The Need For Call Center Training

Traditionally, there are products and services that companies sell that keep them in business. In order to do that there is a lot of investment in terms of product development and design to get that edge over other competitions.
In the Call Center industry – the people / agents are it’s product. This is a people-oriented business where clients will choose one call center over the other based on the quality of the people it hires.
Therefore, people being the main asset for the company, the need for training is a ‘must’ and not a ‘want’.

To talk specifically for the International Call Centers. Where agents need to communicate with people overseas. A special need for training has emerged. Earlier in the domestic call centers, issues of importance were ‘how to manage calls’; handling irate customers, and productivity. However, in the international call center over and above these concerns are issues of culture and accents. This has given a new dimension to training needs of the
international call centers. What we take for granted in terms of knowing English and communicating in that language suddenly needs to be re-looked at, in terms of how we pronounce certain words and how we phrase the sentences in order to be understood.

The whole concept of call centers is to communicate with customers and in order to do that communication training is a must.
The second point that makes training mandatory for call centers is the environment that it operates in. It is a ‘real time’ environment. Traditionally, in companies, a subordinate has a senior to supervise the work and there is ample time to amend errors. In a call center environment, this is not possible as agents are talking to customers ‘real time’ and while their interaction with customers can be monitored, supervisors cannot stop an agent from
an error as barging in at that moment creates other problems.
Therefore, in a call center there are higher standards of personal accountability and productivity and you must get it right the first time.

 

AUTHOR

Lynda Lepcha

Co-founder