Tip of the Week

. October 7 - Averages are helpful but they are just that, they are averages.  They will give you some idea of how agents are doing overall, but they may not give you a complete picture.  Consider for a moment that a score of 85% and above is the goal in quality monitoring.  It might be entirely possible that the average score for the month was 85% or even higher.  One might think, “Great! We had a terrific month and provided excellent service to our customers.”  This might or might not be the case. Suppose for a moment, that 100 scored calls were included in that average.  The calls could breakdown as follows: 20 of the calls received a score of 100% 45 of the calls received a score of 85% or greater but less than 100% 35 of the calls received a score below 85% With this breakdown, we see [...]

September 16 - Depending on your organization, new hire training classes can be anywhere from 4-6 weeks long, and most workdays are 7-9 hours long. Therefore, your trainees can be receiving somewhere between 150-240 hours of information in a short amount of time and that can make it extremely difficult for their knowledge retention rate. Not only do we incorporate games, learning activities, and exercises to help engage our trainees, but we also schedule different speakers (from other departments) and different trainers on a daily basis. Scheduling different trainers ensures the trainees are staying alert, engaged, and hearing new information from a different perspective/teaching style. This has worked very well for our training team and tends to be a huge positive on evaluations from the trainees. Note:  This week’s tip is provided by Debbie Short of Cokesbury, retail division of The United Methodist Publishing House.  She may be reached at dshort@cokesbury.com.  

 January 15 -  This series of tips are related to Data and Numbers.  Last week, we talked about the Opportunity to present Data and Numbers.  This week, we will discuss Creation. The Creation of a report or presentation sharing data and numbers requires that you reflect about what you are going to share, where the attention of result should be, and understand what will be done once the reviewers see the presented information. When faced with creating your presentation, I would share that there are three considerations: Your presentation is like a clean sheet of paper and you get to create the design. This is great if you are a creative person and love the ability to control the message.   Create a focal point versus getting lost in a detailed spreadsheet. Instead of having a crazy detailed Excel spreadsheet (that has so much data – but no one can read [...]

March 13 -  Last week’s tip started our conversation on calibration with a discussion on why calibration is important and the benefits of calibration.  This week we will look at some how to conduct a calibration session. The following basic steps are prerequisites to consistent calibration: Every employee responsible for monitoring and scoring contacts should have an excellent working knowledge of the contact center’s services. Those doing the monitoring must understand how the standards are administered. Those doing the monitoring should be given formal training in the program, as well as relevant documentation on criteria and definitions. The following describes some tips for a successful calibration session: Schedule at least one hour of uninterruptible time. Choose a facilitator. The role of the facilitator is to direct discussions, take notes and keep the team focused. Observe a contact and have all participants use your monitoring form to make notes and score the [...]