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  • 5 Fun Call Center Soft Skills Training Activities

    Are soft skills a weak spot for your call center team? While product knowledge, scripts, and protocols are important parts of training your agents, neglecting call center soft skills can affect your call center’s performance. After all, service roles are all about building relationships and rapport—and that’s much more difficult to achieve over the phone or chat.
    Sure, it’s important to hire people with strong soft skills. But the best agents know how to apply those skills effectively in their role. A new hire who is experienced in face-to-face customer service might not fare as well over the phone at first. It’s up to the employer (that’s you!) to guide them as they discover their strengths and weaknesses in this work environment.
    As Mary Poppins once said, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.” Gamification is one of the best ways to help your agents internalize these important skills and use them effectively in their roles. At your next training session, consider featuring some of these engaging activities to help your team sharpen those soft skills!
    How to Teach Soft Skills Training
    First, Which Soft Skills Should You Focus On?
    It’s important to understand what soft skill application looks like in each type of role so you can guide your agents properly. There are many types of skills that will come in handy in the call center, so we’ve compiled our top picks for improving contact center performance:
    Communication and tone
    When it comes to contact center work, communication is king. But just because someone is well-spoken doesn’t mean they’ll thrive in the contact center. Agent roles can be challenging because they are limited to two types of communication—voice and text – when supporting customers. They don’t have the benefit of relying on body language or facial expressions.
    Tone becomes so important when writing responses or conversing over the phone. Agents should know how to ask effective questions so they can get to the heart of the issue quickly. This will improve KPIs in the long run, including Average Handle Time, Customer Satisfaction (CSat), and First Call Resolution (FCR).
    Working with goals and targets
    Just because an agent is willing to work with set goals does not mean they are prepared to succeed. After all, contact center work isn’t just about working hard to reach a target—it’s also about knowing how to motivate and pace yourself throughout the day.
    Agents who are new to this type of work may get frustrated or even burnt out. And that can contribute to agent attrition and turnover, which can put you in an even bigger bind! Providing best practices for working with targets will help agents better manage challenges they encounter throughout the workday and improve their chances of meeting their performance goals.

    TIP:
    Your veteran agents are your best resource. Ask them how they regulate their work throughout the day and encourage them to share tips and techniques with newer agents.

    Empathy and intuition
    Something people don’t often think about is how much time and effort is spent managing customer emotions. When an agent connects with a caller, they are suddenly thrust into an interaction with someone they’ve never met, who is likely dealing with a frustrating matter. Add hold time to the mix, and your agents may find themselves locked in a conversation with an irate customer.
    While scripts are great for unifying company messages and standardizing the customer experience, reading lines verbatim may come across as cold and robotic. Agents should have enough autonomy and training to adapt the script to the situation while validating the caller’s emotions before resolving the issue. This is key if you want to deliver an exceptional customer experience.
    Active listening
    Isn’t it frustrating when you’re having a conversation, but you don’t feel heard? That’s the dynamic you want to avoid in your contact center—and active listening is the solution.
    In short, active listening means complete attentiveness to what the customer is saying. Agents may repeat parts of phrases or respond in a way that validates them and their situation. This skill involves a combination of empathy and communication, and the ability to ask thoughtful follow-up questions.
    Problem-solving skills
    In the call center, no two interactions are exactly alike. That’s why critical thinking is an essential part of a call center agent’s role. After all, you are there to guide the support process and help solve the customer’s problem.
    Agents should be able to independently tackle problems, spot important details, and find a solution to each problem that comes their way. They should also know when it’s time to escalate to a manager. No matter who picks up the phone, you want to make sure the customer is in capable hands.
    5 Group Training Activities to Develop Call Center Soft Skills
    A PowerPoint presentation can be helpful for listing and explaining the above soft skills. The bigger challenge is encouraging your agents to practice, internalize, and apply these to their daily work.
    So how can you get agents to engage in sharpening their soft skills? The short answer: make it fun! The activities below will help your agents flex these skills and better understand how to apply them to their daily work.
    Voicemail Review
    Play a short voicemail message left by a customer, and have agents practice active listening. They should take note of their tone of voice, as well as any other phrases or details that can help them read into the customer’s situation.
    This exercise is meant to help agents read between the lines of what the customer is saying, as well as understand their tone of voice. Once everyone shares their impressions of the voicemail, have them discuss what steps they would take in the follow-up call.
    At the end, reveal what the real resolution was and how it was handled. Were your agents far off with their assessments?
    Call-Backs vs. Voicemail: Which is Best for the Contact Center?
    The Drawing Game
    Organize your agents into pairs. Agent A will be given a simple drawing, and Agent B will have a paper and pencil. Agent A should describe their picture (without naming the item) to Agent B, who will try to recreate the drawing on a blank sheet of paper. Neither agent should be able to see the other’s sheet of paper.
    For example, Agent A has a picture of an ice cream cone. They may describe it as an “upside down triangle with a big circle on top”. Agent A and B may talk to each other to complete the picture, as long as Agent A doesn’t say that it’s an ice cream cone. When the time is up, the pictures are revealed and compared. This activity encourages communication and problem-solving in agents—and even a little friendly competition!
    Customer Call Roleplay
    Most contact centers use roleplay in their technical training, but did you know this method can be applied to soft skills as well? Pair up your junior agents with more seasoned agents and have them engage in roleplay.
    Have the more experienced agents play different types of customers on the phone. Think of customer personas, such as the ones listed here. How do agents respond to individuals who give short answers without much detail? How should they approach an irate customer who begins the call with a long list of complaints?
    Encourage your veteran agents to draw from their personal experiences and coach your newer agents through these scenarios. This will helps strengthen their problem-solving, as well as active listening and communication skills.
    9 Types of Call Center Customers (and How to Deal With Them)
    20 Questions
    This classic road-trip game encourages your agents to think critically and ask thoughtful questions. Have one agent select a mystery word that falls into the category of “person,” “place,” or “thing.” Then, each agent will ask a question that can be answered with “yes” or “no” to narrow down the word.
    Challenge your team to try and get the mystery word in 20 questions or less. This exercise will help agents ask more insightful questions and understand customer situations a lot faster.
    Who Am I?
    This is another game that is great for encouraging thoughtful questions—with a twist! In this game, an agent is given a mystery word (a noun) that only the other agents can see.
    The other players then take turns making statements to try and describe the mystery word to the agent. The goal is to get the agent to guess their mystery word in as few tries as possible. This game is especially good for improving players’ communication and active listening for the main agent.The post 5 Fun Call Center Soft Skills Training Activities first appeared on Fonolo.

  • Extensions and souvenirs

    When a brand is successful, there’s often a desire to extend it.

    Disneyland was an extension of Disney movies. It reflected some of the magic of the movies, but created something new and valuable as well. Disneyland had some of the Disney essence and then built something additive and new.

    Apple did the same thing with the iPhone in extending the brand of the Mac.

    On the other hand, the new Leica watch is simply a souvenir. It’s not a better watch. It’s not more of a Leica than any of a dozen other overpriced watches could be seen to be. It’s simply there to remind you that you liked the original. It’s a souvenir of a feeling, not the creator.

    Nothing wrong with a souvenir. I’m sure Leica will make a profit from their watch with little damage to the promise that the brand itself makes. But make too many souvenirs and you become a hollow shell, wasting the chance to make the change you seek.

    The crappy t-shirt you bought at your favorite musician’s concert is a souvenir, but they shouldn’t count on that as their legacy or the engine of their growth.

    All day, individual creators have to make choices about what they’re going to do next. Sometimes we can create an extension. And sometimes, we decide to make a souvenir instead.

  • Stop Sending Emails to Unengaged Subscribers

    An active email list is an essential pillar of email marketing. As a business owner that sends out emails regularly, you want an email list with contacts that engage with your content and purchase your offers for email marketing success, great ROI, and increased business revenue. An average worker battles with up to 121 emails…
    The post Stop Sending Emails to Unengaged Subscribers appeared first on Benchmark Email.

  • CX Ops Roundtable (free events)

    Hi #cx community- we’re hosting our next monthly round table tomorrow (Thursday) at 12PM EST. You can sign-up here for more information and invites: www.cxops.org/community submitted by /u/jncreative [link] [comments]

  • GiveSites Pro Sell More Businesses With What They Have Got…

    Perhaps a lot of people have been talking about GoteSites.pro lately. ​ It refers to the most recent, most inventive, and most results-focused gift site creation tool to have been released to date. ​ This ground-breaking platform enables you to build gift websites that are updated automatically and provides unlimited gifts to business owners under your own brand. ​ You simply need to have a fundamental understanding of how the Internet works, and GoteSites will take care of the rest for you. ​ You no longer need to wait a few days or a few weeks for your gift site to go up. You can quickly and easily create an unlimited number of gift sites with GoteSites and start promoting them right away. ​ https://www.skilatchi.com/2022/09/givesites-pro-sell-more-businesses-with.html submitted by /u/cycysimba [link] [comments]

  • Side Hussle

    submitted by /u/NarrowConclusion1714 [link] [comments]

  • We ignored SEO => 700 visits/ month vs. We focused on SEO => 500,000 visits/ month Here’s an SEO course I made to help you learn SEO the way even a 5-year old can learn. FREE!

    SEO contributes >50% to our $3 million startup | Here’s an SEO course I made to help you learn SEO the way even a 5-year old can learn. What to Expect: SEO strategies for scaling e-commerce brands without ad spend and why solely relying on paid advertising strategies, like Facebook Ads, will keep you from reaching your earnings potential How to skyrocket your profit margins and put more money in your pockets for each sale generated How to increase conversion rates by bringing users to your website who are actively looking to purchase your product How to generate consistent traffic that you can rely on to generate sales on autopilot for years on end, without massive fluctuations or constant maintenance. Behind the scenes look at how our strategies have 10x organic revenue for e-commerce brands that implement them And much, much more… Link: https://amanbhatia97.gumroad.com/l/seo submitted by /u/amanbhatia97 [link] [comments]

  • Mindbox: Redesigning an automated marketing platform

    Mindbox is a cloud-based marketing automation platform for client companies. It helps them control email campaigns, set up personalization, and manage loyalty. Mindbox also removes the load from internal IT systems and allows you to transfer the collection, storage, and management of client data to a cloud-based CRM system with convenient management. Evrone provided three React specialists to help with the website redesign for Mindbox, and for the duration of the project, they became full-fledged members of the team with equal access to repositories and regular one-on-one meetings. Read the full case study here. submitted by /u/elizaveta123321 [link] [comments]

  • I Took 7 Weeks Off Work After Hiring 3 New Teammates, Here’s Why It Worked Out

    In July and August of this year, I had the incredible experience of taking seven weeks off of work — fully paid. I benefited from our generous sabbatical policy (more on that below) to take a break from work. It had been a particularly busy year, and I had two new teammates join in February and then a third in April who all reported to me— so the timing was tight here to get everyone onboarded and operational before I went on sabbatical. I was pretty nervous about taking such an extended period off of work after just having brought on three new teammates. But, in the end, my being away ended up empowering my teammates to level up their ownership and highlighting processes I didn’t need to be involved in. Taking time away from work can be daunting, but in my experience, it can also be immensely worthwhile. It provided an opportunity for growth for both my team and me. Here’s more about sabbaticals at Buffer, how I set things up while I was out, and why it ended up working out so well. Our sabbatical policySince 2019, Buffer has offered sabbaticals to all teammates who have been on the team for five or more years. Teammates are invited to take a fully paid sabbatical and spend it however they’d like — working on a side project, traveling, helping a non-profit, spending time with family, achieving a life goal, or something else entirely. We offer six weeks of sabbatical for every five years at Buffer, plus every additional year without taking a sabbatical adds another week (maxing out at 12 weeks). February marked six years at Buffer for me, so I was eligible for a seven-week sabbatical. I’m one of 22 people who have taken sabbaticals from their time at Buffer since the practice was first put into place in 2019. How I set up the team for support while I was outI run the communications and content team, comprised of two content writers (you’ve seen Tami and Umber on the blog) and one social media manager (you’ve seen Mitra everywhere but might remember Instagram and TikTok videos in particular). Then we work with several agencies as well. Everyone’s sabbatical planning was slightly different, but for me, I focused on my three teammates first. Here’s how they were supported: 1:1s with another managerI do weekly 1:1s with each person, and in my absence, they did bi-weekly 1:1s with another marketing manager to continue getting that support. Connecting with my managerIn some companies, “skip level 1:1s” are popular as a way for teammates to connect with their manager’s manager. My manager is our CEO, Joel, and while I was away, he did a group call with the team to check in and see how they were doing. This isn’t quite a skip level but a similar idea. Peer reviews Our original process for blog content was that everything was being run by me for editing. We had peer reviews instituted instead for all blog posts in my absence. Social posts are not all reviewed, but there are several options for peer reviews on social posts around the company when needed. Masterminds New mastermind pairings were kicked off around this time, and each teammate was paired with a mastermind partner. These are fun pairings meant to connect two teammates who don’t often work together to chat about challenges and lend a different perspective. They evolve a lot as the relationship deepens. Here’s more on how we run masterminds at Buffer. Passing off points of contact In each of my agency relationships, there was usually one other person who was already familiar with how we collaborated. So that person stepped up to become the primary point of contact, or else I assigned several people to be points of contact so our partners at the agency would have options. Documentation for everyone Last but not least, we have a really great internal handbook and marketing wiki on our team. Over the past year, I’ve been building systems so that we regularly document processes and best practices in Notion and sometimes include a Loom video. Before leaving on sabbatical, I regularly asked teammates questions like: What don’t you know enough about?What are you worried would go wrong?Is there any process you’re unsure of?Are you confident you can access all of the information you need?Then I recorded videos or wrote up documentation for anything that came up. I had already written down all the other documentation around using specific tools, but I checked that over multiple times to ensure it included everything I thought relevant. After many months of setting everything up for success, I felt complete confidence in my team. So I set my out-of-office reply and logged out of all of my communications tools for seven weeks to be completely disconnected from work. The positive benefits of being away for 7 weeksI was expecting things to go well because I felt everyone had prepared, and I knew there was a solid support system in place, but I was surprised at just how well things went without me there. (Maybe I should go on sabbatical every year? 😆) I saw a lot of positive benefits. My team grew a ton during this periodThere’s nothing like removing the quick gut check with someone to level up your decision-making skills. I heard across the board that making decisions without my input helped build confidence. I believe this was especially beneficial because, as a new teammate, the practice of running things by me was initially built into the onboarding. Once the habit is created, it can be challenging to break. This led to each person taking on more ownership over their area and projects. We questioned our processes When I returned, one of the questions I asked in our first 1:1 with each person was what processes we might want to reconsider. In the end, things I had been owning that I passed to others temporarily ended up sometimes staying with that person because the new process made more sense. For example, in one case, it was a new primary contact for an agency we collaborate with, and another instance was that peer reviews ended up being both fun and helpful, so we kept those. We also realized there hadn’t been a lot of collaboration built into the content calendar before I left. I had been planning everything while my teammates were still onboarding. Now that everyone was onboarded, we started an editorial review where the content calendar planning is much more collaborative. It surfaced unclear areas Being away also surfaced areas that were unclear and that weren’t documented. They all ended up being tiny things (like choosing the right cover image for blog posts), but still, it meant there was room for improvement in communication and documentation around those things. Ultimately, decisions were made without me leading to teammates being more empowered within their roles and areas, and our team processes were improved and felt much more robust. I couldn’t be happier with all of this! Where could things have gone better?I wondered, “could things have gone better?” and I think there’s always room for improvement. But the biggest thing was ensuring my team had enough connections across the company. They are connected to each other and others on our Marketing team, but for new teammates at a remote company, it can be challenging to feel connected. Without a manager there to help make connections, that can be even more difficult. So if I could change one thing, it would be ensuring that there were even more points of connection between my teammates and other leaders at Buffer.Over to youHave you taken time off work as a new manager? How did it go? Or do you have any questions about our sabbatical policy at Buffer? Send us a tweet; we’d love to continue the conversation!