Recent stories in "Training & Development"
Getting Top-Level Support for the Contact Center
Over the years, I’ve had the chance to speak with many world-class service providers—companies that are recognized as leading service providers within their industries. These companies stand out by putting their customers and frontline staff at the forefront of their processes and policies through demonstrated practices (think deeds, not words). One thing that all of [...]
The Value of Training
It’s an unfortunate reality in many companies that, anytime the budget needs to be tightened, staff development becomes an easy target. Once training resources are cut, they’re often among the last to recover. Because of the fluctuating economy, organizations continue to maintain rigorous controls on spending. Those that are beginning to see their financial health [...]
Employee Performance: Maximizing Average Performers
Reward and recognition, merit pay allocation, promotions — programs like these are usually designed to reward your Superstars, those employees who reach the highest levels of performance . There’s nothing wrong with organizing your resources to reward your highest achieving employees. The top 10% to 15% of employees do, after all, drive a disproportionate amount [...]
Debt Collection
Some companies view collectors as a necessary evil, like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. “Yes, we have them, but they’re in another building—deep inside the basement where they will do no harm.” Companies that excessively focus on customers often forget that some customers are downright bad. In these organizations, management finds it hard to imagine [...]
Team Leader Training – 10 skills new team leaders need to know.
“Congratulations! You have been promoted to acting supervisor.” It was 1993 when my manager pulled me aside and gave me the good news. I was thrilled at the chance to lead a contact center group, but I was also nervous. I was a top- erforming agent, but I had never managed staff until now. Unfortunately, [...]
Do You Foster Lifelong Learning in Your Contact Center?
How does lifelong learning translate into the contact center? In an ideal world, a lifelong learning environment would afford agents, frontline supervisors and managers the opportunity to leverage the latest technologies and training methodologies to engage in ongoing skill development. It is a place where the emphasis and focus on training is elevated on the [...]
Keep Your Frontline All-Stars Productive
I have a confession to make. I made a huge mistake. It happened 12 years ago, when I managed the call center training function at a national telecom company. I spent 80 percent of my time coaching the lowest performing 20 percent of my team! At the time, I just wanted to get my low [...]
Coaching Frontline Leaders
The ability to provide world-class contact center service is directly linked to employees with the right attitude, skills and motivation to deliver during every moment-of-truth interaction. Many companies have developed formal coaching programs targeted at arming frontline agents with the right information and processes to provide service that meets the customer and company requirements. While [...]
Employee Performance: Focus on Your Superstars
Every manager holds a quiver full of beliefs about how to manage and develop their team. They work to get to know each team member, clearly communicate job requirements and goals, identify strengths and weaknesses, and support continuous performance improvement. A key component of their management strategy often includes dedicating substantial time to their poor [...]
New-Hire Training: Simulate a Real-World Experience
Prepare new-hires for life in the call center by replicating the true work environment during the initial training phase. I watched with an air of confidence as our newest contact center agents sat at their desks for the first time since completing six weeks of training. I had become the training manager one week earlier, [...]
Employee Performance: Managing the Bottom 10 Percent
Last time we examined the best of employee performance — how to polish the shine on your high- performers and how to motivate your mid-performers to step up their efforts. This month, we turn our attention to the exasperating question of how to deal with our bottom 10% — those employees who don’t have the [...]
Here’s What I Can Do Now …
Let’s get right to it … Vocabulary is a key player when it comes to Customer Care. Choosing the best rapport-building words and phrases contributes to the efficiency of the contact, the CSR’s confidence, and the customer’s experience.
Audit Your New-Hire Training Program
Like death and taxes, we can’t escape the need for new-hire training in the contact center. New reps have to hit the ground running when they start taking calls — it’s just the nature of the job. To a large extent, new-hires operate without a safety net, and many customers are unforgiving if they encounter, [...]
Four Trends Driving Training Value
A new vision for training groups in 2010: Focus on skills and opportunities to help contact centers grow the bottom line.
How to Measure Supervisor Performance
Move beyond team averages to address the behaviors and skills that drive employee and customer satisfaction, and business results.
