INITIAL AGENT TRAINING

Today, there are many ways to get information, and that is the very question to ask in developing a training plan.

Is it strictly knowledge and information transfer, skill building, or both? Many companies today try to do too much in new hire training, making it overwhelming and therefore questionable as to whether the training “sticks.” Humans haven’t changed much in how they learn. The best way to master a skill is to get feedback from the coach/trainer/supervisor, improve it, and do it again. For this reason, many topics of the new hire training, like soft skills and systems training, lend themselves well to instructor-led training.
E-learning works well for strict knowledge transfer, such as compliance, regulations, policies, and procedures. It provides consistent information, allows for testing the participant’s knowledge, tracks test results and completion dates, and delivers the content. Too many new-hire classes ask participants to sit in a classroom for six weeks and complete online courses daily. If e-learning is the only training tool, it’s time to rethink your training program.
What has changed is the way the modern learner experiences learning. 21st-century learners expect different training environments from learners of past generations. Many agents want more peer-to-peer learning. They want to acquire "social" knowledge through communication and peer collaboration. They like to work on tests and projects together in groups.
Modern learners expect training to be personalized to their learning styles, personal strengths, and general interests. Technology is key to personalizing the training experience. E-learning is boring.

Modern learners want

• To have a say in their training plan
• Have higher levels of digital literacy
• Want feedback – good, bad or ugly
• Want to make a difference
• To use their creativity, resist rote learning and memorizing
• Desire teamwork – we’ll figure it out together

Modern learners do/are

• Enjoy the “trial and error" approach to learning new skills
• Learn by doing
• Have a “can do” attitude – they are not afraid of learning new material
• Need challenge or suffer from "zone out" - yet need to be structured
• Resourceful, but don’t know a world without search engines
• See subjects inherently interconnected – balk at topics organized into subjects – that is the older model

Instructor-led training is not dead.

Interestingly, we have come full circle with e-learning and instructor-led training over the past 15 years. Students prefer face-to-face training over online courses. No one enjoys clicking through screens full of text. The classroom allows for teamwork and collaboration and is far more social than online coursework.
Instructor-led training is overdue for a technology makeover. Smartphones are usually banned from the corporate training room, thinking they are distracting. People run their entire lives from a Smartphone today; asking new hires to put them away is like asking them to stop breathing. The corporate training room must look for ways to integrate Smartphones, tablets, and other AV technology into the classroom. This usually means the course design and curriculum also need a complete makeover. Don’t do it halfway – the 21st-century learner can tell – there is no hiding.
Installing 60” monitors on the wall and stuffing 40 students into a room for system training is hardly a modern classroom. Training today is the total experience of exceptional curriculum design incorporating the 21st Century learner, the technology, including the Smartphone, the quality and expertise of the instructor/facilitator, and a solid new agent training plan. They are all critical to agent success. Taking shortcuts or going halfway will show up in the classroom; the 21st-century learner will catch you!

In most situations, screening applicants for interpersonal relationship skills and an orientation toward service is more important than technical skills.

Sure, a technically skilled person may reach full productivity faster. But it’s much easier to train an empathetic employee to work your computer system than to train an un-empathetic, technically proficient employee to show genuine interest in other people. Not everyone knows how to read a customer’s body language or facial expressions, and those skills prove difficult to teach. In the common shorthand, you want people with a high emotional quotient (EQ), not just a high intelligence quotient (IQ).

Promoting the rock star agent or SME to a trainer position is setting up corporate training for disaster.

While these folks know the company, products, and services better than anyone, they are not always the best trainers. Sure, you can put them through an introductory train-the-trainer course, but starting with a quality, experienced trainer is much more effective. A professional trainer will make all the difference, even if the curriculum isn’t up to snuff. The professional trainer can make new hire training engaging, experiential, and time-worth spending.
Today’s instructor is a facilitator of the learning process. No more are the days of death by PowerPoint and 8 hours of lectures. Learners expect activities, discussions, and projects, and these kinds of actions require a strong facilitator. Facilitators are managers of the process. Facilitators use their knowledge of how learners learn to create an active environment that values participant’s prior knowledge and learning styles. Instructors are content-based and express their understanding through lectures and writing. You find them hiding behind PowerPoint presentations. Facilitators convey their content and knowledge through learning activities.
A mediocre trainer only tarnishes the training department as a “waste of time”. Select a professional trainer and pay the trainer well. This is the new agent’s first impression of the company. Make the training productive. This is an opportunity to show how “21st Century” the training and contact center is. Everyone will want to work here!

The recruitment effort doesn’t stop with the offer letter.

Now that the right agents are on board, what do they need to know to be successful at your contact center? What is the training plan, and what should it include and what should not? You can’t teach everything.
Too often, companies put agents through three months of training only to be disappointed with the results because they tried to teach everything, from how to use their applications to being empathetic to the customer. According to Help Desk International, these are the top five new agent-training topics:
1. Customer Service Skills 26%
2. Technologies used by customers: 21%
3. Technologies used to provide support: 14%
4. Problem-Solving skills: 10%
5. Learning to leverage other support center staff: 7%

Today’s contact center agent must know a little about many things.