Did you know that recruiting and training a new employee for your call centre costs an average company at least around $5,800 per year? Just imagine the costs on a larger scale for huge corporations! Recruiting and training new employees has become one of the most costly and tedious items found on just about every companies’ financial sheets.
With respect to call centres, the industry has been plagued with having very high numbers of employees leaving and never having taken the time to even be engaged with their employers and/or co-workers. Therefore, it has become extremely important for managers to seek ways to keep the employees the company has recruited and trained. For a manager to take the time to effectively train and nurture employees can not only keep employees from resigning or going AWOL (absent without leave), but can also drastically increase productivity.
Here are some other benefits of effective call centre training:
- Agent turnover rate decreases: At least 41% of call centre agents decide to quit due to receiving a low score during training. This is compared to the 12% of those who leave even with a fair/good score during training.
- Employee engagement increases: Around 65% of agents have stated that having a high quality of resources and information during training causes them to engage more during the training process.
- Lower repeat call volume: Most repeat calls are due to agents not having a thorough training experience.
- Increased income/profits per agent: When you provide extensive training that increases engagement, the company can see up to and beyond a 218% increase in income per agent and 24% increase in profit margins. Incorporate some predictive diallers into this equation and you could double the numbers!
Even with all the benefits of effective training, every year there are many employers failing to provide the highest quality when it comes to training their call centre agents. Among Americans, there are 31% that tend to think employers simply don’t desire to provide them with the best resources to do their jobs better. Also, 27% of Americans have suggested they would even offer to spend their own money on better training and resources if it made their jobs easier. Call centre agents want the best resources and information with them to handle their calls.
How can you make your training process much more thorough and increase engagement? Are you ready to invest whatever is needed to obtain the benefits of effective call centre training? Continue reading for our three tips to effectively train call centre agents.
Make Clear And Concise Expectations And Metrics
When it came to what caused high turnover rates, 31% of the managers believe it is due to agents not fully understanding what was expected of them. With clear and concise KPIs and other metrics, an agent’s anxiety will be reduced. They will know exactly what to expect when it comes to conversion rates, customer satisfaction, call resolution, adhering to schedules, abandoning calls, etc. It may also help in this area to think of ways to create games that inspire a little “competition” among agents while keeping in line with company expectations. Deliver this with products like call reporting and products such as Xima and Cytrack
Help All Your Agents Win
Most successful companies realise that their success is not obtained by the help of a few, but of many. Never giving attention to the needs of those agents who are struggling to get through the day will only add to your turnover rates down the line. Share the information that has made other agents have higher performance metrics with those who should be striving to attain those levels. On the other side, don’t shy away from pointing out why certain actions are causing everyone to fail as a whole and individually. A bit of encouragement and a push in the positive direction can go a very long way to help retain engaged call centre agents.
Incorporate Some Coaching Tactics
Sometimes all it takes is a little pep talk to pull an agent out of low energy/productivity period. Once training has been completed, there are still going to be periods where even your best agents are going to feel pressured or unsure about procedures and this is where coaching comes in. Companies that both train and coach their call centre agents tend to increase their productivity numbers by 88%. This is in comparison to the 22.4% increase companies see that only focus on training. Coaching gives the agent the one-on-one attention they need to have questions and concerns addressed so they can improve.
Those are the three tips to effectively train your call centre agents. As you can see, encouragement, coaching and providing top resources of success to your agents are the foundation for happy employees, managers and employer’s alike. Take these steps into consideration and start applying them right away to start reaping the benefits.
If you would like to talk to someone with years of industry experience, why not call the team at Com2 and ask to talk to our Call Centre specialists today.
