Dell Testimonial

August 12, 2020

Accelerating Onboarding and Training for Contact Center Agents During a Crisis

Accelerating Onboarding and Training for Contact Center Agents During a Crisis

Maintaining excellence with technology and engagement

Contact center support services increased significantly during the pandemic, according to a CGS poll of business leaders. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (74%) saw their volumes increase, with 41% of respondents noting dramatic increases.

As companies were transitioning customer service agents to work from home while striving to maintain service levels during the pandemic, BPO service providers and their clients were faced with the need to expand their call centers as consumers transitioned to online purchasing from brick and mortar shopping. Some companies made the difficult decision to reduce their in-house call center staff and looked to BPO providers to quickly replace or augment their existing workforce requiring BPO providers to fast-track their recruiting, onboarding, and training efforts.

Reinventing recruiting

Simultaneously, BPO providers like CGS hired a significant number of new agents to work in both global call centers or using Work From Home (WFH) arrangements. As customer organizations, BPO providers, and agents adjusted to new realities, one need remained constant. BPO providers like CGS needed to rethink how they would hire an extensive remote workforce while still providing comprehensive training and support for new agents and deliver on the promise of an exceptional customer experience.

Traditionally, interviews had been performed at CGS offices with a small percentage of interviews conducted virtually in remote areas. In-person and remote interviews are distinctly different, requiring recruiters to engage candidates with different questions and approaches to ensure a good fit. CGS had been conducting both in-office and remote interviews for several years and leveraged their experience to transition to nearly all interviews to be conducted remotely via video.

“In this current context we won in this situation because we had already digitally transformed our recruitment process,” said Vlad Sterescu, Country Manager for CGS Romania and SVP of Call Center Solutions in EMEA. Moving from a paper-based recruiting system to digital testing and video interviews allowed CGS to recruit quickly to meet emerging client needs.

Agent onboarding and support

When new agents join a call center team, they must understand the job, the company, and the brand promise of the company they will be supporting. “We believe that ideally onboarding should be done in the office,” says Sterescu. “Agents need a lot of support which is best delivered from people who work side by side.” Mentoring, feedback, and co-worker connection play an important role in an agent’s success.

CGS estimates that only 30%-40% of their staff may return to working within call centers in the foreseeable future. For agents who work in-center, some additional onboarding and training steps are needed to make it a safe environment. Providing face masks, teaching how to practice social distancing, and limiting the number of people in conference rooms are all part of the larger effort to keep employees safe.

For remote teams, creating small, virtual groups can help new agents quickly adapt to their role. “Instead of having a one-to-five ratio that we would in-house, we have a one-to-three ratio. Agents will be in their own breakout room inside of the Zoom platform, and one person will be supporting three trainees, providing more support to new agents,” noted Joshua Mims, CGS Training Manager.

Fast-tracking agent training while maintaining quality

“Traditionally, the average duration of our training for new agents is at least four weeks,” said Sterescu. “Our training includes a complex curriculum that delivers essential information for new agents across the globe.” In addition, CGS digitally transformed their training methodology in recent years to leverage digital testing and assessments.

This approach ensures that trainees receive the training they need and are continually assessed against best-in-class standards.  But the pandemic required an expedited approach to training. “Right now, many companies are in crisis mode and don’t have the luxury of 30, 60, or 90 days to ramp up. Because of our technology investments and preparedness, we could ramp up our procedures to serve clients in less than two weeks,” notes Michael D. Mills SVP, Global Sales, CGS Contact Center Division.

CGS views trained agents as a key part of the delivery of BPO services, including WFH scenarios. “We have greater flexibility and scalability because we aren’t constrained by the number of seats or space in a brick and mortar call center facility,” says Mills. “Our clients see increased productivity as well as the ability to rapidly scale up or down using a WFH workforce.”

Training goes beyond just the basics for both new and experienced agents. “In a BPO environment, collaboration, constant coaching, and mentoring are vital to ensure quality and the overall customer experience with our clients,” says Mills.

Remote training and engagement

“We had previous experience doing remote training,” says Sterescu. CGS’s global workforce historically required remote training because agents often worked from locations that were not near a main office. CGS trainers had the experience to provide remote training as the number of new agents increased, but also the skills to adapt to a larger, more dispersed workforce.

“We needed a unified platform where we could bring all the trainees together. We chose Microsoft Teams because we felt it was the best platform to have everyone in one place,” says Sterescu. Microsoft Teams allows CGS trainers to communicate with trainees, share content and documents, and keep everyone on one path.

In addition to a common platform, CGS provided video equipment to new agents that didn’t have access to a video camera. “We realized that without video cameras, our level of engagement would be less than traditional in-person training,” observed Sterescu. “As our training teams began using cameras, the level of delivery engagement and understanding within the training environment increased.”

“Virtual breakout rooms allow us to do more hands-on training and more practice sessions with new agents. They are getting more individualized attention. We've really been able to make agents feel more comfortable knowing that they're going to still have the same level of attention that they would have gotten with in-house training. They’ve adapted well and we’re seeing good numbers,” says Joshua.

Tech support is essential for agent success

As WFH agents increase in number, so does the need to keep them connected. In addition to traditional training and call center support, agents need technology and equipment support. “It’s now part of our standard operating model to make sure people can connect, have good internet, and secure equipment,” says John Samuel Executive Vice President Digital Transformation and Technology, CGS.  “We test to make sure that our tech support teams can support our agents remotely and quickly.” CGS uses Augmented Reality tools to make sure new agents stay connected to customers and to the CGS resources they need to be successful.

“In a three-week period, we expanded by nearly 1,000 agents across the globe for several of our global clients. Not only did we have to ramp up quickly, but make sure we could provide our agents with multilingual tech support,” says Mills. Both new and experienced agents can depend on having the resources they need to serve customers and perform their job.

Cultivating a team spirit

Training isn’t just about learning a job. It’s also about bringing people together. “We cultivate a team spirit, which helps a lot during times of growth,” says Sterescu. As new customers are added and call volumes increase, it’s important to have everyone working together. “We need to continue to cultivate our brand. It is about our agents knowing that CGS brings people together.”

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