Workforce Management Featured Article
Help Your Call Center Agents Through 'Worst Case Scenarios'
Call center management is a complex skill honed over years, or even decades, of workforce management, understanding customers, learning systems and mastering processes. There is a plethora of information available to help call center management navigate the storm waters of supporting customers. There is a dearth of information, however, for call center agents themselves who might be coping with difficult situations.
How Do You Help Your Agents?
You train them, you coach them, you review them, you encourage them, and sometimes you discipline them. But do you help them understand how to cope with the most difficult problems they can face? Are they prepared for the angry and abusive customer? Do they know what to do if a customer says something inappropriate? Can they pull out a veneer of calmness in a chaotic situation? Think of it like the “Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guide for the Contact Center.”
Some tips and “hacks” you can pass onto agents in difficult situations include:
Use of the mute button. If they’re tempted to say something rude to a customer who is being difficult, the mute button can be a desperate last measure for an agent tempted to make an outburst. Caution agents that this route should only be used in desperate situations: if the agent thinks the line is muted when it’s not, a customer service disaster could unfold.
Hand out stress balls. These are the squishy balls or stuffed characters we squeeze and abuse in order to get a little aggression out in a non-harmful way. Ensure every one of your agents has one at their desk. They’ll appreciate the gesture, and will probably even use them.
Encourage agents to keep a notebook. All agents should be encouraged to keep a notepad at their workstations in case they think of questions during calls they’d like a supervisor to address later. In the complex, noisy environment of the contact center, questions can be forgotten. Agents can also use these notebooks to make observations of tactics that worked, or calls that have gone wrong. It’s a way to keep thoughts preserved until they can be addressed.
Make time for agents to share the weirdness. Agents will regularly encounter callers who are far off the beaten path of human behavior. There’s no one who can appreciate these off-the-wall stories like other agents. Make time for agents to share their “weird stories of the week” with one another. It will build team cohesion and help relieve stress.
Drill agents in what to do about abusive callers. There comes a time when a call simply isn’t salvageable: the customer becomes abusive, creepy, sexual or otherwise inappropriate. Ensure agents know what to do in these cases, whether it’s clearance to hang up on the caller, or put them on hold so a supervisor can be called to help. Many agents may feel obliged to continue abusive calls, which will rachet up their stress levels and worsen their performance.
Anything you can do to support agents in difficult situations will help you run a better call center environment, and help agents feel like someone has their back.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
