celebrate their accomplishments!  Give them good PR and notoriety throughout the organization. Celebrate who is the most accurate; recognize whose feedback helped an agent improve the most, celebrate those that get their assignments complete and lean in to help others; identify those with superior knowledge as team SME's, etc.   Of course, give them feedback and coaching when necessary [...]

January 9 - Use audible cues in your training rooms to help get the attention of your employees or direct them towards an activity. Consider having music playing out loud in the classroom at the start of class. Do this every day before they arrive. When you are ready to get started, turn the music off, let the silence sink in, and then dive into it. This will help you to quickly get the attention of your trainees so that you don't waste time waiting for them to pay attention. They will recognize the audible cue that when music is on, they can talk and socialize, but as soon as it is turned off - time to work! Similarly, put music on when you send your trainees on break and then turn it off again once the break is over and you are ready to get back to work. If you [...]