Remote Call Center Technology Spotlight: Agent Onboarding & Training
Locked out of your office? Need to onboard more agents to meet COVID demand? Missing key technologies to train and support your staff?
Those are real concerns for you, but your customers couldn’t care less.
The demand for exceptional customer service has only increased as a result of COVID-19. And now the pressing question is how can call center leaders — who’ve already shifted entire workforces to remote — continue to train agents remotely so their bench is filled with skilled professionals?
The answer is leveraging technology that has been available for years. Learning Management Systems (LMS) are perfectly suited for remote training; however, when on-premise work was still the norm, these systems were viewed as luxuries, not necessities.
Obviously that’s changed.
The new normal requires adopting tools you may have previously ignored. Because, even after the pandemic dust has settled, most experts agree at-home work is here to stay.
The call centers best suited to win over the next 6-24 months will take these new mandatory tools and build remote training protocols in the same way they built remote work processes.
The New Remote Agent Challenge: Training and Support
Optimizing remote teams has always been a challenge — but at least it was on your terms.
Now COVID has upended the call center industry, seemingly overnight, as businesses are being challenged to scale remote agents with limited access to train them.
That’s why any training protocol that doesn’t embrace technology to help support and energize remote agents will inevitably fall short.
For proactive business leaders, leveraging top technologies for training and onboarding has a few key benefits:
- Ensures training is targeted at the right person.
- Ensures engagement with the training materials.
- Provides a central system to track and analyze agent progress.
- Establishes a standard of service agents can achieve.
- Seamlessly weaves training into day-to-day work.
- Integrates mobile options for the work from home staff.
But what tools should you use to capture these benefits? Glad you asked.
Why an LMS System is Perfect for Remote Call Centers
An LMS, or learning management system, is an end-to-end platform that helps organizations centralize the training and performance of their agents.
By managing your entire e-learning from a single platform, you can connect distributed agents, reduce training time, and steadily improve caller satisfaction.
This goes well beyond training and support processes done over video conference solutions, as LMS tools are robust enough to integrate with call analytics and performance metrics. That means your virtual face-to-face learning can be supplemented with performance-based insights that make it simple to coach remote agents while they learn concepts quickly.
The most used LMS features are traditionally agent assessment, learning paths, and blended instruction, according to ispringsolutions, which helps automate the training and deployment of call center workers.
COVID-19 has forced organizations to lean into their remote training capabilities – whether good or bad – and the organizations already leveraging a tailored LMS solution are in a good position to widen the gap between themselves and the competition.
Selecting the right LMS will always be the first step toward better remote agent training.
But, with hundreds of LMS solutions to choose from, it’s hard to know which one is best for your specific needs — and discovering that answer takes time and effort.
Here is a helpful 7-step process to use when selecting a new solution provider:
- Declare your business goals
- Define the channels, features, and functions you require
- Identify relevant vendors
- Evaluate possible solutions
- Select a vendor
- Migrate, train, and implement.
- Monitor results and adjust as needed
But, if you’re too busy to DIY, you can always work with a trusted advisor that understands the needs of your customers and can deliver better business outcomes in these uncertain times.
What Can I Do Today to Improve Remote Training and Onboarding?
If you’re interested in LMS, businesses need to start the conversation with experts, not vendors, to determine how to best support their remote agents across an at-home model.
If you’re looking for cloud-based call center solutions to help elevate and empower your agents during COVID-19, Cloud Call Center Search is here to help.
Contact us today for a risk-free, no-cost consultation to get all your initial questions answered fast.
