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Article : Training Can Achieve Much More Than You Think. Think again.

This article by Shona Harper (pictured right) seeks to understand the real task for training and skill development. It suggests that training can help you realise more fundamental benefits than often thought when applied correctly.

The author discusses the issues and problems facing the industry at present and applies a useful classification. The article concludes by addressing precisely how training can help us tackle the unique challenges of the call centre environment.

Managing a customer contact centre can be a constant battle. We battle with resources, technology, people, customers, politics, not to mention the unique real time environment which magnifies all our pressures 10 fold. Small wonder we often hear the battle cries echoing down the corridors. The main issues we need to contend with can be helpfully classified into two areas.


Shona Harper
Director
Contact Centre Professional Ltd.

Training can achieve much more than you think. Think again
  1. Internal factors.

These are issues, which are symptomatic of the industry and hinder its development. They are well documented.

Poor perception
The industry unfortunately suffers a negative image in many respects, being referred to as the dark satanic mill of the service industry. Often this reputation is undeserved so it is the problem of perception, which is the real issue to contend with. The examples below indicate the strength of this perception, especially from the media.

Kit Kat advert

The advertisement read out in the tone of an automated call centre recording, ran:

'Please choose one of the following options. If you would like to leave a message, press one. If you would like to hold and be plunged into a silent telephonic abyss, press two. If you would like to listen to a hideous version of Greensleeves, press three. If you would like to speak to someone at our understaffed call centre who is too busy to help, press four. If you would like to speak to an operator who is very nice but no help at all, press five. If you would like to be cut off, press.

Before reverting to a normal voice for the strapline: "Have a break, have a Kit Kat".'

Leading newspapers

When you ring someone at a call centre, do you want to ring their neck?
The Guardian

'The customer is king' is true in theory, but mostly an ignoble lie in practice. The customers have moved to centre stage in management thought and talk, but in real life they remain, not monarchs, but second-class citizens.
The Observer

 

Attrition
Whilst attrition is getting better in some call centres, it remains a perennial problem for most of us, inflating our recruitment & training costs as well as compromising our delivery of customer service. Most worrying perhaps, is our ability to retain the best people.

 

Recruitment
Our recruitment issues are usually related to securing the right people – finding those with the right skills to meet our needs or who view the call centre as a career – rather than a shortage of people per se, although this is a problem in some micro markets. The cost of recruitment is also high, as there are few benchmarks by which to measure candidates.

 

Poor customer service
As individuals, we all have our own horror stories to tell about our call centre experiences. Within the industry as a whole however, it has been shown that the UK call centres are under performing when compared to much of Europe, the US and Canada. The UK is actually just above the worldwide average when it comes to responding to customer enquiries over the phone. (BPS Teleperformance) Worrying, when you consider the maturity of the UK call centre market. This means not only are we missing business opportunities and adding billions to our bottom line but are also losing out on inward investment.Ü Lack of heterogeneity
There is a lack of heterogeneity within call centre staff at present because of the barriers to entry to call centre employment. We need to increase the mix of people in our call centres if we are to truly reflect our customer base and espouse brand values.

 

Succession planning
The flat structure typical of most call centres combined with high rates of growth within the sector means that it can be difficult to succession plan. This has resulted in a shortage of those with the right skills for junior management. Flat structures of course can also lead to motivational problems.

 

Lack of professionalism
Levels of professionalism below junior management level are noticeably missing at present. The call centre is viewed as a career by only about 20% of those working in call centres. For the others it is seen as a temporary stop gap whilst seeking other employment or simply as a way to make additional money. Whilst this will always be a feature of the industry, the balance is skewed at present. The implications of this are great both for our overall performance/levels of service and our operational efficiency.

  1. External factors

These are factors out-with the industry but which are inextricably linked, so that change in one drives through changes in the other. These are for example:

 

Marketing
New paradigms in marketing have a profound affect on how we do business within the call centre, how much business we do and its complexity. The rise of relationship marketing and CRM has changed the skill sets required by our agents as well as the importance of their role to the wider organisation.

 

Technology
Advances in computational power and customer contact technology have changed the way we do business at the customer interface. We can recall an individual's data in real time from millions of records and use their personal data to drive the conversation. An individual may contact us across a number of contact points, so we must take a single view of this customer and take care to provide the same level of service & promote the same messages in all interactions.

 

Consumers
Consumers are becoming more and more powerful in terms of knowing their rights and the marketing game! They increasingly know what to expect in terms of their relationships with companies – data in exchange for vouchers, loyalty rewards for example. Their expectations of customer service are also growing and negative experiences lead them to vote with their feet!

 

Competitive markets
Markets are increasingly homogenised with most organisations competing fiercely to win and retain business. This means competing along new lines such as customer service or value added services.

In summary, these factors are linked to the changing strategic focus of the industry and as a result, our changing requirements.

It's the role of the call centre manager or director to contend with all these issues along with changing industry and organisational circumstances. All too often the pressure of having to deal with this complicity of factors means that we don't have time to address the real issues. It is often the symptoms or consequences of these problems and issues that are dealt with rather than the root causes.

Analysis of the issues and their inter-relationships helps us to take a clearer view of what need to achieve and how we can do it.

Of course there are a number of ways to tackle the issues outlined within this article and these cannot be adequately dealt with within these few pages. However, my experience within call centres has shown that skill development is the most successful of these approaches and can make considerable in roads into all the issues covered here. Sound like a ridiculous claim? Let me explain.

Why do you need advisor training? What kind of training do you provide? Most people when asked those questions, answer in a fairly glib way. "Oh" they say, "to make sure our people can talk effectively with our customers. The training we give them ensures they know our products and covers communication techniques as well as how to manage difficult customers". Sound familiar? Whilst important, training and skill development goes much deeper than this. The right training programmes can help you reduce the negative effects of internal issues and adapt to the external issues discussed above.

 

Think of it like this:

The content of the training -'what we teach' - will help you deal with external issues and changing industry requirements.

The form of the training – 'how we measure it' – will help you deal with the internal pressures facing you.

In other words, the right kind of training can help you balance both sides of the call centre equation. This is the real task for training.

What is right kind of training? In my view, it's one that can:

  1. meet the needs of a modern and strategic changing industry in terms of the content of the training. This means drawing and applying information from a wider range of academic disciplines as well as acting as a bridge between excellent academic research and the industry. This information includes disciplines such as relationship marketing, CRM, principles and techniques of the contact centre, data protection, stress management and team working

  2. Help reduce issues and problems within the industry through the development of measurable skills (investment in people) and use of accreditations.

The benefits of this training are summarised in the table below.

Issues (internal/external)

Benefit from skill development & accredited courses

External - Changes in marketing, customer behaviour etc = more complex transactions at the consumer interface & changing organisational requirements

Applied training in direct marketing, CRM, data protection, customer sovereignty and so on equips people to deal with the increasingly more difficult transactions required through application of a wider range of disciplines to the customer interface.

Internal - Lack of consistency in level of customer service – although UK is the largest in Europe, level of customer service is just above the world-wide average*
Henley Centre report shows satisfaction with call handling reducing in 13 out of 15 sectors evaluated within the report. Worst hit were insurance and mail order sectors with declines of 50% satisfaction**

Demand led training linked to accreditations can professionalise the industry at junior levels, attract good people into the industry, retain good people through provision of career structure, introduce training standards, link training to marketing and academic research, turn the CC into a revenue generator not a cost centre, increase heterogeneity of staff

Internal - Attrition (as high as 125% in some sectors)

Training which is valuable (wanted by employers and difficult to achieve) can attract the right people (careerists) rather than the passers through, retain staff within the industry to make the most of their qualifications. External training is also seen as more valuable by the employee and therefore more likely to be perceived as investment in individuals.

Internal - Skills mis-match

Skill development based on employer needs and changing requirements of global and local companies improves access to employment opportunities

Internal - De-motivation

Training and Accreditation make it easier to link pay to competency, increase empowerment through training and academic stimulus, reduce stress, help cope with stress, provide framework for career structure and succession planning

Internal - Recruitment costs/shortage of skilled people

Reduces costs through reduced attrition (see above). Accreditations also attract people into the labour market as a career vs. job only (men for example), provides benchmark to make the process simpler and quicker. Also provides training for those looking to start a career in CC thereby reducing barriers to entry, including discrimination.

Internal - Attracting inward investment and new jobs

Enhances UK competitiveness through exceptional standards of customer service, best practice within call centre training, availability of highly and appropriately trained work force, the provision of demand led expertise and knowledge

This article has hopefully gone some way in challenging your perceptions about what training can achieve. Of course we need the right kind of training and it has to be accountable. That is, training effectiveness measured not only at the point of delivery but also after the students are back at their desks. Developing your people with relevant skill development programmes will return excellent dividends. It may even be the difference between company survival and company failure. It will almost certainly help you manage your ongoing battle until the cries can be heard no longer.


About the Author
Shona Harper is director of Contact Centre Professional Ltd, a new and exciting company which has developed a series of accredited call centre training programmes, designed to meet the needs of a changing and demanding industry. She is also an experienced call centre and marketing consultant.

Today's Tip of the Day - Keep Cost In Perspective

Read today's tip or listen to it on podcast.

Published: Thursday, August 8, 2002

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