5 Responses

1. A sound idea?
   Barbara,

   I’m curious, how are you going to measure the success of this training intervention?

   I have concerns about the way your question is phrased and your wish to train attitudes

   * We are currently putting together a series of workshops for Call Centre staff including one titled “Attitude is Everything”.

   By this I gather you have decided on the title before identifying the need, haven’t decided on the outcome or how you will measure it as well as what the learning objectives are and how to structure some training around it.

   There is a widely held view amongst trainers that you can only influence attitudes to a degree and that may indeed be only temporary. The following two links discuss this in depth.

   https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=92612
   https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=6547

   Lastly isn’t it simpler to recruit for the right behaviours and attitudes in the first place?

   If call centre staff have attitudinal problems and recruitment isnt the root cause then training may not be the ‘fix’ you are looking for.

2. Attitude…
   Hi Barbara,

   I agree with Mark that it would be useful to understand how a) you have identified the need and b) you intend to measure the effects of the training.

   Generally speaking, training cannot solve an attitude issue – depending upon the nature of the problem, you may find counselling or coaching a more appropriate solution.

   Kind regards,

   Colin Hamilton
   email: colin@bis-improve.co.uk
   web: http://www.bis-improve.co.uk

3. “Health Checks”
   Hi Barbara,

   I completely agree with Colin and Mark’s comments. We can’t really train attitude, but we can go some way to influencing it. This means doing a lot of ground work before embarking on any training programme.

   I’ve covered this type of work before and am currently working with a client at the moment to address telephone behaviour. I always ensure I spend good time working with the management team as well as agent representatives to analyse training needs, root causes etc in detail. It helps if the you have access to call recordings, or if there is no system in place, to listen to live calls from a remote system.

   To dig to the root of any attitude issues we are running “health check” sessions with groups of agent representatives. I guess these are a similar idea to focus groups. The objective is to find out what would help make their lives easier and uncover any “barriers” (e.g.attitude issue). We focus on the barriers as “problems to be solved” and have set up working parties to address them. I’ve found that this involvement from the start helps build trust and commitment as individuals start to feel that they are active participants in a helpful process, rather than passive delegates.

   If you want to discuss more my email address is gannaway@supanet.com

4. Ensure each member of the team understands the effect THEY can h
   From my experience, I have found that if the call centre team members understand the effect they can individually have on each call, the overall team performance can improve. The team members should all be aware of the overall result required by the team and the activity needed by each individual in order to achieve this.

   Also, each team member should be aware of how their attitude and body language can be translated through their voice to the customer at the end of the telephone and how this can affect how the customer will ‘see’ them. Tone, expression and posture can all have an affect on how we sound on the telephone.

   Finally, another area you may want to consider is how people’s performance levels can vary throughout the day. It is important for individuals to be aware of their own performance pattern and for them to be conscious of how this can affect the customer and therefore the result of the call.

5. More technique than attitude
   Hi!

   I frequently train call centre staff – and have found that the title ‘Telephone Techniques’ works better at trying to encourage correct call handling. Although the attitude of the agent is vital this really comes as a result of confidence in handling calls effectively. If an agent feels confident they normally handle calls with a ‘good’ attitude.

   There is quite a lot of reference/resource material on telephone techniques which I have found extremely useful. I have even written my own manual for this type of course. If I can do it, I am sure you will be able to!