The 5 types of reps EVERY call center should have

The 5 types of reps you need on your phones and working your floor. (And how to get the best from them!)

Who are they? They are....

•  Diamonds
•  Pearls
• Jades 
•  Marcasites
•  Golds

 Diamonds

Who are your Diamonds?

Diamonds are your superstars—they’re expensive, dazzling, sparkling, upbeat, high energy, and can be a little flashy at times. They love to show off, be loud, and get the party started. 

How do you use your Diamonds?

 Diamonds need to be appreciated with thank-you’s, bonus structures, public praise “Wow, everyone, Jeremy just got 1500$ before noon- let’s all give Jeremy a hand!”, and good news when coaching. Diamonds can be a bit moody, fragile, and temperamental, so if you have to give them coaching, use the “poo sandwich” method—praise the good, give the coaching points, end with more praise.

Diamond famous quotes:

"Hey, did you see that last sale I just got? I wam- bam- thank- you- ma'am-ed that customer! Woooo hooo!!" 

 Pearls

Who are your Pearls?

Pearls are your quietly glowing mother/ father figures. They have a gentle aura about them (and this applies to plenty of men too!) that seems to just melt customers that can’t even see them! They float serenely around the stations, dropping off kisses, hugs, and “how are you?’s” to all your staff. Everyone loves them.

How do you use your Pearls?

Pearls are great early warning systems for unhappiness and attrition on your staff. Because other types may enjoy or even thrive on chaos and gossip, you may not really see a problem if you ask them—you may not notice until half your staff has left over the romantic fallout between your Manager on Duty and your Team Manager. Pearls may drive you crazy with their slow pace and need to greet everyone and have (several) coffee and chat breaks a day, but they keep the human side running, and that’s important. “MVP” or “World’s Best Employee” plaques or mugs might be welcome, personal time with you (the boss) such as a coffee or a “reward dinner” might also work. Personal, thoughtful gifts are best.

Pearl famous quotes: 

"Hi, Shelia? How was your husband's knee surgery? And how's the new house working out, Fred?"

Jades

Who are your Jades?

Jades are cool, calm, collected, brainy types. They don’t get emotional, they just fix the problem. Sometimes they can be “clueless” about “people stuff” but they are key for those Tier III tech support queues you’re running. 

How do you use your Jades?

Jades do well as technical trainers because they often naturally command respect due to their technical expertise. Jades also make up good Team Leads and Subject Matter Experts—they seldom let interpersonal “drama” affect their business decisions the way other types can. Jades like challenging work, respect, and to be recognized for their expertise.

Jade famous quotes:

"Guys, if you would have listened to me about the server last month, we wouldn't be in this situation now. But good news is, it can be fixed." 

Marcasites

Who are your Marcasites?

Marcasites are your oddball creative types. They biked to work, they have tattoos, they have a side gig in a band. They tend to do pretty well with customers since they think out of the box and are willing to come up with creative solutions. 

How do you use your Marcasites?

Marcasites shine in creative endeavours. Find their talent (acting? Let them M.C. your next seminar. Flair for media? Let them try out a company twitter feed) and nurture it. Ensure that they are focused (they can be a bit scattered) and that you work with them on a long term growth plan (they hate to feel stuck or trapped). Use them to shake up the team and give everyone fresh ideas and fresh perspectives.

Marcasite famous quotes:

"What if we created a robot IVR that sounded like a cat purring? Wouldn't that be so rad? Customers would love it!"

Golds

Who are your Golds?

Golds are your basic, everyday employees who show up, come to work, do a very solid job, and go home to their families. They don’t give you any issues, but neither do they swing from the rafters with 5000$ checks in their hands after sales. They’re the setting in which your other types shine.

How do you use your Golds?

Treat them well, keep your word, and set a reachable but high standard. Treat them the way you would have wanted to be treated in your work, or the way you were treated by your best boss and you’ll find yourself with a very solid staff.

Gold famous quotes:

"Hi Boss, how was your weekend? What's new?" 

To be successful, you need a mix of people. With the right blend of your "jewels" and the right treatment, you'll be on your way to a very effective team!

Love thy trainer as thyself....creating trainer-friendly stuff!

How trainer- friendly is your training design?

                                                               Source: Flikr.com

First, what do trainers want?

·         Easy to teach

o    I have been guilty of creating training materials that are just too ambitious, and I think most designers have. They get excited about new technology or a new program, they use themselves as a model learner, they plan around a superstar trainer who could conduct training while doing aerial yoga…it’s hard to crash to earth when you see that your training is just too difficult to teach and you need to start over.

That’s why good designers should consider the following:

•  Mechanics and Logistics: how many students are there? What is the general condition of the technology in the rooms?
•  Your audience: Who will be learning these lessons? Are we talking about experienced, tenured professionals having a “boot camp” experience? Or are we talking about shy, nervous 18 year olds putting a toe into their first job post school?
•   Your teachers/ trainers: Who will be teaching this? What is the mean level of experience of your trainers?

·         Easy to break down, shift around, plug and play, stop and start

o   When I was training for Call Center Communication Basics, the company I worked for made a decision that to slow down attrition, they were going to ramp up “engagement”—the end result was a 2 hour mandatory speech/ Q and A session with bored, restless HR professional that ate up a big chunk of our already-tight weeklong schedule. We also had students coming in for the first time on Day 2, regular hours long delays due to weather conditions, and so on.

 If your training plan is timed to the minute as falls apart if it has to be broken up….time to rethink.

·         Easy to customize or change 

o   I think most of us (or maybe all of us) have trotted out shiny new lesson plans or materials that we’re just bursting our buttons over (mine was called “The Psychology of Selling”—and boy howdy was it going way over the heads of the front- line retention reps that I was teaching it to! There may have been a “tell me what emotions these ads evoke in you” unit, but I’m trying to erase that from memory) only to discover it’s not working.

The best lesson plans, materials, and agendas have a little wiggle room and plan B built in, so that if it’s flaming out, you can smoothly switch, downgrade, or customize your items to fit the situation. 

How do you make training that’s trainer friendly?

1.       Talk to trainers

a.       Sometimes (okay, a lot of the time) when you get to a certain level (Director, Global VP) it’s easy to forget what it was like to be a trainer. Some Instructional Designers were never trainers, they were perhaps computer experts, or Captivate gurus, and therefore have no earthly idea what a pain it is to find a whiteboard marker at an offsite location. Meeting with your trainers has many benefits, including getting their buy-in, helping them become comfortable with changes and new materials, helping you develop a good relationship for follow up and measuring your success, and last but not least: finding out early in the game what pitfalls, particulars, and hurdles your training program will face.

2.       Teach it yourself

·         Wow, it’s really hard to spell out http://savvyauntie.com/About.aspx?GroupId=39&Name=How%20to%20Become%20a%20Savvy%20Auntie

letter by letter! I guess we better find a solution for that if I want my trainees to surf that site during class!

·         Wow, that big mouth in the back of the room is dominating all of your rhyme and song games!

·         Wow, everyone really hates role playing games and the energy after lunch is just nil!

You get the idea.

3.       Attend classes regularly

a.       Things that worked in one classroom, with a particular trainer and class, might not work so well in other environments. It’s really key to attend more than one class, over time—see if the training agenda, materials, and overall structure are holding up--- and if it’s being taught the way you envisioned or your trainers need more explicit instructions.

4.       Talk to students

a.       Usually, students can tell the difference between engaged, excited trainers and “barking seals”—those trainers that substitute volume, slogans, and goofy facial expressions for genuine passion for the job. 

Discreetly ask around and see what the students think-  do the trainers seem comfortable with the materials and lessons, or do they seem like they’re going through the motions dying for their next coffee break?

Your trainers are your pit crew, your driver, and your race car all in one—it’s vital to keep them interested, excited and on board with your ideas and execution. Now you know how!

Why you need to be taken down a notch: the role of feedback in creating effective training events

Feedback: You need it.

It can be scary to put your "baby"-- your carefully created, lovingly made training event-- into the hands of what sometimes seems like crazed toddlers--your reps-- for honest feedback. But you should welcome feedback, encourage it, and take it seriously. Here's why:

1: One of the major goals of any training program is compliance with the ideas being taught. True compliance, internalization, and maybe even evangelism, will only come with full cooperation.

Reps won't fully co operate with something they don't buy and are just doing under threat of losing their jobs.This is when you get bored, sing- song recitation of scripts, "hacks" and "cheats", transfers and aux- hopping, and other passive aggressive avoidance tactics. On the other hand, reps who had a hand in creating a great training program feel respected and invested in, and will most likely give you their full co operation.

2: As fabu as you are, you may have a blind spot for your "little darlings".

 I remember being a Graduate student and having to regularly pump out 20- page papers, in addition to my personal writing, and reading that the key thing to do as an editor of manuscripts is to "kill your little darlings" or at least, be open to doing so.

 Little darlings aren't just too-sweet, too-perfect characters, they can come in the form of the

a) overarching idea (Hunger Games-like contests for a shy, stage-fright-y community-oriented population? Whose idea was THAT?)

b) the execution (Hey, if 6 hours of training is good, let's ramp it up to 10 hour days and get this puppy done early!),

 or the

c) training events themselves. I once had a game of "sell me this random item" go over like a lead balloon with a class. (I took it out after it's maiden voyage, never to return).

Honest feedback will go a long way towards helping you see and kill your little darlings.

3: A good trainer is like a good performer- witty, sensitive, and "on". But a *great* trainer is one who interacts with the audience. 

 Think about how comedienne Kathy Griffin engages with her superfans, or when she gets cutely caught up in a joke and says "Oh, you guys aren't going to believe this!", addressing the audience like friends, rather than keeping that fourth wall between her and her fans. This is the vibe you should be going for.

Great trainers engage their audience-- their trainees. You'll get on- the- spot feedback from your trainees in the moment, such as their enthusiasm level, facial expressions, and engagement level with the material, but it's always good to have it written down for future reference.

4: It sends a message about what you expect in terms of performance from your trainees. 

This is a bit abstract, but stay with me. When you show respect and care for your trainees, by letting them know you'd like their feedback after the sessions, it shows that you're investing in them, and in the training program as a whole. It shows that you trust them, and that you value their time, and input. They're not just robots or cogs for you to shove through the system-- you care!

Allow me to get on my soapbox for just a moment (hey it's my blog and I'll suds if I wanna, suds if I wanna!). In my 3 years in the Philippines, I saw most trainers treat reps as if they were kindergarteners. This created a vicious cycle in which most reps kind of acted like kindergarteners-- screaming when the power blipped out for a moment, sneaking food under the desks, lying about taking smoke breaks when they shouldn't have been, etc.

The problems of the call center industry are too many and tangled to get into here in this entry, but one of them is that we treat reps like children (no paper allowed on the production floor--including Kleenex-- really?!) and then moan and wring our hands when they passively transfer a screaming customer into "the Void" instead of stepping up and taking responsibility.

 Adding "took ownership of call" to the quality mon form isn't enough. It has to start with training and induction. Asking your reps to honestly and carefully evaluate your training class is one way to set a standard from Day 1. /endrant...for now.

In my experience, the majority of people will rise to the standards that you set and enforce for them-- provided you meet them yourself, of course!

5:Ask to receive. ("Black ops"!)

My regular readers know that I am a fan of "using black ops for white missions"---in other words, for using psychological "tricks" to maximize your training and customer service experience. Why should Madison Avenue ad guys have all the fun? Studies have shown that asking someone for a favor actually bonds you to them more than doing a favor for them!

 http://greatonthejob.com/2011/01/asking-for-a-favor-the-three-keys/

So ask your trainees to do you a favor- and fill out the survey cards you hand around, and they'll likely bond with you and think fondly of your class and your suggestions/ instructions.

6: In case you need another reason, it's great for your brag sheet/ book/ file.

It's one thing to say you're a great trainer. It's another to be able to pull out a sheaf of glowing, handwritten references or direct a potential employer to a Survey Monkey link with top end results. It shows your bosses that you're not afraid of honest feedback and that you expect the majority will be good. It gives you concrete proof of what you're doing well.

So...how do you rate this blog entry?

Falling off the gerbil wheel: what Collections can teach you about customer service

Inside the world no one wants to talk about in public but everyone's morbidly curious about....Collections.

I worked collections for 6 months, and learned an incredible amount about customer service. I can just hear the groans and see the rolled eyes, but it's true. I was the only woman in the top five performers every month, and I was so valuable to the company that when I left, my boss asked me if I would consider working from home, making my own hours, part time, anything to keep me in the business. And I did it with customer service-- really!

Collections has a bad reputation- most of us have either experienced the horror stories (threats to call the local police or publish newspaper lists of deadbeats) or heard about them through "exposed!" news stories that highlight the worst, most fly -by- night of the shops. But it was in collections that I learned many of the skills that I use today as a customer service expert in call centers.

Number 1: Listen about twice as much as you talk. 

Irate customers (and all collections customers-- we called them "debtors" or "payers", for a rather queasy making window into the super alpha world of collectors-- are irate) have a story they feel has not been heard and acknowledged. Sometimes it's legit, most of the time it's misunderstanding layered with personal delusions, but....see Number 2.

Number 2: You live in a place called 'Customer World'. And it's kind of scary.

The customers don't have any idea what happened, how it got this way, what a payment schedule is, what the actual law is, or what penalties can be charged. But by God, they certainly think they do! Generally speaking, the customer is....how to say this nicely...not the best source of information about their own case. Take what they say with a grain of salt. Usually, if they were on top of things, they wouldn't be getting calls from a collection agency.

Getting the customer to manage their expectations and get on the same page as you, the rep, is about 95% of the battle. "Okay, so you were under the impression that there was no interest on this note. Alright, I can see how that happened. Well, bad news is that actually there was. [Pause to let this sink in]. So given that situation, what can we work out?"

Number 3: Argue by asking questions, like a lawyer.

If you must point things out to the customer, it's best to come at them sideways, leaning over, like Vincent D'nofrio questioning a "person of interest" in Law & Order Criminal Intent. "So, if your son took out the loan, Mrs. Samuel, how did he get your SSI number again-- I just want to make sure I get all the facts here."

Number 4: It's ALL about how you say it. 

This means the words you choose and your tone, emphasis, enunciation, phrasing, and intonation. The ability to make snap decisions about what tone to use with which customer is a skill that's built up over time, but one of the most powerful tools in your toolkit is the ability to "play with your voice" as masterfully as a Royal Shakespeare Company actor.

A few key points:

Use collaborative language and qualifiers as much as possible:

• "We want to see this get worked out"
• "Just a quick call to see if that payment pushed through."
• "Let's see what we can work out for ya, real quick, okay?"

Gain agreement by asking permission and setting expectations:

• "Okay, so I'm going to get you over to verification and they'll run you through a quick statement about your payments and then you'll be done, cool?"
• "Alright, so what I'm going to do is give you a reminder call a few days before this payment goes through every month so that you have time to go to the bank and put some money on the WalMart card, okay hon?" 

Your vocabulary and usage should match or be *below* the level of the person you're speaking to.

• No one, I repeat NO ONE, likes feeling talked down to. You won't bedazzle them with words. I actually won a few hearts over by explaining jargon and processes in layman's terms, making the scary world of post dated checks, legal disclaimers, and "pending civil cases" more accessible and less threatening (after I had scared the poo out of them by using carefully selected big words on my initial message. See Number 4 headliner).

• Talking to a lawyer? You're a nanny. Talking to a construction worker? You're a high school drop out. Talking to a sometimes- employed scatterbrain? You're a caseworker who cares. 

Number 5: Play with your scripts, your tone, everything, until you find things that fit, and then use them until you're sick to death of them. Rinse and repeat. 

Once you reach a certain level of collections performance you're given better "paper" (i.e. debts) to collect. The most desirable paper is called "bouncers"-- people who had been paying up until the most recent payment and then their payment didn't push through or didn't come in. These were actually easy to collect on, because they were proven payers. I loved NSF's.(Insufficient Funds).

In order to get these guys to pay, you had to use a certain tone and certain words, and I found one that worked like magic: "Let's find out what happened and where the gerbil fell off the wheel here, okay?"

Something about the collaborative, easy going, slightly goofy language made people's defenses come down and I almost always got paid on NSF's.

Number 6: Once you get paid, it seems to work like a magnet to attract more payments throughout the day. 

You can use this law of inertia with your reps (if you're a trainer) or with your customers (if you're a sales person or sales coach). When your rep makes that first sale, jump on it, make a little bit of a fuss, and get that dopamine flowing. The high energy, confidence, and excitement will show on the next few calls and will most likely result in another sale or "maybe", keeping the energy up and self perpetuating. Soon your reps will be addicted to this feeling (insert evil mustache twirling here) and you'll have very effective reps.


Number 7: Red money is not green money. 

Red money is money that hasn't cleared yet-- payments scheduled but not processed. Green money is money in hand / in the bank. Guess which kind you want?

When dealing with customers in sales, retention, or collections, drill your reps into:

A) Managing their expectations and excitement when it comes to promises, maybes and possibles.

 It's so hard to gently pop the balloon of excitement when your newbie comes rushing up to you with a Promise to Pay, but after you make a fuss, nicely remind them "Let's save the real celebration for the green money, okay? But great work."

B) Taking the bird in the hand vs. the two in the bush. 

Sure, selling a Mega Blow Out Super Stud package on your first day to a confused Little Old Lady is a ego boost....until her son sees the charges and screams bloody murder and processes a chargeback! Go for the 12$ a month insurance, the 5$ a month extra channel upgrade....until the training wheels are off and you know what big game smells like and acts like.

I was the rare person who liked collections and would happily spend a Saturday night drinking Jack and Coke's and talking shop with other "collectors" (I lived in an area so heavily dominated by the industry we had our own bank that exclusively served collectors!), but I know it's not for everyone.

That doesn't mean you can't take some lessons from collections back to your own sales, retention, and up selling customer service and tech teams! So do we have a deal?