The American writer William Arthur Ward once wrote: “Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.”
In other words: fail to jump upon an opportunity quickly, and it may pass you by.
Consider this in a contact center environment. Nowadays, perhaps the rarest opportunity is to hire skilled contact center agents.
Let them off the hook, and rival service operations will gleefully snap them up.
Yet, the next promising prospect will likely take longer than 24 hours to come along.
As such, from the initial candidate interaction, the process must move fast. Operations should engage prospects in a slick, orderly onboarding program.
In reality, this is much easier said than done – especially in remote environments.
The statistics reflect this struggle. Indeed, 55 percent of contact centers spend 6-12 weeks training and onboarding new agents, as per 2021 ProcedureFlow research.
However, there are measures contact centers can take to streamline the onboarding process.
Here are three excellent examples.
Eliminate Logistical Delays
New hires often experience a period of downtime as they wait for hardware to arrive. When this happens, their minds wander, they explore other job openings, and – ultimately - disengage.
As such, thinking through which elements of the onboarding program an agent can complete on their own devices – before receiving hardware from the business – can accelerate ramp-up time.
Contact centers may take this to the next level by implementing a bring your own device (BYOD) model – as the laptop is already at the employee’s location.
Such a strategy eliminates downtime, reduces costs, and simplifies onboarding, as agents are already familiar with navigating the system.
Teaming up with a security solutions provider – such as ThinScale – helps to safeguard such a model by solving the problems of BYOD.
Set the Virtual Workspace Up Quickly
Complex onboard programs often frustrate agents, especially when they have to setup their devices remotely – with little to no support.
Instead, contact centers should create as simple a set-up process as possible, with clear steps for agents to follow once they receive their device.