How to Clone Your Best Call Center Agents

If you are a manager of people in your organization, you know first-hand the challenges and complexities of managing a variety of personalities. Not only that, but the goal of every manager is to make sure department goals and objectives are met in the process.  One of the nuances of management is that there are always those employees who seem to just “get it.” They work well with others, they bring a solid understanding to their job which leads to job performance that is consistently excellent. This is true regardless of the industry in which you work.

However, as managers within the contact center industry, we see these nuances on a regular basis. We seem to always have those agents who quickly rise to the top and perform their duties with excellence each and every day. For us then, we often ask ourselves: “How do we clone our best contact center agents in order to ensure consistent customer service at all times?” Well, over the years we have developed a few ideas that have proven to be successful and we’d like to share them with you.

CLONING YOUR AGENTS

Set Goals: When it comes to developing excellence within your contact center, the first step is to define clear goals and objectives for your contact center staff.  What industries does your contact center support? The answer to this question will help to determine your next steps. For example, if your contact center supports the Healthcare Industry or Financial Services industry then there are certain regulations that must be followed when assisting customers and those regulations will help determine the best metrics to establish for measuring success with your agents.

Here at Centris, our contact centers support a number of different industries each requiring specific agent training to support their customers. However, while each industry has its own specific needs, they all share one common goal and that is providing a positive customer experience for each and every customer. For us, Customer Experience has always been the primary metric that drives everything we do and it is the one metric we use to assist in our hiring process as well as gage how we are achieving our goals.

Identify your achievers: Once you have established your goals and training, begin to identify those agents who consistently strive to achieve your contact center goals. Once those agents have been identified, devise a strategy to replicate what they do.

Tap into their talent:  At Centris, we have found the best strategy for cloning our best agents, is to tap into their talent by making them part of the training process.  In the case of a new hire, we will pair them with a more experienced agent in order for them to see, first hand, the standard we strive to maintain in customer service. From the very beginning, they will observe the correct way to handle customer calls, intake customer information correctly and handle sensitive information carefully. Over time, this has proven to be a great way to guard against agents developing bad habits that can lead to poor job performance.

In the case of an agent who may be struggling, providing a peer mentor has proven to be a great way to challenge these agents and develop them into high-performing agents as well. Peer mentoring can often uncover some of these “bad habits” mentioned above and provide a positive environment in which to train the agent away from these habits. Not only does this method help those who are struggling, but it also develops leadership and a greater level of job satisfaction in the agent who does the mentoring.

So, how do we clone our best agents in the contact center?

• We set clear goals.
• We train and equip our agents to achieve those goals.
• We tap into the talent of our best agents to train and influence their colleagues.

As we have followed this formula over the years, our Centris Call Centers have benefitted from a high level of employee satisfaction and a very low level of employee turnover. Our staff of highly satisfied employees consistently brings a high level of satisfaction to our customers.

If you are looking for a near shore contact center offering well-trained agents focused on improving the experience of your customers, contact us. We can customize a plan that will work for your business.