VIDA Management Consultants

Specializing in Customer Interaction

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Improving Agent Performance Workshop Series

The Improving Agent Performance Workshop is for contact center supervisors and management staff. The workshop is structured into five, 3-hour sessions held two weeks apart. There is a sixth session held two months after the last workshop to review and discuss goal achievements and assess overall agent performance improvement.

The key to retaining good customers is to retain good employees. Organizations that are successful at this have made agent performance building part of their daily processes and culture. This series of workshops is designed to improve supervisor skills and involvement in the processes and daily tasks required to keep the frontline staff engaged and focused on improving skills.

Session One – Improving Agent Performance

This session is designed to teach supervisors how to deliver training using a one-on-one coaching format. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each agent, supervisors will learn how to deliver skill development content to improve agent performance. Each agent has different development needs and the supervisor is best situated to determine what specific skill development is needed to improve agent performance.

This method of individualizing performance improvement is a productive and effective way to improve agent skills. The workshop is tailored to the center’s specific needs by using your agents’ recorded calls and your monitor forms to evaluate the calls.

The topics include:

• Setting “SMART” goals
• How to Determine if Goals are Met
• The Monitoring Process
• Developing Performance Improvement Plans
• Providing Agent Feedback
• Using Best Practice Examples
• Performance Coaching

Session Two – Helping Agents Deal with Difficult Calls

This session teaches supervisors how to coach agents to handle difficult calls….the ones that destroy agent productivity for the rest of the day, and lead to turnover.

The workshop provides an overview on types of problem calls, solutions and guidelines to handle the situation, and how to measure agent improvement in handling difficult calls. There are Coaching Lessons for the supervisor to use as a guide to break-up agent learning into segments, track goals, and measure improvement.

After this workshop, the supervisor will be able to teach agents how to remain in control, think rationally, and resolve the customer’s problem while under attack from an irate customer.

The topics include:

• Why Customers Get Angry
• The Relationship Between Anger and Reason
• Communicating the Right Message
• Sometimes It’s Not What You Say, But How You Say It
• Steps to Control Difficult Calls
• Being Ready for Difficult Calls
• Coaching Techniques including Coaching Lesson Plans
• Difficult Calls Tracking Form to measure progress
• Incident Reports

Helping agents master this one skills will give them confidence to handle anything they are given.

Session Three – Effective Use of Contests and Incentives

Agents have trouble staying on the phone, let alone doing a great job on every call. That’s why providing recognition for a job well done is motivating and influences agent behavior. Another benefit is the energy, fun, and excitement that becomes part of the center’s culture. Contests and incentives are used to boost performance, improve quality, and meet goals.

The topics include:

• Design based on the needs of the center, i.e. weekend overtime, product upsells, qualifying leads, etc.
• Using a theme to provide a goal focus
• Looking at the budget
• Marketing the contest to the agents
• Prize and award ideas
• Clear goals, with a quick start and end date
• Presenting awards and prizes

We end the session by planning out 2 – 3 performance related contests that will be ready to use when the need arises.

Session Four – Flexible Policies

Call centers are structured like school. Start times and break times are assigned and specific to the minute. Agents form cliques with their friends, eat lunch together, and give the cold shoulder to newcomers. Some supervisors are well-liked and others are not. There are lots of rules covering work issues from attendance and tardiness, to being in your seat when you’re supposed to.

This session is a roundtable discussion that will build awareness of how your center’s policies affect agent’s behavior, job satisfaction, and overall job performance.

Discussion topics include:

• Are they in writing?
• Are they easy to understand?
• Are they balanced between discipline and flexibility?
• Are they enforced consistently?
• Are they different from other departments’ policies?

We end the session with agreement of what’s working and what’s not working and create a game plan of discussing issues and problems with agents to get their buy-in before making major changes.

Session Five – Team Building

All centers are regularly faced with quality, service, and sales challenges. A team approach can drive up overall performance, create camaraderie, and make for a more stimulating environment. Belonging to a team gives employees the experience of being part of something bigger than their job and the satisfying experience of being part of a successful whole. Successfully meeting a challenge, just once, leads the way for another success and another success. Creating a successful team environment can make raising the performance bar fun and effective.

This session is an interactive discussion of developing and fine-tuning effective work teams.

Discussion topics include:

Setting clear goals

How team members stay connected

Developing team roles and responsibilities

Having a shared understanding of priorities

Using healthy conflict-resolution practices

Obstacles to a productive team environment

Accountability for results

Celebrating milestones of progress

Relating how the team goal fits into the overall success of the center and whole organization

Activities to inspire teamwork, improve morale, build trust, and respect

We end the session with an outline for supervisors to use to develop team contracts to generate mutual agreement and sense of ownership between team members.