Certainly you know by now that Inova Solutions offers real-time tracking and communication technology through its Inova LightLink® suite of applications.  However, you may not be familiar with (or may have forgotten how to use) some of the best features of the LightLink suite.  As part of the Inova OnCourse training program, Inova is rolling out a new element:  Inova OnCourse Complimentary.  These sessions, which will be offered cost-free to our customers, will focus on a variety of topics to help LightLink users take full advantage of the system features.

The first session, scheduled for October 18 at 2:00 pm EST, will be a refresher about the LightLink System and will include a review of System Manager, Message Editor, Marquee, and OnTrack LED displays.  We will review how to:

• Send an instant message
• Add special effects to a message
• Insert real-time data in a message
• Schedule a message
• See all the messages on your system
• See only the messages for a particular display
• Cancel a message

This is the perfect opportunity for you or your employees to learn (or even relearn) some of the most popular LightLink elements.  In one short hour, you will be better equipped to use LightLink to communicate with your contact center employees.

As we continue to develop these sessions, we will focus on additional commonly used LightLink features, possibly including:  configuring data sources; creating security manager settings and default profiles; and using desktop autosweep, virtual displays, and display groups in LightLink Administrator.  Stay tuned for additional topics and dates!

I recently came across the ICMI Customer Management Blog and was particularly interested in Rose Polchin’s post Make Training Count.  Polchin provides ten tips to help ensure that training is, in fact, the best use of your money and that it is likely to provide a positive return on investment (ROI).  Polchin also provides an additional post to further develop each of her ten tips.  Below are some highlights from her tips:

Tip 1:  Ensure training is the right solution.  Polchin refers to the importance of a needs analysis.  As she says, “Training can’t ‘fix people’.”  Training can educate people, but it is not a one-stop solution for contact center ills or for disgruntled employees.  It won’t work if the process itself is inefficient, if motivation is lacking, equipment is malfunctioning, or any number of other possible issues.  It is critical to discern that training is likely to address the specific area of concern.

Tip 2:  Communicate the reason for the training.  It’s critical for adult learners to understand “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM) when attending a training session.  Ideally, they would be aware of this prior to starting the training; if not, it is the trainer’s responsibility to make it the purpose of the session clear from the very beginning.  Otherwise, your adult learners may, at best, mentally check out of the training because they view it as irrelevant.  (At worst, it may actually further reduce motivation because learners view the session as a waste of time!)

Tip 5:  Refresher Training – Again, Polchin uses this opportunity to further expound on the absolute necessity for needs analysis prior to jumping into a training program.  Refresher training may be required; however, before requiring agents to attend additional training session, you need to understand what’s going on.  Is there actually a performance gap; if so, is training the most efficient way to address the problem?

Tip 7: The trainer understands the goals, objectives, and audience.  As I previously discussed, it is a huge benefit (and often a requirement) when the person delivering the training understands the training material and the audience.  This allows the trainer to answer tough questions on the fly and to provide real world examples to help learners transfer knowledge.

Tip 9:  Time is currency.  Understanding the priorities for training and spending your money on those objectives will lead to the biggest ROI.  Don’t waste time, and money, on training that doesn’t directly meet your needs or reflect your contact centers goals and objectives.

Although it is often difficult to quantify, any training program must consider the possible ROI.  Polchin’s ten tips offer some critical questions to ask when deciding whether your training will really count.

Working in the customer service industry, I’m sure you’re aware of the frustration that can come when you don’t have either efficient tools at your disposal or the training to effectively use those tools.  If you are seeing a performance issue in your contact center, a good place to start might be to take a look the tools your agents are using, and the training they have received about those tools.

Is the phone system antiquated or having technical difficulties on a certain day?  Was the product database malfunctioning?  Are CSRs improperly trained about how to transfer calls or search for products?

Tools – One key aspect to evaluate in the workplace is the usefulness of the tools that employees are using.  Employees may be facing additional challenges if the technology is outdated or overused, if the process is too cumbersome, or if the hardware is not intuitive.  Take a careful look at all of the tools that you provide to your employees to help them do their jobs, including the hardware, software, job aids, and even office environment and work process itself.  Are the tools improving efficiency or offering another important benefit?  If not, consider finding a way to make improvements.

Training – As a graduate student, I worked as a temp in a variety of offices.  One of my stints was an administrative assistant for a dean at the university, where I jumped right in:  writing letters, filing papers, scheduling travel, and – apparently – hanging up on a lot of callers.  Unfamiliar with the university’s phone system and hardware, for the life of me, I could not figure out how to transfer calls.  When I finally asked the full-time admin across the office for help, she was shocked that I was so inept.  However, those of us who have been doing a task for so long often forget how difficult it can be to first master the fundamentals.  If an employee is not meeting performance expectations, it is certainly reasonable to make sure that he or she has been properly trained on ALL aspects of the job, even those things that may seem obvious to those with more experience.  Be careful about making assumptions about an employee’s technology or hardware skills.  Given the variety of operating systems and the rapid changes in technology, employees may not be immediately comfortable with your center’s infrastructure.

If employees are not meeting performance expectations, there are a variety of areas that you could evaluate; tools and training are two of the common areas where issues can often be easily identified and improved.

Training rollout is a large commitment in a call center, and not one that you want to start casually.  One unique challenge for the contact center environment is determining when you will actually deliver the training.  For many businesses, once a training need has been identified, it’s relatively easy to pull all of the trainees together during regular business hours for training.  For your contact center employees, this is often unreasonable if not impossible.  Many contact centers operate around the clock and likely do not have a single timeframe where all employees are onsite and available for training.  This additional challenge makes it even more critical for contact center managers to accurately identify the best time for training delivery.  The easiest way to break down your timing options are to consider whether your training will be best offered real-time or asynchronously.

Real-time, or synchronous, training occurs when an instructor is actively involved during the training delivery. This can occur in a variety of environments, but the key is that the instructor is available to lead the training or to assist with comprehension of material.  Real-time training could include an instructor onsite in a traditional classroom environment, remotely connecting with trainees at separate training stations, or providing on-the-job training.

In contrast, asynchronous training does not include the same-time engagement of the learner and an instructor. Feedback is either provided automatically (through a computer programmed response) or is returned by an instructor at a subsequent time. Asynchronous training could include typical web- or computer-based training packages or correspondence-style coursework.  There may or may not be a live instructor available for assistance; but, if there is, that instructor is not directly connecting with the trainees while they are actively engaged in the learning.  Instead, the instructor is evaluating learning or answering questions at a different time.

I suppose in an ideal world, where budget and time were unlimited, real-time on-site training would be the preference; we all know this is never the case!  When on-site delivery is the best choice, but too challenging to realistically implement, you can often blend the two options to find a suitable solution.  A few examples to consider:

• Content that involves more recall or comprehension can often be successfully delivered asynchronously.  The basic nature of the content makes it relatively easy to evaluate through simple question and answer sessions, either through computer-based methods or via an asynchronous instructor.  Even with “simple” content, though, there may be a  need for some on-the-job follow up by a supervisor to ensure proper comprehension and transfer.
• If your training material requires higher level thinking (remember Bloom’s Taxonomy?), a real-time instructor may be best choice because the instructor can provide customized and immediate feedback; the ability to promptly identify and correct incomplete comprehension reduces the chance of faulty knowledge transfer.  If a full-blown course with a real-time instructor is not realistic, you could consider introductory sessions to introduce the content with subsequent small-group sessions with a live instructor to practice implementation.
• Training that involves soft skills (i.e., leadership, management) or diversity is often best offered real-time and on-site.  Having an instructor on-site makes it easier to handle sensitive topics.  To reduce the time frame of the training, material can be delivered prior to the training session so trainees are familiar with the content and the training session can be used for higher level discussion.
• Training that may affect morale may be best delivered on-site so the instructor can encourage buy-in.  However, this can often be addressed through a single kick-off meeting, with training subsequently delivered asynchronously.

It is difficult to consider synchronous and asynchronous training in a vacuum, of course.  When trying to choose whether training should be offered real-time or asynchronously, you will need to balance your space and personnel availability with the pros and cons of each delivery method.

Bloom’s Categories of Learning are widely accepted in the instructional design field as a starting point for clarifying the types of learning that typically occur.  While it would be easy to write an entire dissertation-length paper on these categories, it would be overwhelming and not really all that useful for most people!  However, if you are considering a new training program for your contact center, it is helpful to have a general understanding, since this will help you better select when, where, and how your training should be delivered.

The categories are really broken down into three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.  Given the contact center environment, it is unlikely that you would have training that relates to the psychomotor domain, which focuses on physical skills.  Also, unless you are facing challenges with employee motivation or are rolling out a diversity training program, you will likely not be working much within the affective domain, which includes attitudes and feelings.  Contact center training will focus largely on the cognitive domain of knowledge and understanding.

The cognitive domain is broken down into the six categories of learning, progressing from the most basic (knowledge) to the most complex (evaluation); these categories are briefly reviewed below with a few examples from contact center training.

Even just this rudimentary understanding of learning categories can help you avoid common mistakes made when rolling out training.  For example, if CSRs are expected to act as decision makers in response to customer complaints, it is unlikely that solely training them on recalling a corporate policy (knowledge) will help them effectively make decisions about applying that policy to the vast variety of customer complaints.  Once you have a better understanding of the learning category that your training will likely encompass, you will be better able to determine the details of your training program including the delivery method, training location, course objectives, evaluation criteria, etc.