Call Center Crash Course, Does It Help?

During the early years of the call center industry, one of the most in-demand services is English proficiency training, since customer service and outbound telemarketing for the US that time was something relatively new to Filipinos and that for us to be able to cope with it, an excellent command of the English language is a must and we have to admit that those kind of training really helped a lot. Now, as years go by, because of the rapid growth of the industry and the huge demand of agents it entails, most BPO companies decided to do in-house training, fusing it with the company’s existing training procedure which actually help them save time and of course money. Because of this, the need for training services from third party companies had lessened dramatically. During its silence, a new breed of training centers came out, the call center training institutes that offers short term courses for people who wants to enter the call center industry, they provide basic trainings such as grammar, American culture, geography and a little bit of everything.

I would say it’s a good idea but If you would really want to be a competitive candidate for any call center, it would take more than a crash course to get you in, especially if you are competing with other candidates that already had call center experiences, I’ve done recruitment before for a call center in Ortigas and I would say that I’m not that impressed with applicants that boasts about their call center training, I’m not saying that they are terrible, all I’m trying to say is, if I want myself trained, I would definitely want to know what’s really important. What I’m pointing out is to go more in dept and focus on the important parts. If you want to train call center agents, train them on phone skills, phone ethics, build confidence, spontaneity and train them to think on their feet. Most of the applicants I interviewed before can’t even look straight at me and can’t even express themselves. Bottom line is, for people out there who are planning to take training courses for call center, look at what they have to offer, what’s their training program and what does it cover. For those who are doing training and are planning to do call center training, consider my words as pieces of advice, all of those came from first hand experiences.

-rgs