How to Identify Better Training Opportunities your Teams Need

Harmony within a team is an important factor all businesses need to consider. Whether you’re managing a high-flying sports team, or have a smaller-scale contact centre to run, if your team isn’t working together and being productive, performance can quickly drop. Finding a way to get the best out of your employees will lead to creating a better employee learning experience, but how can this be achieved?

As many businesses know, team training in the workplace is a vital component to ensure business goals can be achieved in the long term. With 75% of employees overall satisfied with the learning and development in their companies according to a recent workforce study, employees who know what they are doing and what is expected of them will have laser-focus and be overall more efficient. This isn’t easy to achieve, so relies on the right training being identified.

At Ventrica, we have employees in all corners of the UK and further afield, working both remote and hybrid roles. We know that to get the best in terms of performance, we need to focus on the overall employee experience (EX), otherwise, this can start to impact the customer experience – if you have disengaged employees, you’ll have unsatisfied customers. Here are some of the ways to identify better opportunities for team development training to avoid your CX taking a slide.

Talk To & Understand Your Employees

Simply engaging with your employees through conversation can do wonders for team training. To understand what it is your employees need to improve and develop in a role, simple conversations about this can open up the potential for training opportunities. If employees aren’t given the opportunity to feedback about their experiences, line managers may not fully understand how they can help them. As many as will stay at a company longer if there is investment in their career development, so being as proactive as possible is crucial in terms of retention. You may even find that more than one employee has had the same experience or start to see a trend from the feedback you receive. This is why it is crucial to open a feedback loop with your employees.

Having regular meetings and opportunities to talk about development will identify at an individual and team level what needs to be improved. Holding feedback forums is one way to bring employees together to discuss what matters to them. It will provide an opportunity for them to talk openly and for you to ask the right questions about their training and development needs. In a contact centre environment, you may find that more training is needed on using certain systems, how to deal with difficult conversations with customers, time management, or even health and wellbeing opportunities. This can all be discovered through speaking to your employees regularly rather than waiting for them to come to you. Appointing a representative in your team who is a people champion is also effective in doing this. Employees will then know exactly who to speak with to provide feedback, and your people champion can also develop surveys and focus groups to proactively seek and receive this too.

Gather Feedback from Customers

Not only does speaking with your employees open the door to better team development training but gathering feedback from your customers can identify a much-needed focus for this too. Your customers will interact with your teams regularly throughout the customer journey, meaning they are best placed to provide honest feedback on what’s going well and what isn’t. If your company is not doing so already, collecting insights from your customers through feedback surveys, CSAT, NPS and review sites, should be shared with your teams. This includes not just any negative feedback but also the positives, which hopefully should outweigh the amount of negativity. This is important because it will show your employees the full impact of their performance and day-to-day on the customer experience, keeping them engaged with their efforts.

Regularly sharing customer feedback with employees is an effective way to not only engage them but identify where training is required. If employees have had feedback on putting customers on hold, you can craft training around helping to address this and reduce hold times. If a customer is unhappy with a lack of empathy and attentiveness on a call, you can look to listen to calls and identify how to help employees actively listen and build rapport with customers. There are various ways customer feedback can have a huge impact on team training in the workplace.

With customers who enjoy positive CX potentially spending 140% more than those reporting negative experiences according to Deloitte, putting the effort into training that’s related to customer feedback is good for business.With customers who enjoy positive CX potentially spending 140% more than those reporting negative experiences according to Deloitte, putting the effort into training that’s related to customer feedback is good for business.

Create Development Plans with Clear Goals

The development of your employees can only be achieved when tracking performance, and this all starts with clear goal-setting and development plans. Without setting expectations for your employees, whether it’s individual development goals or overall team ones, it can leave employees with a lack of focus.From the onboarding process to regular performance reviews with established staff, having this direction throughout their career in your company assists the employee experience. Having these goals and plans will help to direct what training is needed to achieve them. However, not all employees are happy with the chosen training opportunities provided. According to Gartner, 45% of employees will leave their current employers for better professional development opportunities, meaning many want to see improvements to training. If you have remote working employees, clear expectations and goals will keep them on the right track whilst working away from an office environment unsupervised. One of the biggest challenges with managing a remote team’s training is with systems and technology and working alone, with 40% of employees struggling due to a lack of suitable work space, missing their co-workers, and technology issues. This will have an impact on EX and can lead to employees feeling burned out or disengaged. Spending the time to work on personal development plans for both remote and in-office employees will quickly identify where training resources are needed.

Enhancing the Employee Experience for Better CX

The ultimate goal of providing better training opportunities is to improve both EX and CX. You want your business to have advocates both internally with your employees as well as your customers, helping to improve the experience for others and attract new customers. It will also strengthen brand loyalty and in turn help improve revenue. Most companies are aware that team training is crucial for the success of their business in the long term, but may struggle to deliver this effectively depending on their existing resources and team size. According to PWC, as many as 39% of employees are concerned about not getting sufficient training in digital and technology skills from their employer. Fortunately, to help deliver the CX customers need and expect, outsourcing processes can provide a huge boost for companies that are struggling.

At Ventrica, we can provide BPO solutions that enable businesses to focus on what matters to them. It can help free up resources to put back into training, whilst also providing support to meet peak demand with our experienced employees ready to deliver the CX your customers need.

To learn more about how we can help your brand overcome its challenges with both EX and CX, talk to us today.