Call centre training usually starts with the software. Here is how to log in, here are the buttons, here is where you write the note.
That is the least important part and the easiest to learn. A new agent will have the buttons within a day. What takes a fortnight is knowing what to say, and that is what the first week should be for.
Day one: listen
No calls. The new agent sits with your best agent — not your most senior, your best — and listens to live calls for most of the day.
Give them one job: write down every question they hear, and every answer.
By the end of the day they will have a list of fifteen to twenty questions, and they will have noticed that four of them are most of the work. That list is more useful than any training manual you could write, because they wrote it.
Day two: the four calls
Take the four commonest calls from yesterday’s list and work through each one properly.
For each: what the customer actually wants, what you need from them, what you do, what you say, and what you do afterwards. Role-play each one twice, badly then better.
Then the buttons. An hour, maybe less, because now the system has a purpose. “This is where you write the note that the next person will read” means something on day two in a way it cannot on day one.
Day three: real calls, side by side
The new agent takes calls with the experienced one beside them. Not listening in from elsewhere — beside them, able to lean in.
Start with the easiest category and widen through the day. Expect the first three calls to be slow and slightly painful. That is correct.
The rule for the person supervising: do not take over. Let the call be imperfect. Taking the handset teaches the new agent that they cannot do it.
Day four: alone, with a safety net
The new agent takes calls on their own, with somebody available who they can transfer to without embarrassment.
Agree the escape route explicitly: “if you do not know, say ‘let me check that for you’, put them on hold, and ask me.” Having permission to not know is the thing that stops new agents guessing, and guessing is what costs you customers.
Day five: listen back
Pick three of their own calls from the week and listen to them together.
This is the most valuable hour of the week and the one most often skipped.
Rules for it: start with what was good and mean it; pick one thing to change, not five; and let them hear themselves rather than being told. People correct their own calls far more readily than they accept correction.
What to teach that is not on the system
Three things decide whether somebody is good at this, and none of them are software.
How to say no. Most new agents either promise what they cannot deliver or go rigid. “I cannot do that, but here is what I can do” is a sentence worth practising aloud.
How to handle anger. Not with a script. With one idea: the person is angry about the situation, not about you, and the fastest route out is to show you have understood before you explain anything.
How to end a call. New agents let calls drift because ending feels rude. “Is there anything else I can help with today?” is a complete and polite ending, and it is worth half an hour of practice.
What not to do in week one
Do not set targets. Handling time, calls per hour, any of it. A new agent who is being measured will rush, and rushing in week one builds habits that last.
Do not give them the hardest queue. Start narrow and widen.
Do not leave them alone on day two. It happens constantly when a desk is short-staffed, and it is the main reason new agents leave in the first fortnight.
Do not teach every feature. They need the phone, the customer record and the note field. Everything else can wait until they ask.
Week two onwards
Three calls reviewed together each week, for the first month. Fifteen minutes. Then monthly.
The desks that do this have agents who get better. The desks that do not have agents who plateau in month two and stay there, and then a manager wondering why the numbers do not move. The numbers worth watching are here — but the calls are where the answers are.