Call center training must focus on the emerging technology. It must keep pace with new technology in order to be there in the competition. Call center is an integral part of customer relationship management. Call center executives are the real representative of the company. They represent the company and its product; they must be trained well to give correct and effective information of the companys performance and its services. To maintain a great deal with customer the call center leaves huge impact. At the end it leads to company revenue and profit. Its not an easy task to deliver consistent quality service, it involves a great deal of training and preparation.
There is a drastic change in the way customer interacts with the call center agents nowadays. It has changed from the traditional way of telephonic interaction to the web based interaction. Now, the interaction is done via e-mail, and of course the telecommunication services. The customer is only interested in the services regardless of the method used by the industry. They just need better services. There are various training factors which determine your company growth:
Revenue vs. Training Expenditures
There is no defined formula or rule to determine the ratio regarding sales revenue to training expenditures. It totally depends on the size of an organization and types of business they are into. Normally, company spends 2% of their payroll costs on the training.
Time factor:
It is very important to keep track of time, if training requires lots of time then we must go for the following things:
- Self-study programs that can be done on its own
- Asynchronous training programs that can be completed independently and do not require everyone to be together in a group to complete
- Make sure you have some type of validation or verification that they have completed their training with a certification plan or testing evaluation.
Web Based Training:
This is also a form of media through which training can be imparted. But how well it trains the person and is it really effective as compared to face-to-face training. Web-based training is considered as one of the effective method of training. The effectiveness of web-based training can be determined by the audience, the learning objectives, and other criteria. Web-based training is very important as this method of communication does not give an instant reply or does not give immediate interaction with the customer. So it is very important to make them comfortable with the technology. They will need to know how to respond when an immediate response is not required. Written communication is very different than oral communication and has to be handled much more carefully. As an example, voice inflection, humor, and insinuations should be avoided in writing, whereas on the phone they might be readily accepted.
The best way of determining the effectiveness of agent training is summarized below:
- Simulation
- Customer feedback
- Call monitoring
- For outbound, are they hitting their numbers?
- Increase in productivity
How independent are your employees? Once your people are trained, how often do they come back to their supervisor for help? If happens continually, there would seem to be a learning or training problem.
Quality Measurements:
To measure the quality of work it is very important to make certain things very clear, such as what are you looking for, customer satisfaction or number of leads generated and cleared.
Points of Contact:
To measure the effectiveness it is very important to consider all the contact points like web, phone, and email. The effectiveness can be measured with the clearance of all incoming inquiries. Is there any backlog generated? If the inquiries are being processed properly and answered with customer satisfaction then the effectiveness can be decided.
So the training must be given in a manner that employee handle the things properly and effectively. They must response quickly, professionally and efficiently. A complete training program gives satisfaction which makes customer and employees happy.
Best Delivery Mechanism
There are few things which make a training delivery very important. The training delivery can be determined by conducting through analysis. The following points are worth mentioning.
- Your training audience
- The learning objectives
- The skill level of the audience
- The difficulty of the subject matter
High Turnover Rate
Some company provides training on regular basis and they invest lots of money on training part. There are ways through which the training costs can be reduced.
Costs of hiring trainers: computer based training is always an effective way to train the employee. It is cost effective as well as interactive. Other way is self study. These are the best delivery methods to reduce the cost of training.
Costs of high turnover:
A focus on employee satisfaction is an important part of an overall training program, and it should decrease your turnover rate.
Costs of productivity:
To reduce downtime caused by training, you can implement self-paced training. These modular programs can be completed during downtime or slow periods. This type of training allows you to keep employees on the job during high activity times while also recapturing the value of low productivity downtime. Employees can actually maximize their productivity while they are learning.