21 Jul Using Nautilus to coach/train better call center agents
Customer service is the ability of any company to assist their clients to a degree that is befitting of their brand. It’s a reflection of a company’s ethics, policies, and their overall image. Given this definition, it’s no wonder why investing in one’s customer service team and the technologies they use are of prime importance.
Where the industry is and where it’s going
Even in 2022, the call center industry in the United States alone is prospected to grow 2%. In terms of market size and revenue, that equates to $23.9 Billion. That’s a spectacular number, with employment and profit expectations that can greatly dictate the direction of the economy for years to come.
In Southeast Asia alone, there are about 800,000 call center employees. This statistic comes from a Bloomberg report from 2019. In the same report, it is estimated that there are as many as 80,000 new employment opportunities created every year; this is huge for an industry that’s been around since the 1990s, and gives valuable insight to the future.
People illustrations by Storyset
Current trends in call center coaching
Just like it is with hiring the right people, having the correct set of tools is also of prime importance. For the longest time, call center coaching leaned towards using old-school classroom style teaching. There was a reliance for paper-based materials and the industry-standard roleplaying. For the most part, these methods worked and continue to work with minimal rate of attrition.
As of 2021, the turnover rate for a call center remains significantly high at 30–45%. According to the same research that produced this statistic, continual turnover is a reality in the contact center industry and that “when calculating the cost of turnover, you need to not only account for that employees’ salary but also recruiter fees, onboarding costs, and training expenses.”
How Nautilus can help change the odds for your business
This part of the Reporting Portal is focused more on how your agents are doing stats-wise and performance-wise. We included features here to help you track their status, what they’re working on, and how efficient they are at handling calls. The numbers reflected here can be used for a variety of reasons, but namely for coaching.
Agent Reports
At Nautilus, we sell more than just a telephony software. We’re selling a customer journey that’s clear, detailed, and easy to understand. We know that the real challenge for any contact center business is seeing how their performance is doing, what they can coach their agents on, and how to improve their overall call distribution.
Nautilus designed a powerful cloud-based contact center software that offers a two-fold solution: a seamless communication software and a Reporting Portal that actively reflects and updates important data in real time.
For this article, we will be focusing more on our Reporting Portal and how you can use it to improve your call center training methods, reduce your attrition rate, and how to train better and more forward-thinking call center agents.
Using the Agent Reports to train better agents
The performance of one agent can greatly determine the outcome of your company. So having the numbers to back up any decisions and coaching plans you end up going for is essential. Check out the image below for a quick look at some numbers you can see on the Agent Performance Report:
Here we can see the total number of calls made by agent 101, the number of answered calls, the percentage of calls serviced, total ring time, mean ting time, total talk time, mean talk time, total time spent on ACW, mean time spent on ACW, total handling time, and mean handling time.
These numbers are reflections of their behaviors while working the phones, and having this data on hand lets you approach your coaching from a fact-based standpoint. Any coaching plan and improvement plan can be grounded on these numbers, and can be used as a point of comparison and contrast in the future.
Achieving Agent Happiness using metrics
Call center agents are the lifeblood of every business. Keeping them happy while promoting a fun, vibrant workplace is a challenge all in itself! But how do we do that? And how do we incorporate numbers from the Reporting Portal to achieve that?
- Keep everything interesting. Promote a fun, competitive workplace using your Agent Groups and their statistics. Some contact centers are already doing this; use their group performances and stack them up against other agent groups. Whoever performs better gets fun prizes!
- Promote healthy and cooperative coaching. Using their individual numbers, help your call center agents become better at their job and make them an active participant in their growth. Everyone likes to feel that they’re heard, and more so when they know that their concerns are heard. The process of coaching itself can be very daunting, and it’s easy to feel attacked when you’re being coached. Having numbers on your side and approaching the coaching process from a point of fact can yield to better engagement. This gives both parties a point of reference: a place to begin and a place to eventually go.
- Knowing your performance gives you the opportunity to lift everybody’s spirits. When your team is performing well, let them know. Give them the necessary pat on the back. If they’re a little behind, give them the encouragement to go forward.
Conclusion
The call center industry is not going anywhere anytime soon, and that’s a fact. Customer service is still here and will remain relevant for decades to come, despite the rise of self-service solutions and automation. Following that, having a well-oiled customer service machine is and always will be a must-have for any business.
Coaching the next generation of call center agents will be a challenge, what with the continued evolution of the technologies we rely on. The best way to thrive is to adapt, to know the numbers and the tools you will likely end up using. That’s what we’re providing here at Nautilus. Knowing how to use the Reporting Portal effectively is a must, and we’re here to help you do so!
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