Anne Morales, Author at SymTrain

The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Call Center

Companies are constantly seeking ways to reduce costs while improving service quality. Outsourcing call center operations has become a popular strategy for achieving these goals. In fact, according to recent reports, the call center outsourcing market was valued at approximately USD 105.5 billion in 2023.

Since this strategy is hot, here are some compelling reasons why outsourcing can be beneficial:

Reducing Costs

One of the most significant advantages of outsourcing is the potential to save 30 to 50% on call center costs. This cost reduction is achieved through various means:

Lower Wage Rates: Outsourcers typically pay lower wages for comparable jobs, including agent wages and management salaries.
Centralized Support Functions: Outsourcers provide centralized human resources and technology support personnel, which enhances productivity.
Shared Resources: By sharing technology, processes, and support functions across their entire client base, outsourcers can spread costs, leading to additional savings for each client.

Controlling Costs

Customer call patterns can be unpredictable, causing call volumes to fluctuate by as much as 50%. These fluctuations can lead to unexpected costs and challenges in maintaining consistent customer experiences. Outsourcing helps mitigate these issues by converting variable costs into predictable fixed costs. This flexibility allows companies to manage business peaks or off-hour operations more effectively, ensuring a better customer experience.

Speeding Time to Market

For companies launching new business units, products, or marketing campaigns, outsourcing can expedite time to market. By handing over call center operations to an experienced outsourcer, companies can focus on other critical areas of their business. For example, a startup bank outsourced its back-office operations to a provider with the necessary regulatory knowledge and operational expertise. This enabled the bank to offer excellent service at a lower cost, benefiting both the bank and its customers.

Increasing Capability

As technology and business processes become more specialized, outsourcing for capability rather than just cost becomes advantageous. Some companies use outsourcers to enhance their service offerings by leveraging the outsorcerer’s advanced technology and expertise. For instance:

Multimedia Capabilities: Some outsourcers can handle Web chat, e-mail, and text messaging, broadening the range of customer service channels.
Specialized Services: Outsourcers can offer specialized services, such as outbound calling to prospects for new customers.

Outsourcing call center operations offers numerous benefits. By partnering with a reputable outsourcer, companies can achieve significant operational efficiencies and improve their overall customer service experience.

July 24, 2024 Anne Morales Insights No comments yet

AI Coaching: Why Do You Need It?

The contact center industry has always been at the forefront of integrating new technologies to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. One of the latest advancements making waves is AI coaching. Coaching has always been around and relevant. In fact, according to the International Coach Federation (ICF), 86% of companies were able to provide figures that coaching provided a median company ROI of 700% of its initial coaching investment.

But unlike traditional methods, AI coaching now offers a dynamic, data-driven approach that enhances agent performance and optimizes customer interactions. Let’s explore how AI coaching is transforming contact centers and why it’s more than just a buzzword.

Understanding AI Coaching

AI coaching leverages AI to provide consistent and impactful feedback to contact center agents. By analyzing interactions, AI identifies areas for improvement, offering personalized suggestions to agents. This continuous loop of assessment and feedback ensures that agents are always learning and improving, leading to better customer service.

Practical Benefits of AI Coaching

Personalized Approach: Traditional coaching often adopts a one-size-fits-all approach, which may not address the unique needs of each agent. AI coaching tailors programs based on individual performance, strengths, and weaknesses, making learning more relevant and effective.

Consistent Feedback: AI can analyze calls, providing instant feedback to agents. This immediacy helps agents correct mistakes and apply the learning in their next interaction, enhancing their performance incrementally.

Consistent Evaluation: Human evaluation can be subjective and inconsistent. AI coaching ensures uniform standards by objectively analyzing every interaction based on predefined criteria. This consistency helps maintain high service quality across the board.

Scalability: As contact centers grow, maintaining the quality of coaching can be challenging. AI coaching scales effortlessly, providing the same level of personalized training and feedback to a large number of agents without the need for additional resources.

Improving Agent Performance

AI coaching is not just about correcting mistakes; it’s about empowering agents to excel. By highlighting successful interactions and best practices, AI coaching boosts agents’ confidence and motivation. Over time, this leads to a more skilled and engaged workforce, capable of handling complex customer issues with ease.

Data-Driven Insights

One of the significant advantages of AI coaching is its ability to provide actionable insights. By analyzing vast amounts of interaction data, AI can identify trends and patterns that might be missed by human coaches. These insights help managers make informed decisions about training programs and process improvements, ultimately enhancing the overall efficiency of the contact center.

Implementing AI Coaching

Deploying AI coaching might sound like a disruptive endeavor, and in many ways, it is! However, this disruption is beneficial, significantly reducing the time and cost associated with coaching entire teams. With SymTrain’s Intelligent Coaching, contact centers and BPOs can now provide scalable coaching, delivering consistent feedback to all agents. This tool ingests and analyzes call recordings, associated metadata, and QA performance scorecards, pinpointing areas where an agent’s performance can be improved.

It facilitates rapid skill development through targeted coaching exercises designed to address specific weaknesses. Here’s how to get started:

Collect Data:

Gather call recordings, QA scorecards, and metadata from your agents to establish a coaching baseline.

Analyze & Customize:

Use the data to craft training exercises that cater to each agent’s unique needs.

Deliver Coaching Plans:

Automatically assign AI simulations and modules tailored to each agent’s skill level and areas for improvement.

Feedback:

Provide agents with consistent and immediate feedback, continuously monitoring their progress.

Validate & Report:

Complete the loop by updating the system with performance data to track and celebrate improvements.

AI coaching is truly transforming the industry by providing personalized, real-time training and feedback. By enhancing agent performance and offering data-driven insights, AI coaching helps contact centers deliver exceptional customer service consistently. As this technology continues to evolve, its impact on the industry will only grow, making it an essential tool for any forward-thinking operation.

July 23, 2024 Anne Morales Insights No comments yet

The Modern Approach to Upskilling: AI Coaching

Gone are the days when it was practical for experienced agents to attend refresher courses or coaching sessions passively in a classroom setting or once a week with a trainer. This outdated approach left little room for real comprehension of new skills or knowledge in their ongoing customer interactions.

While managers understood the value of continuous improvement, they struggled to provide personalized guidance to tenured staff, especially in large team settings where staff is scarce and practice challenging. The rise of call volumes has further complicated matters, making traditional in-person coaching sessions simply impractical. Today’s seasoned workforce demands flexibility. They need to have the possibility of upskilling on their own time, without disrupting their regular workload.

Younger employees, in particular, respond better to engaging, short focused lessons. They expect coaching to be accessible according to their individual needs and availability. Recognizing these shifts, SymTrain has pioneered in AI coaching: That is leveraging AI to improve upskilling the existing workforce. This innovative approach aims to benefit tech support and telecommunications companies by reducing agent attrition, increasing speed to proficiency, and improving overall performance drivers.

A New Method: AI Coaching

AI coaching employs AI to simulate typical customer interactions, allowing agents to engage in one-on-one practice within a lifelike setting, but leaving the risk out of it. This continues until they’ve improved crucial metrics and mastered critical call scenarios, essential interpersonal skills, and industry best practices.

This approach simulates authentic customer exchanges, including real-time chat and voice conversations. By practicing in this controlled environment, agents can refine their skills, mastering various call types, soft skills, and required protocols. AI coaching continues to support agents, offering in-the-moment guidance and bite-sized learning opportunities.

AI coaching is like having a smart, virtual tutor that helps agents practice in a safe, simulated environment. It’s a bit like a sophisticated role-playing game, but for job training. It uses AI to create realistic customer scenarios. Agents can practice handling these scenarios without the pressure of dealing with real customers. The AI provides immediate and consistent feedback, helping agents learn and improve quickly.

A practical example:

Imagine Sarah, a customer service rep for a telecom company. Instead waiting an entire week to coach her after listening to a bad call on billing, the company uses SymTrain’s AI coaching:

Sarah logs into SymTrain on her computer ecosystem.
The AI presents a scenario: “An angry customer is calling about a billing error.”
Sarah speaks to this virtual customer, trying to resolve the issue.
As she talks, the AI analyzes in real time her responses and problem-solving approach.
After the call, the AI gives Sarah feedback.
Sarah can practice this scenario multiple times, improving with each attempt.

This approach allows Sarah to gain confidence and skills before going back to the phones. It’s a long-term solution that improves agent performance without risking real customer relationships or interfering with the actual production environment. The company can create various scenarios based on real calls, ensuring Sarah is well-prepared for a wide range of situations she might encounter in her job.

Intelligent Coaching: AI Coaching Harnessing Real-World Data

SymTrain AI coaches through Intelligent Coaching, a product capable of ingesting call recordings, associated metadata, and QA scorecards to identify areas where each agent needs improvement, from handling difficult customers to explaining complex products. Based on these insights, the AI creates personalized coaching exercises that target specific skill gaps.

This tailored approach enables agents to rapidly develop their abilities in the areas that matter most, leading to significant performance improvements. By focusing on individualized coaching based on actual call data, Intelligent Coaching provides a highly efficient and effective method for improving agent skills and ultimately improving customer service quality.

Continuous professional development is crucial for experienced agents to drive their expertise and capabilities. This ongoing upskilling cultivates a workforce of self-assured, high-performing professionals who consistently apply best practices and meet industry benchmarks. By leveraging AI coaching, seasoned agents can revisit and refine their skills on various call scenarios.

The combination of reinforced core skills and expanded product knowledge transforms tenured agents into versatile, top-tier performers capable of excelling across multiple aspects of customer interaction.

July 18, 2024 Anne Morales Technology No comments yet

Tips and Tricks Session: Mid-Year SymTrain Updates with Dan McCann

In our recent Tips and Tricks session, Dan McCann, CEO, shared exciting SymTrain updates and innovations we’ve accomplished in the first half of the year and what to expect moving forward. Here’s a brief overview of the key takeaways:

Key Takeaways and SymTrain Updates

Training Plans:
- Advanced Assignment: Assign simulations or modules to trainees with specific success criteria and deadlines.
- Pre-Assignment Capabilities: Schedule Training Plans to be delivered at specific times.
Visual Chat Sims:
- Enhanced Simulations: Incorporate visual elements and cues to create more engaging chat simulations.
- AI Help Integration: Access support and feedback within the system through AI-powered assistance.
Language Expansion:
- New Languages Added: Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, French, Indian, German, and Portuguese are now available for simulations.
Instant Scorecard Page:
- Immediate Feedback: Agents receive instant feedback on their performance, including handle time, keyword score, and click score.
Intelligent Coaching (Phase 1):
- Data-Driven Coaching: Utilizes call recordings, metadata, and QA performance scorecards to create personalized coaching plans. This innovative product is integrated with solutions like Verint, Five9, and QEval.
- Automated Coaching Plans: Agents receive tailored coaching plans based on their performance data.
Future Developments (Phase 2):
- Enhanced Integration: Expanding partnerships and integrations with platforms like Zendesk and additional languages planned for the second half of the year.
- Automated Content Creation: Continued development of automating visual simulations and Intelligent Coaching assignments.

Watch the Full Session

To get more details and insights, watch the full session of “Mid-Year SymTrain Updates with Our CEO, Dan McCann” here Don’t miss out on the exciting developments and how they can benefit your team!

July 18, 2024 Anne Morales Tips and Tricks No comments yet

Integrating AI to Coach and Ensure Quality

Call centers are adopting AI and automation tools. According to a 2023 report, 83% of call centers consider AI a high priority, reflecting the significant shift towards adopting AI and automation tools in the industry.

But, this very adoption brings a new challenge: effectively integrating these technologies with traditional methods, specially in the learning and development context, where manual training and QA has been king so far. However, the truth is that relying solely on outdated manual methods can miss all the great benefits that AI brings. The ideal solution is a balanced combination that utilizes AI’s strengths alongside the unique expertise of human coaches.

Incorporating AI for coaching alongside human intelligence for nuanced feedback is crucial for maintaining excellent customer service. This blend ensures that as call centers adopt more advanced technologies, they can still provide personalized, high-quality customer interactions.

The Limitations of Traditional QA Processes

Traditional QA involves selecting a small sample of calls for review by analysts who evaluate various aspects such as call handling, script adherence, and customer satisfaction. Insights from these QA analysts are used for agent performance improvement. However, in today’s industry, where the big companies have thousands of agents and several lines of business, this method falls short.

Coaches are not able to provide training and feedback in a consistent and scalable way, affecting operations at their very foundations. Traditional QA and coaching processes have significant limitations. Typically, only a small sample of calls are reviewed, leaving a vast number of interactions unchecked and potentially missing critical issues or trends. Additionally, the subjective nature of human auditors can introduce personal biases into their evaluations, affecting the objectivity and consistency of the feedback.

Furthermore, coaches and QA analysts often focus on a limited set of criteria during their reviews, which means they may overlook a few important details that might be crucial for comprehensive QA. This narrow focus can prevent the identification of broader patterns and areas for improvement, limiting the overall effectiveness of the coaching and the QA process.

AI Coaching with SymTrain’s Intelligent Coaching

AI coaching, such as SymTrain’s Intelligent Coaching, comes in to transform performance by automatically ingesting and analyzing any agent’s call recordings. This comprehensive approach leverages data analytics to process call recordings, associated metadata, and QA scorecards, pinpointing exact areas for improvement in an agent’s performance.

The Undeniable Impact of Intelligent Coaching

AI-driven customization in call centers significantly enhances agent performance by creating personalized coaching programs at scale tailored to each agent’s unique strengths and weaknesses. This targeted approach really accelerates skill development and boosts frontline performance in days, resulting in a more competent and confident workforce capable of delivering superior customer service.

Moreover, the integration of automated plan assignment and management features increases time efficiency by reducing the manual workload of supervisors. These systems handle routine coaching activities, freeing supervisors to focus on strategic priorities. This shift allows for a more focused and effective management approach, enhancing overall operational efficiency.

By integrating AI to the coaching and QA processes, call centers can also achieve a balanced approach that leverages the strengths of both, personalizing coaching with less resources and time, and analyzing the quality of calls in a much deeper way. This approach ensures that call centers can provide the best possible service to their customers, thanks to an ongoing coaching and improvement culture that translates to great NPS and CSAT scores.

July 16, 2024 Anne Morales BPO No comments yet

Effective AI Coaching to Fight Attrition

Call center attrition is a significant challenge facing the industry today. According to TTEC, annual attrition can often exceed 50%. This high rate results in substantial recruitment and training costs, lower employee morale, and diminished customer satisfaction. To tackle this issue, it’s essential to understand the root causes of attrition and implement effective strategies to retain talented employees.

Improving Agent Development with AI Coaching

High agent attrition and inconsistent customer experiences often arise from insufficient training and support. It has been proven that to fight this, contact centers need to focus on comprehensive agent development, beginning with pre-hire assessments and extending through continuous skill enhancement. The solution lies in leveraging AI coaching to transform early training and sustain ongoing development.

1. Hiring the Right Candidates

SymTrain’s AI simulations are designed to identify the most suitable candidates for contact center roles. By utilizing data-driven insights it evaluates candidates’ skills, personality fit, and potential for long-term retention. This ensures that only the best-fit candidates are hired, significantly reducing the likelihood of early attrition.

By assessing candidates’ likelihood of staying and performing well, SymTrain helps prioritize best-fit candidates, streamlining the hiring process and improving long-term retention rates.

2. Retaining Agents with Ongoing AI Coaching

Once the right candidates are hired, SymTrain’s AI coaching continues to support them through their journey, making sure they are confident and competent in their roles. AI coaching goes beyond traditional training methods by offering interactive, personalized simulations that prepare agents more effectively.

This approach ensures that agents are not only well-equipped from the start but also receive continuous feedback and support throughout their careers. By investing in AI coaching, contact centers can build a more skilled, confident, and satisfied workforce, leading to better retention rates and improved customer interactions.

Implementing AI coaching successfully requires choosing the right technology. With the right AI coaching solution, contact centers can transform agent development, reduce attrition, and enhance overall performance.

The Result: Cost Savings and Efficiency

The combination of effective hiring and robust ongoing coaching translates to significant cost savings for contact centers. By reducing the need for retraining due to high attrition, SymTrain delivers substantial cost savings and efficiency gains for its customers. Each hour spent on SymTrain’s platform saves approximately $250 by streamlining the planning, delivery, and scoring coaching. For new hires undergoing two hours of role play daily, and tenured agents engaging in two hours of targeted coaching monthly, these savings add up significantly.

But the benefits extend beyond just time and cost savings. SymTrain’s impact on agent proficiency and performance is profound. By accelerating speed to proficiency, SymTrain helps each agent drive an additional $500 in monthly revenue. This is achieved through quicker revenue generation, increased interaction time with subject matter experts and top-performing team leaders, and broader managerial spans of control. Moreover, as agents perform better and faster, they tend to stay longer, further enhancing capacity and reducing attrition-related costs.

Furthermore, well-trained and competent agents contribute to better customer interactions, enhancing overall service quality.

July 12, 2024 Anne Morales Communications and Media No comments yet

Tips and Tricks: Navigational Only Syms

Navigational only Syms offer a streamlined approach to training, focusing on guiding users through processes without the need for audio interaction from the trainee. These Syms are particularly useful for directional training, system navigation, and proficiency assessments. Here’s a quick overview of what we covered in our latest Tips and Tricks session:

Key Takeaways

Versatile Use Cases: Navigational Syms are perfect for onboarding, system training, and upskilling tenured agents. They allow trainees to practice navigating systems without the risk of errors in a live environment.
Proficiency Testing: Use navigational Syms to accurately assess a candidate’s proficiency in software applications by guiding them through specific tasks, rather than relying on self-assessment scales.
Onboarding and Training: These Syms are ideal for new hires, helping them get comfortable with company systems and processes quickly and effectively.
Upskilling and New Processes: Help tenured agents adapt to new systems or processes by providing them with a safe space to practice without affecting live operations.
Repurposing Existing Syms: Clone and modify your current Syms to create navigational versions, focusing on complex processes that agents frequently struggle with.
Simple Creation Process: Building a navigational only Sym is straightforward. Create or upload a script, add your screenshots, and define the interactions. Use highlights to guide trainees through each step.
Scoring Adaptations: To avoid a zero score in navigational Syms, incorporate a keyword interaction at the beginning, or clarify that the click score is the primary measure of performance.

Watch the Full Session

To get a detailed walkthrough and see these tips in action, check out the full session video:

July 11, 2024 Anne Morales Tips and Tricks No comments yet

AI Coaching to Improve Patient Experience

Soft skills have become increasingly important in the call center industry, particularly in industries such as healthcare. According to a study by Hiver, more than 21% of customers suggest that healthcare call centers should have empathetic support teams, and approximately 50% of callers prefer empathetic agents.

In these centers, where agents handle emotionally charged and sensitive issues, mastering skills like empathy, active listening, or compassion is essential. These qualities are what distinguish top-performing agents today. Customers expect more than just transactional interactions; they want agents who understand their unique situations and can offer tailored solutions promptly and effectively. This level of service can be challenging, especially for new agents who are still developing their emotional intelligence compared to more experienced ones.

Proper training and ongoing coaching are crucial. They ensure that agents, both new and tenured, are equipped to deliver the superior level of service expected in these demanding fields. Without this foundation, agents may struggle to meet customer expectations, resulting in potential gaps in service quality and customer satisfaction.

Why Patient Experience Matters

At the heart of it all, patient experience isn’t just about transactions, it’s about building trust and satisfaction. When healthcare agents excel in empathy or active listening, they create meaningful connections with patients. This connection reflects an organization’s commitment to caring for patients beyond mere transactions. From enrollment through account resolution, each interaction becomes an opportunity to touch and improve patient lives, boosting trust in the brand.

By prioritizing soft skills in training, agents can better meet patient expectations for personalized, efficient service. This approach not only improves satisfaction and loyalty but also strengthens a company’s reputation. It’s about ensuring every patient interaction contributes positively to their overall experience and supports long-term growth and success.

AI Coaching in Healthcare

AI coaching helps prepare new hires to know what they are going to face and how to face it before they even interact with their first live patient. SymTrain utilizes AI to design conversations and create targeted lessons, enabling team leads and QA analysts to quickly teach empathy and other soft skills.

Tenured healthcare agents also use AI coaching to correct common or recurrent mistakes and to perfect their call skills. Healthcare providers can now effectively train their entire workforce when launching a new health product, patient service, or business practice, compared to outdated methods like huddles or relying solely on knowledge articles.

Research shows that people learn most effectively through hands-on experiences, with the majority of learning happening when they actively engage in tasks and practice new skills. SymTrain’s AI coaching operates within a simulated environment, providing healthcare agents with realistic coaching scenarios without the risk, cost, or challenges associated with using real patient data. This allows staff to learn and make mistakes in a safe setting, leading to better preparation and performance when handling actual patient interactions.

Traditional coaching methods often require extensive time and resources. In contrast, SymTrain can be launched quickly and with minimal expense. This rapid deployment enables healthcare contact centers to start reaping the benefits of improved staff performance almost immediately. This efficiency means that healthcare agents can quickly build their skills and deliver higher quality care to patients, without the delays and costs associated with traditional training methods.

July 10, 2024 Anne Morales Healthcare No comments yet

SymTrain and Balto: What AI Can and Can’t Do

The recent webinar featuring SymTrain’s CEO Dan McCann, and Marc Bernstein CEO of Balto provided valuable insights into the role of AI solutions and AI coaching in transforming the contact center industry.

The Key Takeaways

1. Automation of Role-Play Exercises

A significant insight was the endless possibilities of automating role-play exercises, which allows global CX contact center agents to perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently. These exercises, which include phone conversations, electronic communication, and visual software navigation, provide agents with the necessary repetition and reinforcement to master their roles.

2. AI Companions vs. AI Agents

A critical discussion point was the differentiation between AI companions and AI agents. AI companions support human agents in performing tasks, enhancing human performance rather than replacing it. This collaborative approach ensures that AI aids in better human performance, and as humans improve, they help AI systems evolve.

3. Continuous Learning and Improvement

The webinar emphasized that AI helps humans perform better, and in turn, humans help AI systems learn and improve. This continuous cycle of learning and improvement benefits both the technology and the human workforce, driving better outcomes in the contact center environment.

4. Impact of AI on the Industry

AI solutions like SymTrain and Balto are constantly getting better and smarter, with continuous tuning and fine-tuning of their systems. This improvement leads to more accurate and effective training for agents, helping them to adapt to new challenges and improve their customer interactions.

5. Automated and Streamlined Processes

SymTrain’s platform offers automated content creation and delivery, which includes ingesting, building, tagging, assigning, and delivering training materials. This automation streamlines the training process, ensuring agents receive timely and relevant content without the need for extensive manual effort.

6. Human Collaboration and Oversight

Despite the high level of automation, human collaboration remains essential. The platform allows for human oversight and editing to ensure the training materials are accurate and effective, blending AI-driven automation with human input for optimal outcomes.

7. Future Developments in AI Coaching

Looking ahead, the industry is expected to see significant advancements in AI technology, further enhancing its ability to support and improve human performance. AI will continue to play a crucial role in making humans better at their jobs, particularly in the contact center industry.

The SymTrain and Balto webinar highlighted the transformative potential of AI coaching in the contact center industry. By integrating AI solutions into training program00129Es, contact centers can significantly drive agent performance to unexpected levels, improve customer interactions, and achieve better overall outcomes.

The collaboration between AI systems and human agents is pivotal in driving this evolution, ensuring continuous growth and adaptation to new challenges. You can watch the full session here:

WATCH

July 10, 2024 Anne Morales Events No comments yet

Strategies to Reduce the Time and Cost to Coach

Call centers that implement effective coaching strategies see significant improvements in agent performance and retention. According to a study by McKinsey, teams led by coaches who spend more than 60% of their time on the contact-center floor experience twice the average staff-retention rates

So yes, coaching agents effectively is essential for maintaining high standards of customer service and avoiding attrition, but it can be resource-intensive. However, AI coaching can significantly streamline this process, offering the same or better quality coaching, and producing time and cost savings while also impacting agent proficiency and performance.

Here are some key strategies:

1. Implementing AI Coaching

Efficiency and Cost Savings

Every hour spent deploying AI coaching can save $250 in resource time and costs associated with planning, delivering and scoring coaching. AI-driven systems can handle these tasks automatically, reducing the need for manual intervention and freeing up your team’s resources.

Automation of Targeted Coaching Plans

AI coaching can automatically analyze QA data, metadata, and call recordings to generate targeted coaching plans for each agent. This ensures that coaching is precise and tailored to individual needs, improving effectiveness without additional time and resource expenditure.

2. Implementing Automated Role-Playing for New Hires

Accelerated Skill Development

By incorporating two hours of daily role-playing exercises, new hires can quickly develop the skills necessary to handle real-world scenarios in less time. Role-play can be uncomfortable on the first days, but having the agent perform it on his own on a simulation makes all the difference. Agents acquire confidence and start gaining competence when navigating the system. This consistent practice helps them achieve proficiency 50% faster, reducing the time required to bring them up to speed and altogether making nesting unnecessary.

Realistic Simulations

Role-playing in a controlled, risk-free environment allows new agents to navigate system tools and handle various customer interactions. This reduces the likelihood of errors during actual calls in the first weeks, while also preparing them for the challenges they will face on the day to day work.

3. Implement Weekly AI Coaching Sessions for Tenured Agents

Ongoing Skill Enhancement

For tenured agents, dedicating two hours a week to targeted AI coaching exercises ensures they remain at the top of their game, all while letting your training and QA team focus on different aspects of the agent’s journey. This regular reinforcement helps refine their skills and adapt faster to new procedures, regulations, or tools. Very beneficial when working in banking, where compliance can vary.

Focus on High-Impact Areas

Targeted coaching focuses on areas where agents need the most improvement, ensuring that coaching time is used efficiently. By addressing specific weaknesses, agents can improve their performance significantly with minimal time investment.

Deploying AI coaching will impact operational efficiency right away, by lowering the time and cost spent on coaching.

July 6, 2024 Anne Morales Insights No comments yet