Best Practices Call Center Training

Best Practices Call Center Training
Call center training is changing. It's becoming more sophisticated as better tools come into the environment. It's also become more long-term, stretching out beyond the initial hire into the realms of coaching, refresher courses, mentoring, spot e-learning and other innovations.
There are two constant themes behind all these changes. One is that training consumes an enormous proportion of a call center's resources. And the second, a direct follow-on from the first, is that centers need to account for those resources by proving that training leads to better performance.
We talked to some of the leaders in the call center training field about some of these trends, and where training is heading in the near-term future.
What effect does training, especially ongoing training, have on agent performance?
Brian Webster, VP Business Development and Marketing, Knowledge Factor: Good training will reduce, and almost eliminate, the performance and productivity differences between rookie and experienced agents. This is huge, considering the visibility these people have with customers. Our clients have seen first-day agents handle themselves so professionally and confidently that customers have asked to speak with their managers to compliment the quality of service. That never happens enough in a customer service center, and it is even rarer for it to happen to a new hire.
Todd Beck, Senior Manager of the Customer Service Portfolio, AchieveGlobal: The effect of training - ongoing training, with reinforcement, application, and manager support -- is that it changes behavior. Training helps agents know what they're supposed to do and why it's important, helps them care about the change and the benefits everyone will enjoy, and gives them skills so they can do what's been asked of them.
Faith LeGendre, Training Director, 1-800-Flowers.com: Training has a strong effect on performance if it is executed correctly, tracked on a consistent basis and measured 100% against the business goals of the organization.
Typically, when anyone completes training, they only retain a small percentage of the information taught, so ongoing training is imperative for keeping performance on target.
Effraim Herskovic, General Manager of Panviva: Training can have a sharply diminishing return on agent performance. Inexperienced agents certainly benefit a great deal from soft skills training as well as introductory training about the subject matter on which they are taking calls. However, the best agents are typically the most experienced agents. That's not because they have had the most training, but because they have faced the widest set of situations and fielded the broadest set of questions.
How do you identify areas where agents might need more training? Or areas that are beyond an agent's control and may involve more process-related changes? How can call center managers more effectively tie the results of their quality assurance programs into training and/or incentives?
Webster: You can't fix knowledge and confidence gaps if you can't measure those gaps in the first place. What call centers need are accurate measurement tools that enable them to identify misinformation, doubt or lack of knowledge in their agents' knowledge. Any one of these knowledge states will translate into lost business or poor customer satisfaction, and will ultimately impact the bottom line. Confidence-Based Learning [Knowledge Factor's training process] is gaining converts for its ability to do just this. CBL doesn't rely on a simple score as a measurement of someone's competence. It identifies and fixes the different knowledge states.
For training to be effective, learning objectives must be derived from the business objectives. Then, when agents achieve mastery, you know the business objectives will be met. Too often training groups establish the learning objectives without focusing sufficiently on business outcomes. The result is a training organization that claims that training has been delivered, but a call center that is operating at less than optimum efficiency.
Sharon Daniels, CEO, AchieveGlobal: Call center managers can most effectively link the outcomes of their quality assurance programs into training and incentives by making certain that the objectives of all three key areas (incentives, training and quality assurance) are all aligned to meet the same outcome(s). While this seems very obvious, it is not uncommon to hear agents talk about the mixed messages they are receiving about what's important - is it call time, first call resolution, or customer satisfaction that is most important?
LeGendre: Identifying learning gaps should be an ongoing process throughout the agent's career. It should start when they begin the interview process and never end: learning is continuous. You can identify these gap areas in the following ways:
During the hiring and interview process, record their gap areas in: typing, phone voice delivery and quality, customer service skills, computer navigation and any other job-related needs. Share these results with your training team so they know what to focus on with each new trainee. (This can also be accomplished in an electronic environment from your HRIS system to your LMS and e-learning tools.)
Pre-Test -- Always pretest and post-test with the exact same test so you can assess initially where there are learning gaps. With the post-test, you can document exactly what you instilled in them and measure the percentage of learning. For example, if a trainee obtains a 30% on the pre-test and a 90% on the post-test, then you know that the trainer or e-learning tool provided them with 60% more knowledge.
Knowledge Checkpoints -- These are questions that are inserted throughout the training modules to check the understanding of the agent and ensure they are on track. If they answer incorrectly to one of these questions, they should be routed to a coaching slide before moving on to the next section of information. This way you are not building on a faulty learning gap foundation.
Coaching -- I have my trainers "follow their classes," out to production, be they brick and mortar or virtual classes. The trainer listens to the recorded call or conducts a data monitoring and sets up a time in the scheduling system to engage in a coaching session with the newly graduated agent. The trainer utilizes the same form and process as the quality assurance specialist and sales and service manager for complete alignment. The agent is able to pull up the form and view the process as they are in it on the intranet. This accomplishes two things. One, the trainer learns where they may have been weak on their training because the trainees are not as apt to apply the knowledge. And two, the agent's additional learning gap areas are documented and a training action plan is set in place.
Metrics are viewed before and after all training in order to understand where the learning gap areas are and if the action plans were effective. If the metric is not meeting the company goal, then the coaching and plan are adjusted and conducted again by the trainer.
How do you see agent training tools evolving in the near-term future? And how will contact centers benefit?
Webster: We believe that more and more organizations will realize the shortcomings of traditional tests and assessment scores as a predictor of future agent performance and will begin to incorporate confidence measurement into their training processes to get a more accurate picture of how an employee might perform. Ultimately, we believe people will start to realize that knowledge is critical, but not sufficient in and of itself, to change behavior, and that it is the fusion of knowledge and confidence that changes behavior.
Daniels: Technology is enabling organizations to get much more sophisticated about how individuals learn and service customers. In the next several years, I believe we will see the continued evolution of workflow support tools that allow customers and agents to interact electronically with pictures, video, etc. to solve customers' questions/problems.
LeGendre: With the emergence of new technologies and with Generations X, Y and M becoming bigger players in the workplace, there will be neither time nor patience for having training that is separate from your daily tasks. All "training" will need to be broken up into the smallest digestible or applicable chunks -- what I call "niblets" or "niblet learning."
These "niblets" need to be completely ingrained in the work that the agent is doing at that given time. So, for example, if you are an agent filling out an order entry screen and don't know what to type in the field and what to say to the customer, you can click a link, and if the system is designed correctly, it will intuitively know which "niblet" to provide to you. Pop-up training, if you will, for the "I want it all and yesterday" generations.
Another example might be if you are a service center manager about to engage in a review session with one of your agents, you should be able to click a button, view or listen to a mock review session to refresh your knowledge, and, of course, only on the piece that you have an application gap area in, and not the entire session. What the future holds is targeted, quick, on-demand learning.
Where should the bulk of training and coaching resources be directed -- at the best performers? The worst performers? At the average ones in the middle?
Webster: We believe that almost every employee is capable of obtaining mastery, and that is inadequacies in training create broad variations in employee performance.
In most organizations, the amount of time someone spends in a training program is fixed, and their performance is the variable. The way we approach learning, mastery is a given for everyone and the amount of time spent in training is the variable.
Beck: Because the bulk of performers will be in the middle of the curve, naturally the bulk of the resources ends up with them. But our client call centers have found that average performers do, in fact, improve the most from training and coaching. That's intuitive. The best performers don't have as much room to grow, so training becomes a motivator and polisher, and gives them language and specific skills they can model as leaders for the rest of the pack. For those reasons, it's still a vital investment. The worst performers are either just not fit for the job -- a selection problem, not a training problem -- or otherwise have, at some point, chosen not to apply what they know. Our client call centers find that investment in training and coaching of the worst performers does not pay off, and that they'd be better off replacing them with better selected agents.
This will become even more important if call centers use self-directed learning. One can assume that current worst performers may not know what they need to do to improve, but they know they are worst performers. If they have not taken the initiative to learn, practice, seek coaching, or self-select to another role, then they've effectively chosen not to improve. One strategy would be to offer self-directed learning opportunities to prepare agents for more formal, perhaps higher cost training. Worst performers who at least demonstrate efforts in the first stage would qualify for further investment and those, we'd hope, would soon move up the performance curve.
LeGendre: Performance in all your classes will look like a bell curve. It's the 80/20 rule broken down into the 20/60/20 rule: 20% of your classes will fall below the performance score, approximately 60% will be about average, and you will hopefully have around 20% that are the over-achievers with a competitive spirit.
For the first few days after a trainee graduates, I ask my trainers to coach the bottom 20%, those with the lowest performance scores (in metrics, quality and attendance) and get them up to the 60% ranges. These are the ones that will require the most time and attention. Then, once the trainer has helped those that were not self-selected out, then you can start to work on the 60%. While you are working with these folks, you want to push out positive messages to the top 20% performers telling them to keep up the great work.
Tom Stanfill, CEO, Aslan Training & Development: Instead of just ranking reps A, B & C just based on performance, the first step is for front line mangers and coaches to divide their team into four quadrants based not only on performance but desire to change. Here is an example of how a manger can assess and rank their team members:
Independents -- reps with adequate performance and little or no desire to change.
Detractors -- reps with substandard performance and lack the willingness to change.
Strivers -- reps that have a strong desire to improve and grow, but are not meeting the required performance levels.
Achievers -- reps that have a strong desire to improve and grow and are meeting or exceeding the required performance levels.
Once the team is categorized, the coach can now implement the appropriate strategy and determine where to spend their time. With the Independents, very little time is required (we recommend ~5%). They are meeting their performance requirements and don't want to change, leave them alone. The key is to raise the average level of performance for the entire team and they will most likely be motivated to elevate their performance (i.e., "High tide raises all boats.")
The Detractors are typically the greatest drain on the manager's time. If the desire to change is low or non-existent, all coaching and development efforts will fail. Therefore, the time invested in the Detractor should be minimal (~5%) until they demonstrate a willingness to learn and grow. Simply communicate the desired level of performance, the time frame required to reach acceptable level, and a willingness to support if their desire changes suddenly emerges. What we do not recommend is to communicate that you don't value the rep, but until they are willing to change, coaching is futile.
On the other hand, heavily invest in the Strivers (~75%). This is your greatest opportunity to enhance the overall performance of your team. They embrace the idea that they need to improve and are open to input and ideas for improvement. Specific performance requirements should be communicated, but a bit more grace should be granted if they are committed to the development plan mapped out by the manager.
Second only to the Striver, managers should invest the considerable amount of time with the Achievers (~15%). These are the stars of the team who also have a desire to continually improve. Here the strategy should be to grow, challenge, and retain.
How is the trend toward dispersed workforces (remote or home agents, for example) changing the way call centers think about and plan for training?
Beck: My experience has been that call center supervisors and agents learn a lot about call quality from the periphery -- overhearing one side of calls while walking around or monitoring a neighbor -- and that opportunity is lost when the agent is working from home. It could be important to provide more frequent, more immersive training for those agents (for example, letting them listen to and evaluate randomly recorded calls). That can't replace the experience of working in the big center, but could provide the peripheral, informal learning opportunities.
What are the most significant changes or advances in training practices or technology in the last year or two?
Beck: Call centers are ... continuing to buy into the not-really-new concept that a call center must be perceived as a strategic partner in order to survive. Our call center clients more often come to us for training as part of a broader initiative. They are not handcuffed by the broader company but rather empowered - by budget, by recognition -- to add value to the bigger picture.
Herskovic: More and more companies are waking up to the fact that most of what their employees learn they learn on the job, doing the work. This type of learning is known as informal learning, and there are a host of practices and technologies that can support it.
Formal learning is facilitated through discrete training events like lessons in the classroom or e-learning modules. Informal learning, on the other hand, is supported through less traditional approaches including performance support systems, wikis, discussion forums and mentoring programs.
How should a center decide how to allocate the training budget? Are there rules of thumb that guide allocation between initial training and refresher training, for example?
Beck: The challenge for call centers is that the budget -- money paid to an outsourced training provider -- is the easy part. No matter how much work it took you to get approval to buy the training, it will be way more work to get participants to attend and, moreso, to get managers to play their role in reinforcing and applying the skills. Many training providers -- including AchieveGlobal -- price training to include the follow-on components, making it even easier to budget and get materials into the hands of trainers and managers.
A best practice might be to reserve some budget for internal marketing before, during, and after the training, to keep everyone aware that it's happening and to remind them of their role in supporting it.
How do you measure the effectiveness of training (besides in actual on-the-job performance)? Is there an ROI calculation that goes into it?
Webster: We believe training organizations should be more accountable for the product they deliver. We work with our clients to identify measurable metrics -- the time saved training their employees, the time to mastery -- and the investment they save in these areas; reductions in the number of on-the-job mistakes and waste; and things like employee churn, which is often attributable to poor training or lack of preparation for the job. Then we watch these metrics change. Over longer periods of time, we can measure improvements in productivity and product quality.
Beck: Each audience within our client organizations tends to have a favorite measurement method and level of confidence. Trainers, training buyers, line managers, and senior leaders all seem to value "Level 1" measurement of the extent participants enjoyed the training and felt it had value. Despite its weaknesses, the speed and low cost of Level 1 measurement seems to make it enough for each of those audiences to feel confident the training investment was worthwhile. Some trainers and training buyers value "Level 2" measurement of how well participants learned and understand the content of training. That can also help individual participants focus their reinforcement efforts. Level 2 is generally quick and inexpensive, and as a score can easily be incorporated into an agent's personnel records.
Herskovic: Strangely enough, we have found that historically most training departments are not really measuring the business impact of their training efforts.
Smart training managers are demonstrating the business impact of their learning initiatives. They are doing so by looking at the performance of a group that is the target of a learning intervention and comparing it against a control group. Or, they are looking at the performance of a group pre and post initiative. Specifically, they are looking at measures like average call handling times, first call resolution rates, customer satisfaction survey results and call escalation statistics.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to a contact center manager who is struggling with training and retaining good agents?
Webster: Consider incorporating confidence-based measurement and learning methodologies into your training regimen. This will give you much better visibility into the performance of your employees and your organization, and will even enable you to identify problem areas in employee mastery before these problems manifest themselves as mistakes on the job.
Beck: Link the training with broader business issues, and make that link strong in the minds of participants. That will improve the immediate ROI because participants will want to attend, to learn, and to use the skills on the job.
And if I can offer a second bit of advice, it's "Remember the supervisors." Supervisors seem to never get trained and yet they are the biggest reason agents leave. There must be a correlation between those two facts.
Herskovic: We would say that there are certain industries and certain geographies in which significant turnover is always going to be a fact of life. In these situations, it is best to limit the cost of onboarding new agents as this will be a major determinant in overall operational costs.