Train and retain the best people

By: jm


The call center industry is an ever growing industry in the Philippines. It is fast becoming the contact center location of choice in Southeast Asia. No wonder, last February of 2006, Dell formally inaugurated their new customer contact center in Pasay City, the Philippines. The first center in Pasay City already employs 1,400 people. Dell, the world’s largest computer systems company, has about 25 call centers around the world. Dell was ranked the world's larget PC vendor in 2006. It had 17.1 percent share of the market, just ahead of second-ranked Hewlett-Packard Co., which had 17 percent share.

With its English-savvy population, it is not surprising why the Philippines was chosen by Dell for their call center needs and with Dell signing on, the Philippines has just scored high in its bid to ride ahead in the business process outsourcing boom.

In fact, a call center representative is one of the most sought-after and well-paid professionals in the Philippines today. Not surprisingly, contact center applications come in droves, but only a handful of applicants make it through rigorous evaluations to join the select group who are groomed to interact with clients of big companies.

In any efficient call center organization such as Dell, often the voice on the other end of the phone is the client's first and most important point of contact. The call center agent thus becoming increasingly the all-important voice of the organization. They act as a contact point between the customer and the company. They can be regarded as the builders of the company's image. Outbound call center agents have the difficult task of gathering valuable research information. Due to the importance of these agents, they should have certain competencies to perform their duties sufficiently. As such, it is of prime importance for every company to have a comprehensive training on all their call center agents or representatives.

Training in the call center can makes the difference between an agent’s success and failure, the same is true for the entire center. The challenge for call center managers is finding the right balance of training among the variety of experience, talents and skills for the different agents.

Call center training aims to build relationship and find out solutions for grievances. It teaches an agent how to listen, clarify, explain, and manage conversational flow. It also helps in handling complaints, manage upset customers, redress grievances, and hold negotiations in challenging situations. Call center training helps to avoid misunderstandings, pacify customers and soothe situations. With a good call center training, it will enable agents to please all customers in any situation.

However, call center training are not for the agents alone, managers, supervisors, and other front line staff can also gain from trainings that are offered from different groups and companies. They play a key role in maximizing the team's performance. Specialized training is provided to agent supervisors in areas such as goal-setting, team-building, leadership, conflict management, providing feedback, motivation, managing customer complaints, stress management, coaching and counseling, and sales management. There are training programs that focus on culture sensitization, and provide tools and techniques to recognize positive contributions of employees towards achieving goals of the organization.

Needless to say, call center training is designed to improve customer satisfaction, increase sales revenue, raise collection rates and helps to challenge and retain the best people. Indeed, training is a necessary business investment that would determine the success or failure of a company.


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