When iPhone brought out Siri, everyone was stunned by how personal she is and there’s no doubting the technology of Siri has continued to improve. Siri helps you do basic tasks, but let’s be honest, the best call center agents are going to have a job for a long time to come.
Here are the top characteristics that make an awesome call center agent.
1. Being Able To Learn And Recall Fast
A call center agent can get inundated with all sorts of random information from call to call, let alone thinking about everything across an entire day. A wicked call center agent will be able to learn and memorize lots of content across the company and understand the company culture.
Just as important, if they are dealing with something more than a FAQ, knowing who to pass the call onto when required is important.
2. Attention to Detail
Getting the same call with the same questions and answers time and time again can be pretty mind numbing. What a good call center agent does is still pay attention to the specifics of each call, essentially active listening. It’s easy to assume you’ll know what the answer is going to be but often clarification may be required which may change the entire outcome of the call.
3. Organization
Call centers can get hectic during the busiest times of the day with multiple people talking at once, different tasks needing to be finished ASAP and ensuring customer satisfaction is maintained. A super call center agent will be able to use little routines in their processes to ensure they don’t make any errors. That potential employee who submitted the wrong CV? Instantly should be ruled out of the running as a new call center agent.
4. Able To Adjust
Yay for humans and individual personalities! Not everyone is going to be easy going that you deal with. A flexible call center agent will be able to recognize personality traits of each caller in the first 20 seconds of a chat and be able to adjust the way they’re dealing with the query accordingly. This will ensure the customers stay happy and the results are achieved in the quickest time.
5. Friendly Personality
Call center agents are the face of many ‘faceless’ customers, therefore, they need to leave a good first impression. Friendly people reflect warm and friendly images to their customers and this will reflect on the customer’s outlook. This means those with a short temper won’t get too far working in a call center, especially with an ‘annoying’ customer. Of course, company culture plays a large role in this.
The best call center agents are a dime a dozen. While going through the hiring process, keep these five personality traits in mind and see if you notice them come through in certain people. You might not get all the boxes ticked, but at least four of the five should be present. Next week? Another five traits of a successful call center agent.