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Who Answers When Your Customer Calls? Training The Voice of Your Organization

by The Connection - June 18, 2015

Who Answers When Your Customer Calls?
Training The Voice of Your Organization
By The Connection

During the start-up phase of most Direct Sales companies, call centers are utilized to provide direct communications to both the organization’s field representatives and customers. However, what often times goes unnoticed, is that the call centers created during the start-up phase of the business can end up controlling nearly 90% of those communications, making the call center and its agents a valuable asset to the organization. As a result, the call center of a Direct Sales organization can directly impact the overall credibility and perception of the organization, as well as influence purchase decisions of their consumers. This aspect makes the training at any call center a crucial aspect to the long-term success of that organization.

When Direct Sales organizations begin to scale dramatically, one common answer to address the growing pains the company faces, especially in the call center, is to add more agents rather than focusing on revisiting, reevaluating, and enhancing their current training program to ensure it meets the additional demands of the company and its call center.

The Training Program Consultants at The Connection commonly see organizations that start with a 4-6 week training program that, rather than revaluate as the company grows, piles on updates like layers. What the company is left with is a training program where only 30-40% of the content is relevant to the company while only 30% of the content is actionable, or information the employee can utilize effectively, in their immediate role.

While revamping the existing training program seems unimportant and daunting to most while other needs seem so pressing, it is actually one of the most critical aspects to the long-term success of your organization and is easier than you might think. The Training Program Consultants at The Connection developed a four step plan to evaluate your call center training program in order to provide your field representatives and customers with the most effective support experience possible.


1. Build Your Fundamental Skills Training Early: The fundamental skills portion of your training program is the foundation to any great training curriculum. A few of the common fundamental skills modules the consultants at The Connection see are:

a. Soft skills

b. De-escalation

c. Data Security and Protection

2. Review Systems and Technology Training Monthly: The impact of technology on the direct sales market has been nothing short of game changing. Every single aspect of the traditional Direct Sales business model has been impacted by the growth and adoption of technology. For this reason, systems and technology training is something that must reviewed on a regularly scheduled basis to ensure the primary voice of your organization is up to date on everything your IT team is rolling out.

All too often it seems call centers and their agents are some of the last to learn about a new technology roll out, and in extreme cases only learn about it when they get a call from the field asking how to utilize it. One tip to keep in mind when rolling out any new products, services, or technology is to remember that your call center will always get the call first. Your agents must be equipped with the training and knowledge of those products, services, and technology in order to support your field for everything they need.

3. Add in General Direct Sales Training: Many Direct Sales organizations are good at training their staff about their company and how they do business, but never take the time to educate their staff about the rest of the space. Simply put, knowledge is power. By providing your call center agents with more information about the space your business occupies, you enable them to have a broader knowledge understanding of the market, compensation plans, history, and other relevant facts of the industry they can use to assist your field representatives and customer as well as be viewed as the subject matter experts they are.


4. Audit Your Training Program Regularly: Training in your organization should be viewed in the same way your finances are. You would never allow your finances to go unaudited, and nor should you allow your training program to be either. Early in the life of every organization, your training program should be audited internally by managers of the call centers on a monthly basis with quarterly audits done externally by outside departments of your organization. Annually, we recommend bringing in an external, independent third party to audit your program as well.

5.
The auditing procedure for your training needs to be well defined so your team can get through it quickly and efficiently. To do this, develop a 360 audit that focuses on information from both the field representatives who communicate with the call center agents as well as feedback from agents who have been in their roles for over 1 year. First, we recommend measuring the effective retention of each module of the training using post training surveys and quality assurance data. To gain a full circular perspective on how the training is perceived by your field representatives, we also recommend surveying them to assess their perception on service and support. This way the auditor can see the training from a full 360 view, and make assessments of the training with all information necessary to determine the program’s effectiveness.

To learn about more information on developing and maintaining your call center training program, contact The Connection at www.The-Connection.com.



 

 
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