SEW recognised that their SIM performance needed improving, particularly in the contact centre, where they found that staff turnover was too high, knowledge was lacking and morale was low. BeSPOKE was invited to develop a training strategy for combating some of these areas. The key developments were; creating a training team to strengthen the internal provision, develop skills in recruiting and interviewing the right people, building a robust induction programme and developing the team leader population in team leadership. At the outset, SEW had found themselves at the bottom of the league table.
SEW improved their SIM results from being at the bottom (21st) of the table to 10th in just over a year, a climb of over 10 places!
Creating the Commit and Deliver Training Team
A training team was recruited internally to strengthen the current provision of one trainer. The team were provided with a train the trainer programme to compliment their natural talent, mentored by BeSPOKE and latterly further developed their skills and knowledge by attending a 2.5 day workshop on Accelerated Learning (for further info on this workshop, click here), from which new ideas on course design and delivery were implemented.
Competency Based Interviewing
One of the first deliverables of the training strategy was to provide more skills to interviewers in terms of Competency Based Interviewing. Delivered by the internal training team, better selections were made and new starters were staying longer.
Robust Induction
The role of the Contact Centre Advisor is quite a complex one, and the existing induction programme was too brief and was not being delivered in the most effective way. The induction programme was increased to ensure a full rounded basic knowledge was gained in a building block approach, creating more confidence in new recruits
Up-skilling
As the training function had been so stretched previously, there was a varying level of skills and knowledge where some team members had been learnt using the ‘sitting with Nellie’ approach. Using a needs analysis, lacking knowledge and skills were identified and appropriate learning interventions were made available to increase the overall skill level.
Team Leadership
Finally, this all needed to be under-pinned by the operation. Perfecting Performance was a large development programme for Team Leaders, which focussed on coaching skills and quality monitoring to ensure that advisors were maintaining excellent levels of service and any issues could be rectified early.
