Today I asked a peer of mine what she thought it took to create a successful call center…

What she sent me was a lot more than I expected.  I thought you would find this interesting.  In fact, I think it would be good if you could leave me a comment.  Let me know if she missed anything or should have included a topic.  You can leave a comment at the end of this article.

In a nutshell- what does it take to have a well run call center?

• Hire the right people
• Train them in a tried method and continue to provide refresher support as needed
• Support the agents with trained Frontline Supervisors and trained knowledgeable quality staff dedicated to their success
• Support the Frontline Supervisors with training and leadership
• Provide leadership (Site Director or above) that promotes from the top down that everyone in the site know the goals and expectations and are receiving the coaching and feedback to get them to their individual goal

Inspection needs to happen at all levels

How to get there…………………………

Since it all starts from the time they walk in the door so- let’s start at the door.

Recruiting and Hiring
The Recruiting and hiring process must be continually tested/measured and followed  A fantastic hiring process that fits the community is useless if a rogue recruiter or trainer doing a 2nd interview is lazy and does not follow the process. Side note- accurate representation of the job has to be shown to the candidate

New hire orientation
An orientation that is accurate and in depth and explained at an agent level should be given as soon as possible.
We forget that the employee can still be job shopping. Orientation is still an awesome time to sell this new person on the company. Who they are, what they do for their employees, career planning, what activities they sponsor in the local community. These people can leave at the drop of a hat during training and orientation can be a time to shine.

Training program- a well run call center must have a training program that sets the new hires up for success. Poor training or a lack of bonding in a class (due to a ill trained trainer) will send a long term poor message to the new employees (and everyone else they tell).
A documented process for training should be followed to ensue all employees are receiving the same measure of training, This does not mean that each trainers can’t be creative in their delivery style, just that class A received the same material as class G.

Hand off to operations- this step is crucial. Especially during a ramp up when large waves of new hires can severely impact production KPI’s .

Operations-
1.    Training and support for Operations Supervisors:
Ensuring that all sups have received adequate training on the systems, company policies and procedures that they will use to support their agents, ie  payroll processing,  attendance tracking, disciplinary action steps and how to deliver
To many call centers toss agents into the sup role with no training and say “go succeed”

2.    Ongoing  leadership training  for all employees in a Supporting Role (Managers, sups, trainers, QA, leads, etc)– reasons are obvious

3.    Morale – this is my number 2 button pusher. Poor morale kills a call center and all KPI’s  This includes all employees.  

Things that impact positive morale:
•    Gossip / Rumor Mill
•    Lack of support
•    Poor schedules and or schedule change process
•    No career succession
•    Poor communication
•    Perceived favoritism
•    Payroll errors
•    Unclean environment

4.    Ensure that supervisors understand their role, their team’s impact and their contribution to the site and the company. When a team understands it’s impact (positive or negative), they are more apt to feel connected to the company.

Workforce
1.    Ensure that a communicated process in place that addresses schedule changes. Not many things will hurt an agent’s morale faster than waiting for a day schedule for 6 months and then see someone walk in and request your desired schedule and have the request granted.

2.    Use workforce tools to limit the schedule shifts due to incorrect original schedules being created. Ie agents assigned to schedules that don’t match the call arrival patterns and then need to be moved after they have made life arrangements to fit the schedule. Poor morale maker.

Quality Department
1.    Ensure that any and all quality agents are adequately trained prior to ever coaching their first production agent on a call.
2.    Provide monthly product testing to the QA team to ensure that their skills remain sharp and make it know that all Support Staff take monthly product knowledge tests (but not the actual scores). This helps eliminate the floor agents discussing the PK level of the support staff.
3.    Ensure that signed coaching forms are routinely inspected for accuracy and honesty.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 4:27 am and is filed under Call Center. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.