Monitoring Question

[Recruitment Mgr]

Hello everyone,

This is a really great site. (I needed something like this when I first became a manager 8 years ago.)

Here's my question. When giving monitor feedback how do you address an agent that speaks with slight "ebonics". The calls overall are good, but every now and then she slips in one or two phrases that come off like nails on a chalk board.

I asked my HR about this and they don't want to touch it. They said if that's the way people talk there's nothing we can do but coach.

I have also been in other places where the expectation was that all agents must conform and speak professionally.

How should I proceed? Am I making a big deal of this?

[TheTerminator]

No! You are not making a big deal out of this and ebonics are not part of agent response unless your dealing exclusively with customers in the "Hood!" It is not an accepted part of professional language. The longer you let this go on the more acceptable it becomes.

Agents using ebonics is the same as saying, yeah, yep, whatever.

I'm sure if you look through your employee handbook you can find something about professionalism.

If you want you can probably cover this under the agent using jargon.

Post again and let us know how it worked out.