Telemarketing Lead Generation Blog

Successful Call Centers Reap Benefits from Ongoing Training

Posted on Aug 8, 2008 by Ashlea Harris, Vice President of Program Management

Training is critical when bringing new employees into your company and especially into your call center. Offering a full range of training should include teaching them about the company’s product or service, explaining the company’s core competencies, showing them how to listen to what the market is saying, and demonstrating how to probe to find out what potential customers want and need.

Ongoing training is meant to reinforce and build upon the basics taught during introductory training. Successful call center managers and executives must understand that valuable training occurs not only when employees join their company, but it is a crucial part of the ongoing development of their employees as they continue to excel in their position. At the completion of new employee training, agents typically only retain a fraction of the information taught; so ongoing training is imperative for keeping performance on target.

Once the intial training has taken place, additional coaching should be focused on building agents “soft skills,” including active listening skills, professional voice qualities and courtesy. Training also will include call-handling techniques that are vital to the success of a call center. At TeleNet, we have found that role playing is essential in the development of an agent and it provides opportunities for us to teach where upselling is most appropriate.

One-on-one coaching sessions, refresher training and listening to calls allows agents to further their development and become more effective on the phone. Without refining skills and constantly tweaking, agents may become complacent. By investing in additional training, your agents will be able to demonstrate more consultative selling techniques as they become experts in the vertical, product or service they specialize in.

I recently read an article by Bob Wasserman, vice president of Call Centers and Systems Integration, and he said it best, “Just as an employer wouldn’t evaluate just one skill before determining whether or not that employee had been successful enough to earn a raise or promotion, call center managers cannot look at just one area of the business to improve with training. Training must address equipment, management, administration and the frontline people. Successful companies know that training occurs before employees come to work and continues throughout their career. Done right, ongoing training will reap ongoing benefits, such as lower employee turnover and higher employee job satisfaction, improved call center operations and greater profits”.

Tagged: lead generation telemarketing, lead generation, training telemarketing agents, telemarketing sales leads, telemarketing training, call center training

• Anabel Foucart, Program Director
• Ashlea Harris, Vice President of Program Management
• Chris Engel, Vice President Information Technology
• Dana Gill, Program Director
• Jason St Onge, Account Executive
• Jason StOnge, Account Executive
• Jon Plant, Account Executive
• Jon Plant, Program Director
• Kathy Rizzo, Vice President Marketing
• Laura Johnson, Program Director
• Melissa Joffrion, Account Executive
• Mike Usry, Account Executive
• Sharon Dahlhaus, Account Executive