Job knowledge

[mafenwi]

I've recently come to work for a small call center that does not have a formal training program for staff. It's primarily OJT because the few products they offer are generally straightforward and require little or no service. However, there is a problem with the staff taking this to the extreme of taking little interest in the products the company offers and not showing initiative. If a customer calls with a problem they toss the call over to supervisor as soon as they hear the word "problem." I have been tasked with finding a way to overcome this lack of training. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to approach this issue? The tenure of the staff ranges from 4 years to 3 months (even those who have been here 4 years have this problem.) I have a few ideas but I wanted to see if others had encountered this scenario. Thanks

[Joseph Benoit]

Are the products you offer owned by your company or are you outsourced? If your outsourced, ask your client to send a rep tp your site to help train your staff on product knowledge. If your company owns the products, ask someone from marketing to pitch in.

[mafenwi]

The products are owned by the company. However, there is no marketing department. This is a very small company as I said. In the call center we have 3 supervisors, one manager and 24 agents. The holding company is across the country and it has no resources to draw upon.

[nathanj@callfusion.com]

I have encountered this sort of problem before - and it's relatively simple to overcome. Firstly, you need to put together training reference materials on all your products to give to the agents and provide them with an avenue to be successful in handling customer concerns effectively.

Second, you need to voice your company's concerns to the agents and let them know that part of their job entails HANDLING customer problems (if it is not already part of their job description, you should consider adding it) and ESCALATING problems that they can not handle; do this in a team meeting format so everyone also has the chance to voice their concerns and to also gauge how difficult this transition will be for your team.

Speaking of job descriptions - iIf you don't yet have a formal job description written for your agent staff, you should also consider putting one together and presenting it during this meeting -- this will also help you explain the way their jobs are going to change (to meet the new description).

Once the expectation is set, your supervisors will need to enforce the changes effectively - without "getting anyone in trouble" for falling back into old habits, but instead encouraging and assisting them with handling their own escalations for the first little while. If you have the systems available to monitor agent calls and ensure that they are handling these problems effectively, I also suggest that you implement some quality assurance plan of action for your supervisors to implement or promoting an effective agent into a QA position.