In recent years, pre-hire assessment and training software tools for call center agents have focused more on simulating specific aspects of the job, such as looking up customers' records during calls, in addition to illustrating general principles of customer service.
Thanks to tools and services such as Employment Technologies' (ETC; Winter Park, FL) Team Leader Readiness Simulation (TLRS), a similar approach is now available for assessing prospective call center supervisors.
ETC, which offers software and services to help call centers assess and develop agents for careers in call centers, introduced the simulation last spring at Call Center Demo and Conference in Orlando, where it was among the winners of a best-of-show award.
The simulated scenarios, which ETC presents to would-be team leaders to gauge their probability of success as supervisors, are components of a much broader assessment. In addition to a computer simulation, TLRS comprises a face-to-face simulation, which plays out similar scenarios to those from the computer simulation, as well as career development plans and interview questions for prospective supervisors.
Although our test drive focuses on the computer simulation, it's worth noting that the evaluation report that follows the simulation includes the career development plan, known as CareeRx.
Background
One of the strongest aspects of TLRS is how clearly the introduction to the simulation outlines two overriding responsibilities of team leaders: to improve agent performance and reduce agent turnover.
To determine whether a prospective supervisor possesses the ability to accomplish these goals, the simulation presents nine scenarios that correspond to circumstances that team leaders are likely to encounter. The introduction points out that the simulation will evaluate how well prospective supervisors demonstrate the following skills and traits: coaching, building relationships, solving problems, team building, decisiveness and analytical thinking.
These are more than mere words; upon completing a simulation, a prospective supervisor receives a report that ranks him or her with regard to these traits. The ranking reflects a scale that ETC has developed rather than a relative ranking based on how one's colleagues within the same organization performed during the simulation.
One noteworthy concept that the simulation implicitly conveys is that agents have developmental needs, and that to enable an agent to perform as best as possible, a supervisor has to recognize and act on these needs. This is the foundation of agent development, which Keith Dawson discusses in his feature article; what's admirable about Team Leader Readiness Simulation is that it extends the concept of development from agents to supervisors. The assessment is constructive in offering potential leaders guidance on how to build their supervisory skills.
Scenarios for Supervisors
Like most training and simulation tools for agents, Team Leader Readiness Simulation presents would-be supervisors with a series of multiple ways to respond to a colleague during a scenario.
TLRS does a good job of showing those who undergo assessments how to navigate through the simulation. Immediately before the simulation, TLRS allows for a seven-minute review of the information that's available to team leaders during the scenarios, including performance goals, reports about individual agents, reports about teams of agents, attendance policies and e-mail correspondence from the call center manager who directly supervises team leaders. (The reports, policies and e-mail correspondence are available for reference throughout the simulation.) TLRS also runs through a practice scenario before starting the simulation in earnest.
Would-be supervisors have an hour and 45 minutes to complete the nine scenarios that make up the simulation. TLRS only lets prospective supervisors complete scenarios, and their corresponding questions, in sequence; it doesn't provide the option of going back and changing answers once they're submitted.
The scenarios involve a newly-hired team leader's interactions with her boss, the manager of a service bureau, and three teams of agents who handle calls on behalf of three clients. The nine scenarios follow a tripartite division, focusing on one's aptitude with evaluating agents, resolving confrontations and using performance indicators to support decisions. Scenarios one through three illustrate how a team leader reviews recordings of calls on evaluation forms, and how she shares this feedback verbally with the agents whose calls she has monitored. The next three scenarios depict confrontations between an agent and a caller; between an agent and the team leader; and between agents on the same team. The last three scenarios, which highlight problem-solving and analysis, involve discovering the sources of a team's poor sales efforts; preventing the loss of a top-performing agent; and devising the best mix of agents to handle inbound and outbound calls.
TLRS excels at revealing the uncertainty that underscores a team leader's decisions throughout the day. Methods of resolving conflict and interpretations of data aren't always immediately discernable as right and wrong; clarity about the effectiveness of a decision usually comes afterward by examining the decision's outcome. That is why TLRS places the least difficult scenarios, evaluations of calls, at the beginning, while saving the most difficult decision, how to assign agents to new sets of teams, for the end.
Despite its function as an assessment rather than a training tool, TLRS does mitigate its depiction of uncertainty by modeling ideal behavior. TLRS doesn't reveal answers, but it does show the simulated supervisor acting in a manner that suggests she always chooses the best possible responses. A small number of questions, like the one shown in figure 2, are explicitly multiple-choice questions for which the answers become apparent later in the same scenario. What's more, e-mail correspondence from the call center manager, performance reports and details about the call center's human resources policies are easily available throughout the entire simulation, so a would-be supervisor has access to information to support his or her decisions during each scenario.
A less apparent way that ETC, TLRS' developer, seeks to counter uncertainty is by surveying team leaders about the activities and skills they consider to be most important for performing well as supervisors. It is this real-life feedback from team leaders that lends relevance to TLRS' scenarios, and the skills they illustrate, during the simulation.
Areas of Opportunity
The impact of TLRS is most visible in the report that follows the simulation. The report characterizes the would-be supervisor's strengths and developmental needs in the areas TLRS evaluates.
We, too, noted strengths and ways to improve the computer simulation component of TLRS. One minor issue we encountered is that the simulation doesn't run at all if the computer doesn't have Windows Media Player version 9 or later installed on it. The user's manual cites this technical requirement, and it would be helpful if the simulation's introduction (which doesn't require Windows Media Player) also presented a reminder.
A more significant challenge was that we developed the habit of ranking possible responses against each other rather than, as TLRS instructs with most of the questions, evaluating a response on its own merit. We suspect that our behavior is not uncommon, and this habit of answering multiple-choice questions may inadvertently lead prospective supervisors to choose responses that they know are not accurate because they perceive that it's not possible for them to designate more than one response to a situation as very effective or very ineffective. The introduction to the simulation ought to reiterate more often the correct way to rank responses.
Overall, TLRS' computer assessment is a logical yet realistic portrayal of a team leader's role as a manager of people and their performance. Simulation doesn't occur in isolation, so ETC recommends that the computer and face-to-face simulations take place first so that they can serve as the basis for CareeRx's development plans. With regard to skills where TLRS identifies the greatest need for improvement, the CareeRx portion of the report outlines specific job-related tasks in these areas. For supervisors whom TLRS designates as requiring help with analytical thinking, for instance, job-related activities can include anticipating periods of peak call volumes or reviewing team performance statistics to locate potential sources of problems.
ETC also advises that the last steps of assessments be the interviews, where prospective supervisors recount how they dealt with difficult circumstances that correspond to issues they will face as team leaders. As you'll read in the sidebar, ETC offers annual pricing for all four components of TLRS; the cost includes implementation and technical support.
TLRS' assessment is valuable not only for potential team leaders, but also for those who are currently supervisors. We especially appreciate that TLRS doesn't simply state whether someone qualifies to be a supervisor; it outlines valuable suggestions for how team leaders in call centers can grow in their careers.
Snapshot of ETC's Team Leader Readiness Simulation
COMPANY: Employment Technologies (ETC; Winter Park, FL)
PRODUCT: Team Leader Readiness Simulation
STRENGTHS: Background and instructions for the assessment are generally easy to understand; scenarios are relevant and convincing; completing the assessment is straightforward.
AREAS TO IMPROVE: Assessment involves a counterintuitive process for selecting answers to multiple-choice questions.
OTHER COMPONENTS: Face-to-face simulations; individual career development plans, based on the results of simulations; and behavioral interview questions.
PRICING: Starts at $8,500 for an annual license for an unlimited number of assessments at a single call center site. Volume discounts are available for licenses for multiple sites.
CONTACT: 800-833-3279/407-865-6644, www.etc-easy.com
