Category

call center

Why didi I name the Company Verbal Transactions?

By | AI, call center, collaboration, empathy, simulations

Why did I name my company Verbal Transactions? Think about it. Any time we speak to someone there is a transaction taking place. Asking your child to take the trash out has a value to it. You want to teach them responsibility and you need to get the garbage out of the house.

When speaking to a customer, you’re providing value to the relationship and the customer is expecting something in return – a transaction.

Recently Peter Cardon, the Bennis Chair in Teaching Excellence at the USC Marshall School of Business published an article in Fast Company to explain that with the increased use of AI, employers are placing more value on soft skills than ever before.

He states “72% of frequent AI users reported that oral communication will become more important, while 50% said that written communication will decrease in value as AI becomes better able to write in a convincingly human way.”

With the threats that AI brings into our lives and workplaces, the values of integrity, compassion, empathy etc. will rise higher in value to help protect us against deep fakes and hallucinations.

We’re seeing more and more employers wanting to provide soft-skill training to employees. One reason may be that the younger employee’s ability to harness their soft skills were stunted during COVID-19.

Just recently I was speaking to a manager in a call center who was stunned at how casual and non-professional some of their younger employee’s chat conversations were with customers.

By using a conversation simulator like our ACES software, we can provide a realistic and scalable way for employers to practice relevant co-worker or customer conversations and put into context why they should steer the conversation in one direction or the other.

 

The Power of Practice: Why Sales Reps Need to Practice Conversations Fifty Times

By | Adaptive Learning, call center, sales training

coaching employeesIn the dynamic world of sales, the ability to engage in effective conversations is paramount. Whether you’re pitching a product, negotiating a deal, or building relationships with clients, your communication skills can make or break your success. One key principle that many successful salespeople swear by is the idea of practicing conversations at least fifty times to become proficient. But why is this so important?

1. **Confidence Building**: Practice instills confidence. When you’ve rehearsed a conversation multiple times, you’ll feel more self-assured when facing real clients or prospects. Confidence is contagious and can significantly impact the way potential clients perceive you and your product.

2. **Refinement of Pitch**: Repetition allows you to fine-tune your pitch. Each practice round enables you to identify what works and what doesn’t. You can adjust your tone, language, and key points to create a compelling and persuasive message.

3. **Adaptability**: Through practice, you become more adaptable. You’ll learn to adjust your approach depending on the person you’re speaking to. This flexibility is crucial when dealing with a diverse range of clients, each with their own unique needs and preferences.

4. **Overcoming Objections**: Sales conversations often involve objections and pushback. By practicing these scenarios repeatedly, you can develop effective strategies to handle objections with finesse, turning potential obstacles into opportunities.

5. **Memorization**: Repeated practice helps you internalize key information and details about your product or service. This means you can speak confidently and authoritatively without relying on scripts or notes.

6. **Improved Listening Skills**: Effective communication is a two-way street. Practicing conversations allows you to develop your listening skills, helping you better understand client needs and tailor your responses accordingly.

7. **Consistency**: Consistency in your messaging is vital for brand integrity. Practicing conversations ensures that your team conveys a consistent and coherent message, reinforcing your brand’s identity.

In conclusion, the adage “practice makes perfect” holds true for sales reps. Repetition is a powerful tool that can transform a good salesperson into a great one. By practicing conversations at least fifty times, sales reps can build confidence, refine their pitch, become more adaptable, and consistently deliver outstanding results. In the competitive world of sales, mastering this art can be the key to achieving and surpassing your targets.

Simulations Speed time to Proficiency

By | Adaptive Learning, AI, bots, call center, contact Center, simulations

It’s a well-known fact that many call centers are challenged with getting agents up to speed as quickly as possible with a high degree of proficiency. The chart below shows the average time it takes for agents to become proficient. But we want to encourage you to start using simulations – like our ACES simulator

 

When we work with our customer’s call centers the #1 reason they use us is to get their agents up to speed faster.

Click here to see some examples

Not All IA is Evil

By | AI, bots, call center, simulations

It seems that AI (artificial intelligence) is getting more bad press than good these days. But my spin is that the good still outways the bad when it comes to the benefits of using AI-based applications and products.

For example, we are using AI to help accelerate the rate at which you can learn a new skill. I’ve seen this approach to using AI in education only at the K-12 level vs. the enterprise level as we are using it.  Most other training companies using AI to curate content to help cross-train employees on skills they need for their job. I would say this is one of the easier ways to apply AI technology.bots

Here is a list of some other “good” ways AI is being used to learn a new skill

  1. Using AI to learn how to speak in ASL (American Sign Language)
  2. Carnegie Learning is using to help teach math in a new way for K-12 students
  3. ACES (our own platform) for ensuring call center employees can demonstrate the appropriate level of English proficiency

One tail of caution though, we really want to ensure that we try to reduce the amount of bias that inherently may be embedded with these systems. I was recently asked by one of our clients if we could prove our AI did not contain any bias. I applaud them for asking this question as — again, this would suggest some sort of “evil” intent is being used.

We were fortunate to find a third-party study that showed our AI back-end (Microsoft’s NLP engine) scored the lowest word error rate. So as Spider Man’s uncle says “With great power comes great responsibility”

Simulations to Teach Coaches How to Coach

By | call center, contact Center, empathy

Practice without a purpose is wasted time

Many organizations are great at taking a top performer and promote them into a manager’s role. But what they forget is that not all good frontline employees are good managers.

Recently I was working with a client who wanted to find a new way to teach her managers how to be good coaches.

Let’s first define the difference between “telling” vs. “coaching”. In an article written by Julia Milner & Trenton Milner, in the Harvard Business Review, it presents a great case study on how you can teach managers to be good coaches. Many of them start off with telling employees what to do — this is NOT coaching.

Coaching is a combination of skills that allow the employee to come to a solution of their own accountability vs. being told exactly what to do. I made a two-step recommendation to my client. As she was overseeing Quality Analysts for a global software company, I recommended she first take a look at a Coaching for Performance certification program from Benchmark Portal. They have many certification programs but this seemed to be a great way to give the foundational skills needed to understand coaching. coaching employees

Then I recommended that she use our simulator to build tailored coaching conversations her QA could use to practice various scenarios. As stated in the HBR article, you need to let coaches practice in a safe environment. This is exactly why companies use our simulator. It provides realistic experiences that can blend all of the skills needed such as:

  • active listening
  • questioning
  • giving constructive feedback
  • assisting with goal setting
  • showing empathy
  • letting the coachee arrive at their own solution
  • recognizing and pointing out strengths
  • providing structure
  • encouraging a solution-focused approach

The embedded smart analytics reporting system will allow my client to access detailed metrics in real-time to see how well her QA’s are doing in the capstone activity of completing coaching simulations.

With many people still working remotely, it’s even more imperative that managers have the right skills to help their employees succeed.
If you’re curious to see how to use our simulator to build your own coaching simulations, please contact us.

Reducing Gladwell’s “10,000 Hours by 90%”

By | bots, call center, contact Center, simulations

Deliberate Practice vs. Traditional Training

I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell and I’m sure many of you are familiar with the term “10,000 hours to mastery”. This has since been proven to be taken out of context but he still references it as a guide to how long it takes for someone to master an innate skill. In Frans Johansson’s book, The Click Moment he explains that Deliberate Practice is a more likely predictor of success. Here are the core elements to Deliberate Practice

  1. Set a specific targeted goal or task you want to master
  2. Provide focused intense periods of practice
  3. Receive immediate feedback and self-correct
  4. Prepare to be uncomfortable in order to overcome barriers to success

One of the core reasons our customers use our simulator is that it uses this deliberate practice approach. Many of our customers need to get contact center agents up to speed quickly. Traditionally they are putting them on the front lines before they have had time to really master interacting with customers. By using our simulator, they see how this gives agents realistic practice so they can reduce the time it takes to get to mastery. Like Johannson’s approach, our simulator is a predictor of agent performance — here’s how.

  1. Simulations are built to look and feel just like your scenarios with a specific skill in mine – such as how to change credit card information, how to handle product returns etc.
  2. We recommend building different levels of immersion so that as agents score out of one level they continue to practice one transaction 3-4 times at a minimum
  3. They receive automatic immediate feedback from a built-in bot who guides them through how to handle verbal and on-screen interactions successfully
  4. They are uncomfortable at first due to the fact they have not had any exposure to this. Our conversational interactions are built on best practice responses. Once they become comfortable with each level, they can move on to more complex transactions

No need to use a crystal ball to try to determine who will be successful. Our ACES  automates this process. The intelligence embedded into the system, allows the managers to know right where in the transaction the agent may have gotten off track.

Businesses don’t have the luxury of 10,000 hours of time to help employees get up to speed on their skills. So imagine if you had the ability to help your agents master many of your complex transactions in 5-10 hours vs. 5-10 weeks? You can view some examples on our video page.

What Zoom (or other video collaborator) Are NOT Good For

By | call center, Employee Rewards, simulations

How Zoom Can be Mis-Used

Ok show of hands, how many of you have had a Zoom Happy Hour?  Or what about birthday parties and game night? In this crazy time of harboring in place, companies are scrambling for ways to keep employees connected, meetings on schedule, and finding ways to keep the doors open.

So beyond the recent security stories I am hearing about, there are situations where Zoom or other video collaboration tools may not be the best tool of choice.

  1. Sometimes just a good old conference call will do the trick. I sat through a painful video call as many of the participants kept dropping or speaking in jerky responses. If you really don’t need to “see” the attendees then just use phone or VOIP connections
  2. Training someone on a new piece of equipment or software application. Zoom is great to walk someone through what they need to do but they really won’t learn unless they can perform more “hands-on” activities. There are many applications out there that will allow you to build software simulations or like our ACES simulation software. Giving employees the ability to engage in a realistic hands-on situation is best done outside of a live video call.
  3. Employee performance review – again may be better done over the phone vs. video as if the connection is “iffy” it may take away from your message and the identified performance improvements you are trying to communicate.
  4. Showing appreciation – how about sending a physical card or letter vs. setting up a video session. This is a personal touch that will go a long way. My 90-year-old mother beams each time she mentions how much she enjoys the letters that I send to her on a quarterly basis. Needless to say, I get a lot of eye-rolling from any of my 12 siblings who may be in ear-shot of this. Why do you think we all get excited when that Amazon box shows up? We know what we ordered but it’s the emotional experience of opening a letter or package that makes it more special.
  5. Last but not least — don’t try to multi-task when in a video call (bathroom breaks). We’ve all heard some horror stories so stay focused on what you’re doing when participating and don’t distract the other participants.

 

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