Although it might sound like an “over-expected criteria” to consider your BPO agents to know your brand thoroughly, modern agents operate at a higher level, striving to meet desired outcomes. For an agent to understand your business just like you, an ideal agent services provider will always hire them from a pre-vetted talent pool – emotionally intelligent agents trained rigorously to deliver best-in-class customer service. The best agent services provider will not just ramp up agents as per fluctuating customer support demands, but also ensure that their agent training program provides synergy between the internal BPO culture and your brand.
Are you wondering how this synergy is maintained? The best BPOs can fail as great strategic partners if the agent training program does not blend with the client’s brand. With agent training being one of the main criteria of our recent win CCW Excellence Award for BPO of the Year 2022, [24]7.ai stood out with its ability to create an all-inclusive learning curve to elevate competence as per your specific needs and onboard agents at record speed.
In this blog, the second in a series, I’ll elaborate on why your contact center operations need a rigorous agent training program for a seamless customer service experience. For future blogs, I’ll consider the two other criteria evaluated by the CCW judges in awarding us BPO of the Year: Scalability and Performance Metrics.
In the modern world, customer experience is running the show for a brand’s success. Since a customer support agent can either make or break a deal, agent training has become the backbone of customer service operations, irrespective of any modern CX (customer experience) technologies. While tech-enabled agents can elevate the quality of CX, a successful agent training program will continue to balance a BPO’s solid foundation. A successful agent training program for modern CX will not just include tools to train agents on your brand, but the training program will also get designed on big-picture thinking and immersed in real-life client cases.
In case you are still re-thinking why a BPO agent training program needs synergy between the internal agent culture and the brand, we hope an elaboration of the following challenges will convince you:
I have mentioned before that a customer support executive can make or break a deal. When you invest in a good training program, your agents immerse in the brand culture and become your best brand advocates. Highly trained agents act as brand advocates who will boost brand loyalty. A brand advocate will always protect your brand reputation and can go to any extent to increase the sales of your products and services.
With scenario-based training, agents strengthen their emotional quotient to handle the most critical customer issues.
Due to the lack of training and monitoring infrastructure in the in-house contact center, agents deliver low productivity and performance in work, ultimately leading to high agent attrition. Get access to an on-demand talent database and high-tech recruiting tools to make the staffing process efficient. The perfect hire will deliver an experience that fits your brand.
Ever experienced tough times while setting up a contact center or even finding a vendor whose agents can smartly operate as an extension to your brand? Did your call center agents struggle to provide your customers with product or service expertise?
An agent services provider with agile staffing activities meets the quick requirements of call center ramp-up. Hire candidates from a diverse and pre-vetted talent pool and avoid the repercussions of hiring unsuitable customer service executives that can lead to a loss of total cost-per-hire. The best BPO partner will assure reliability when you are concerned about hiring risks while onboarding on-demand talent in a short time.
Is your remote in-house contact center failing to provide peer support and managers to monitor agent performance?
Like many, even you may have noticed a decline in agent productivity and engagement. The work-at-home agent model of a strategic BPO service provider comes in a solutions package: A strong virtual team culture and powerful collaboration tools giving agents the access to chat with supervisors, screen sharing, team video conference, and other integrated communications platforms. The agent services provider organizes virtual social events to keep people connected, irrespective of the distance. For example, gamification has virtual contests, rewards, etc. If your business continuity strategies are failing due to the absence of virtual training, a true BPO partner can come to your rescue. When you outsource your remote contact center operations to a good agent services partner, agents are granted aid management coaching with analytics tools that provide feedback. Hence, agents can improve or learn on-field tactics from before while brushing their knowledge with both negative and positive call reports.
[24]7 Agent Services hire digital-native, emotionally intelligent agents and align them to your brand. We train them to multitask for omnichannel needs – from conversationally skilled voice agents to digitally savvy chat, messaging, and email agents. By understanding interactional nuances and reading between the lines, our agents make every interaction the best it can be.
[24]7.ai Agent Services employ our unique “ACE” (Accelerating Consistent Excellence) framework to deliver consistent results. We create a culture of coaching through virtual training sessions, plus agent incentives and recognition. To support success and drive better outcomes, we provide a performance management playbook - that makes it easier to centralize control with an all-in-one tool.
We hire top-performing agents that target new omnichannel competencies that create an intuitive simplified customer experience – contextual, data driven, digitally savvy, customer centric. Our recruitment chatbot virtually screens candidate resumes and processes them further for hybrid assessment (digital and voice competencies). Our agents also go through behavioral and cognitive tests other than technology and language competency tests. [24]7.ai is the largest outsourcing services provider for digital chat agents. We are the top-ranked vendor for 90% of our clients today. We match and exceed clients’ best vendor/captive sites’ scores on their most critical metrics within three months (six months for very complex, niche work – such as advanced tech support, etc.) and consistently rank #1 in their network after that.
Our voice agents learn conversational skills, comprehension, and the importance of tone.
Digitized virtual learning is done through mobile apps, thus engaging the new generation of agents. E-learning tools are utilized in and outside the classroom to supplement and enhance learning. Some examples are our “3+7” structure, which includes a three-day competency workshop, and a seven-day practice lab, which includes mock calls, evaluations, LMS, and peer-to-peer training.
Agents also get trained with the help of pre-interaction context – Artificial Intelligence (AI) + Human Intelligence (HI) transitioning, next-best recommendations, agent-bot/bot-agent communication flow, etc. Like agent empowerment, we also focus on leadership empowerment by providing gamified dashboards and coaching platforms, thus ensuring operational excellence with powerful performance monitoring tools. Gamified daily training supports ongoing improvement, with text mining of transcripts to identify pain points and empower agents to achieve better results.
Agents who get nurtured on emotional intelligence create a personal human connection and provide seamless customer support.
Our emotional intelligence-based training workshop for new hires aims to build self-awareness and have empathy-led conversations with customers. We noticed the new hire learning curve reduced from nine weeks to three weeks, and the DSAT (customer dissatisfaction) has been consistently lower than 22%. (Past batches averaged 37%.) We've received positive feedback from clients during joint call listening sessions. Our clients acknowledged that the call quality has drastically changed, and the agents can address customers' emotional needs. This improved training has also led to reduced costs per interaction.
We employ our unique ACE framework to deliver consistent results. We create a culture of coaching through virtual training sessions, plus agent incentives and recognition. To support success and drive better outcomes, we provide a performance management playbook – that makes it easier to centralize control with an all-in-one tool.
[24]7 WFH (Work From Home) agents experience seamless virtual recruitment with the help of proctoring tools, which include video recording, geo-tracking, IP address tracking, and flags any malpractices like plagiarism, code play, off focus, print screen, or copy-paste. You get access to a larger talent pool topped with language diversity and increase call center scalability at a competitive cost.
We believe happy agents make happy customers, and we’re proud to say we’ve got over 95% agent retention and over 90% ESAT (employee satisfaction). We create an environment of self-fulfillment, focus on developing their talent, and strive to provide career growth opportunities for future leaders through mentorship. Our flexible WFH model allows agents to work from the most remote places in the world without traveling to office locations and leaving their hometowns behind.
[24]7 Agent Services aligns with your brand’s DNA to deliver seamless customer service, lowering cost per interaction while boosting customer satisfaction. Our agents are given the best technology, training, and analytics, and are committed to outperforming your current best site by 10%.
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