Defining Professionalism

Regarding The Caller Experience, some of the latest narratives found in publications include excellent ideas such as offering personalized service, providing a more human connection, deviating from the script, etc. but how do call centers get there?

The clear path to such Caller Experience excellence is Professionalism.

The performance skills of highly professional agent behavior are naturally personalized, they inherently provide a more human connection, and they obviously avoid the use of scripts. These are the basic requirements of highly professional agent performance, and such skills ensure consistent Caller Experience excellence.

To help create such behavior, BCI teaches agents a sizable but manageable number of clearly defined verbal components, based on grammar, tone, and phone manners, that define highly professional agent performance. And while these are easy for agents to master, the challenge is making sure they consistently put it all into practice.

Typically referred to as Quality Assurance or Monitoring, this is where training initiatives often lose their way and fail to produce the desired results. Why?

First and foremost is the use of scripts. Ask anyone about scripts, and the answers will be words such as robotic, fake, and impersonal 100% of the time. Never will anyone say, scripts sound great! and for good reason. Additionally, only small parts of an agent's conversations with callers can be scripted, leaving the vast majority of what an agent says and does completely unaccounted for and unmanaged.

The second issue is checklists. The limited measurement capability of checklists greatly limits their ability to manage agent performance, because the contextual complexities within full conversations between the agent and caller fall far outside checklist parameters, leaving most of what impacts the patient completely unaccounted for and unmanaged.

The third issue is speech analytics software. Sold as a modern solution able to somehow digitally save the day, its highly limited capabilities have never aligned with its bold claims.

The English language has been around for 1,400 years, and the rules of how to convey respect, warmth, and proper manners are not mysterious; we only need to recognize them, and this is what scripts, checklists, and software are unable to do.

Talking to people over the telephone is what call center agents do, and the quality of how they talk, based on grammar, tone, and manners, is what most determines the quality of the experience of the person. This is The Caller Experience.

The rules of talking in a highly professional manner are clear, specific, and easy for agents to master. The difficult part of the process is holding agents accountable, and the reliance on ineffective monitoring methods has caused much cynicism, greatly lowered the bar of performance expectations, squandered huge amounts of investment in training, created an entire cottage industry of experts trying to make sense of it all, and it is why many organizations remain dissatisfied with the quality of their agents' performance.

BCI offers a dynamic training and monitoring program that ensures agents use the most professional grammar, offer impeccable manners, and consistently convey a warm and sincere eagerness to help. We ensure agents follow all internal protocols, policies, and procedures as well. This is the definition of Professionalism, and it provides the clear and absolute solution to the Caller Experience challenge.