MOTIVATING AND INCREASING AGENT SKILLS

The Dutch operations of an international mobile telephony company implemented a unique training programme for experienced CSRs called ‘pit stop’. The analogy with a Formula One pit stop is clear: the company sees CSRs as sitting at the steering wheel, wanting to take their laps as quickly as possible in order to win the race. However, customer satisfaction surveys show that speed is not always the best way to work with customers because quantity and quality of customer satisfaction are not always as they should be. Therefore, the company takes CSRs off the track and fine tunes everything.

The idea of the pit stop, therefore, is to take a whole team of CSRs, including their team leader, out of their normal routine and place them in the pit stop for a week. The pit stop works on a problem at the team level, but actions are differentiated towards individual team members. This means that interventions take place at both individual and group level. The pit stop is a full-time programme of 40 hours; no exception is made for part-time workers. CSRs describe the programme as being very intensive, but they also indicate that they like it very much.

The objective of the pit stop is to create a ‘Wow’ experience for CSRs in order to exceed customer expectations. It should lead to an increase in their empowerment, proactive behaviour, and loyalty, while at the same time generating revenue. The pit stop programme is structured as follows:

Monday: Kick off session by pit stop manager and focus on individual CSRs: feedback from CSRs on what is blocking them (content, process, tooling), and talks with CSRs on what motivates them.

Tuesday: Communication training in order to sharpen the analytical skill of CSRs (questioning techniques).

Wednesday: Attitude training (from reactive to proactive behaviour).

Thursday: Customer experience management: feed-back session with customer experience management department and short behavioural training to give and receive feedback to and from customers, colleagues and management.

Friday: Evaluation and making appointments with the team leader on how to establish changes and how to follow up on the training.

In the morning, two hours are spent discussing a theme, then this is applied in practice. At the end of the day, an evaluation is made: what did CSRs learn? Some training in the pit stop is e-learning, whereas other training is in class. The telecom company developed the pit stop training itself. Three trainers are available to train on communication and attitudes, five trainers handle training in knowledge on products and systems. More specifically, the pit stop programme is designed to train both soft skills and technical skills. Soft skills include:

• analytical skills (understanding customer behaviours by listening and questioning);
• showing empathy (emotional awareness and response);
• providing guidance (ability to communicate at a personal and professional level);
• tone of voice (knowledge and adoption of differences between positive and negative language).

Technical skills include:

• being brand ambassadors (excellent knowledge of products and services);
• escalation (organizational structure);
• follow-up (understanding system navigation skills to effectively manage customer enquiries);
• resolving the problem/request (understanding of processes and relevance). When CSRs are back on the work floor, they have to meet the appointments agreed upon during the final day of the pit stop. Every two months the team leaders make a report and CSRs fill in a short questionnaire with 10 questions about the use of skills learnt in the pit stop. In general, the pit stop is evaluated on customer satisfaction, employee motivation and operational KPIs (key performance indicators). The results of these evaluations show that:
• There is an increase in customer satisfaction (speed of problem resolution, friendliness, expertise, problem solved during first contact, service exceeds expectations).
• There is an increase in employee motivation (work situation, work climate, empowerment, knowledge, coaching, influence over work situation, pleasant feeling, being motivated).
• Operational KPIs improve: higher occupancy (how much time can be spent on customer contacts), more first-time resolution, average handling time (this increases, but is expected to decrease over time), and less repeated calls of the same customer on the same issue.