Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

When a new account’s ramp begins, it is expected that agents to be hired for the program will go through training.  But, if you are speaking about outsourced call centers, the ramp is usually fast and support personnel get the back seat.

What happens is that a company needs bodies on the phones to answer more calls.  This is the priority.  The mistake is not training support groups such as team leaders and quality personnel earlier than the first batch of agents.  This is critical to the success of any new account.  The fact that the leadership team need to understand the customer’s business plus know more processes than the average agent is what makes it logical to have them trained first.

I’ve seen it so many times.  The belief of recruiting an experienced supervisor and expecting them to be ready for live production after agent training is a mistake.  They might be ready for the usual stress and process of handling a team, monitoring a call, do coaching and supervisory tasks, but they need to adjust to tons of policies of a new client.  This will always take time and throwing them into the fire won’t mean success.

By ensuring that the team is solid and considered certified by the client, then you can start training the first batch of agents.  They will get the respect and trust from their agents and the numbers will move faster.