Over three-quarters of UK call centres do not track the impact of call centre training spend on their bottom-line, according to a new study.
Telebusiness Partners questioned 400 call centre managers about staff training.
It found that 76.7% of call centre operations do not have any quantitative measures in place to monitor return on their training investment.
As a consequence, call centre managers were said to find it almost impossible to justify increased training spend - despite 80.1% wanting additional budget, better training facilities and more highly trained staff.
The research found:
* The cross-industry average increase in call centre training budgets over the last twelve months was 3.24%.
* 34.6% of call centre staff training budget decisions are made by HR directors; 30.1% by managing directors or financial directors; and just 23.1% by call / contact centre managers.
* Only 3.3% of call centres measure the impact of sales technique training on sales conversion rates.
The research also revealed that call centres that prioritise training as a key tool for motivating staff have a 20.4% lower agent churn rate compared to those who do not.
The most common call staff training courses provided included:
* Telephone manner - provided by 100%of call / contact centre operations
* Handling awkward calls – provided by 96.7%
* Customer negotiation - provided by 96.7%
* Telephone systems training - provided by 93.3%
* Sales techniques - provided by 73.3%
* Cold calling techniques - provided by 23.3%
One third of call centre managers rate equipping staff with better customer care skills as their key training requirement. 23.5% said sales skills.
Mitz Charos, Head of Training at Telebusiness Partners said: “Senior decision-makers are holding tightly on to the purse strings until they can see a clear business case for investing in training.
"And developing quantitative measurements is the only way to build that case," he added.
* The survey was conducted by Telebusiness Partners during February – May 2004, and questioned call/contact centre managers from leading companies in the travel, insurance, banking, airline, telecoms, government, retail, media and leisure sectors.
