Provide Regular Formal Training for Telephone Staff

Chapter 5 of the Call Centre Motivation Workbook

Regular, planned classroom training designed to stretch and develop your call centre team's skills will provide high levels of motivation.

But don't bore the agents with the same old material every time!

You need to make every telephone training session a new and exciting event for the team, using different topics, media and trainers. And try to create a programme of "graduated telephone training," where staff are taken through increasingly challenging levels, such as beginner, intermediate and advanced.

If they have something to aim for every time they are trained, their motivation will be sharper.

Call centre staff should never see training a punishment for poor performance, so we need to ensure that we create an environment where people are keen to learn. If your staff are given training as a reward, and the training is pitched in a sufficiently motivational style, you can expect a much greater willingness by the staff to perform.

You can increase the motivational impact of formal training by having the staff build their own development plans which can be reinforced by on-the-job coaching.

Some IT Help Desk call centres provide the motivation of training and create an employee lock-in by asking telephone staff to pay for the training if they leave within a year of the course.

That means they take the training really seriously!

To ensure you're providing meaningful courses, make sure you carry out a training needs analysis every time you intend to have training delivered.

The Needs Analysis

The starting point for building a training programme is to carry out a needs analysis on your trainees. It is recommended to use taped calls for this purpose, however, it is also useful to discuss with the trainee his or her own perception of training needs.

To ensure uniformity in your approach, it is worth using a Needs Analysis Form to "score" each trainee. It is recommended that this should be based on your coaching form.

In this way, you can segment learners into entry-level, intermediate and advanced groups, and therefore deliver training that is relevant to each group.

When carrying out the needs analysis, we should be looking for the following:

• Previous experience
• Previous training
• Current areas requiring development
• Current strengths
• Areas for growth

Let us examine each of these aspects

Previous experience is important because it allows us to determine whether the trainee requires brushing up, introduction to a new skill or simply remotivation.

Previous training is important because if the trainee has already been trained in a specific skill area and still requires training, we will need to consider a new approach.

Current areas requiring development refers to parts of the skill set where the trainee is not yet up to speed.

Current strengths are important because we may need to build some areas where the trainee is already strong into the training to enhance their self-esteem.

Areas for growth refers to the fact that most call centre environments will have new future needs and you can begin to plan for these by identifying strengths and weaknesses during the needs analysis.

Needs Analysis Form - Outbound Telesales

Name:									Date:
Previous Experience:
Previous Training:
Marks out of 10 for skill	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Planning
Getting past the secretary
Opening the conversation
Reason for call
Probing & qualification
Listening
Use of features
Use of benefits
Trial close
Objection handling
Final close

Areas for Growth:

Notes:

Conclusions:

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