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7 Important Call Center Skills Every Agent Should Have
December 4, 2019 by CallMiner
Working as a call center agent requires several soft skills to see the best results.
Call centers are responsible for much more than mere issue resolution. These organizations serve as the remote faces of the companies they represent, directly interacting with clients in one-on-one personal interactions. Should a call center representative leave a customer with a bad impression of the brand or prove incapable of helping them, their perspective of the company could be damaged irreparably.
The most skilled call center agents have more than a way with words and access to relevant customer data. They go above and beyond to fully satisfy callers, winning them over for repeat business with the brand they represent.
Below, we have rounded up a few of the most important skills individuals can cultivate to work more effectively in any call center. Read on to learn what they are and why they matter.
1. Clarity in Communicating
Keeping conversations clear and productive helps both in resolving clients' issues as well as making a good impression.
Why this is important for call centers and their agents:
Thinking through your responses and answering in clear, understandable language helps in saving time; less back and forth is needed between yourself and the customer.
2. Technical Proficiency and Understanding in/of Products/Services
Domain expertise is an easily understood benefit to any call center's staff. Ensuring agents have in-depth knowledge of the company's products and services, as well as of common complaints and their solutions, can make a world of difference in the customer's experience.
Customer service agents armed with the ins and outs of a product can make more appropriate recommendations and quickly solve more complex issues on a regular basis.
Patience in a call center environment boils down to allowing customers the time they need to explain their concerns and actively assist along the way.
This skill truly shows its worth when it comes to dealing with particularly upset or confused customers. A patient representative who takes the time to work with them on their concerns will leave a lasting impression. On the other hand, a call center representative who fails to do so could turn the individual away from the company for good.
True empathy exhibited while on the job in a call center builds authenticity and positive rapport with worried, uncertain or distraught callers.
Knowing that their needs are understood and valued can set many customers at ease throughout the duration of a call, simplifying issue resolution significantly.
5. Problem-Solving and Flexibility
Effective problem-solving typically centers on an agent's ability to reason in the moment. An agent's ability to then act on their own ideas can be enhanced with increased autonomy on the job.
Call center reps who can accurately define problems, evaluate them, and then solve them are guaranteed to help more customers in less time.
6. Listening Capacity
The ability to listen intently to customers as they describe their difficulties pairs nicely with clear communication skills. Active listening helps ensure no important details are lost throughout the exchange.
Call center agents who listen can curb the number of calls needed for individual clients to resolve their problems. It allows agents to provide support and suggestions that account for all the details available to both parties.
Being organized as a call center representative involves more than a tidy physical workspace. Varied organizational skills like note-taking, time management, and prioritizing help agents to handle daily workloads. Organization reduces the risk of losing track of a customer's history of calls and the details they have provided up to a given point in time.
As agents interact with multiple clients, maintaining a comprehensive record of their needs and requests keeps them from needing to start all over again on every call. This frees up time and energy for solving more complex problems. Additionally, customers appreciate not having to explain their concerns repeatedly with each contact.
The skills every call center agent needs to succeed in such a fast-paced and demanding environment are largely the same skills needed to succeed in other aspects of daily life outside of work. Developing these skills is a worthy exercise in character building that strengthens confidence in and out of the office.
What skills matter most in your organization?
Posted in Agent Performance, Performance ManagementTagged call center agents
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Profanity: What it Means for Agents and the Organization
When customers direct profanity towards contact center agents, it can have repercussions for the organization that last well beyond the call. According to research conducted by The Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC), the average annual turnover rate for agents in U.S. contact centers ranges between 30-45%, which is more than double the average for all occupations in the U.S.
Highly cited as reasons for leaving the job are abusive calls and low job satisfaction. Both elements that can be directly traced back to being subjected to calls containing profanity from customers. This is especially true when it comes to more junior level positions. According to a survey by talent and benefit company Mercer, entry-level and intermediate agents combine for nearly 50% of industry turnover.
The costs of turnover in the contact center are high. A study conducted by Cornell University states that replacing one agent equals approximately 16% of the gross annual earnings of a contact center worker. Or in other words, the cost to replace one worker is equal to two months of pay. If you factor in the loss of productivity during the hiring and training of a replacement agent, it is closer to three to four months' pay.
Bottomline, contact center agents have a tough job and agent retention is already a tough assignment for companies. Eliminating the causes of abusive and profane laden calls should be a priority for organizations to help reduce agent churn.
Profanity as a Contact Center KPI? You Bet your A$$
The use of profanity in calls to the contact center is on the rise. It has moved beyond an issue of politeness to a business problem that is impacting operations and costing organizations money.
CallMiner recently analyzed more than 82 million calls to determine the prevalence and impact of profanity in the contact center. Our analysis showed that callers are becoming more frustrated with issue resolution and are verbalizing their displeasure at an increasing rate.
Our infographic, What the %!#* is Going On, brings to light the negative consequences of profanity during calls and the potential impact on the company's bottom-line. While the use and variations of profane terms vary, there is no disputing the issue that profanity is bad for business.
Key findings in our analysis showed that calls that contain profanity last on average more than eight minutes longer than those without. Think about what these are doing to your metrics. It was also determined that for calls that contain profanity, 87% of them contain profanity throughout the entire call.
These statistics signify a few serious issues for the business. First, contact center agents are unable to de-escalate volatile interactions. Customers are coming in angry and staying that way. Second, your process is broken. By the time a caller gets to an agent they have lost control of their emotions.
Why Profanity Needs to be Accounted For
The use of profanity during calls says more about you than your customer. There will always be a small percentage of callers who are impolite and show little respect for your agents. However, the more important takeaway is that you are failing on some level.
Maybe it's your inability to properly address and solve customer problems in a timely way. Perhaps your service or product is not performing as promised. No matter what, you can't afford to ignore this key metric.
Measuring the use of profanity can help you head off several costly business problems early on. It can be your first indicator that there is a breakdown in process, product or service. Customer and agent churn can be reduced and contact center metrics can be normalized.
Direct customer interactions are extremely valuable. Don't ignore the important data resulting from these conversations. Reducing the presence of profanity in the contact center should be an established and important KPI for every business.
Use this information early to avoid costly problems down the road. Ignore these key data points and you could be f*cked.
Profanity: Key Consideration for the Contact Center Manager
There are a lot of metrics companies use to help determine contact center success.
There is first call resolution), percentage of calls blocked, average call abandonment rate, average call length, total calls handled,cost per call (CPC) and many more. The list of critical metrics that contact center managers need to concern themselves with and those on which they are evaluated is nearly endless.
But if you aren't paying attention to the use of profanity by customers in your contact center, you may be missing one of the most important metrics of all. When customers use profanity, the impact is far reaching. It negatively influences many of your other KPIs.
For instance, when the profanity starts to fly, say goodbye to metrics such as average call length as it just increased by more than 8.3 minutes. First call resolution? Hard to believe that's happening when 87% of all customers who use profanity do so throughout the entire call. This says they are just as angry when they hang up as they were when they first called in.
How about CPC (What does CPC stand for – Cost per Customer?)? Profanity laced and abusive calls lead to increased agent churn driving up operating costs. No matter how you slice it, bad language runs afoul of critical metrics. We swear.
Profanity: What is Making Customers So Angry?
Imagine being so frustrated with a company you are doing business with that you launch into a profanity laced tirade against a complete stranger on the other end of the line. This scenario plays out in contact centers every day as customers are becoming more frustrated and angrier by the day.
But why? What is making customers boil over to the point where they are struggling to contain their emotions? According to our CallMiner Index, the biggest issue is that customers don't feel that companies appreciate them or value their time.
Our research showed that issues such as long wait times or having to repeat all the same information over and over again across contact channels was a key source of frustration among customers. Failure to resolve a problem in one call also leads customers to believe that they are not a priority, or that the organization lacks the ability to handle even the most basic of issues.
Customers also want to feel as though they are being treated as individuals. Our research showed that when contact center agents rely on scripts, they tend to ask questions with no relevance to the current situation, further irritating the customer. Finally, when agents don't know the right questions to ask or are incapable of answering customer questions, this indicates to the customer that they are not being taken seriously and their concerns are not a priority.
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