We provide our advice for training advisors to use empathy in the contact centre, before sharing some activities that will help you to develop empathy skills further.
Firstly, Assess Emotional Intelligence in Recruitment
To be a contact centre advisor, you need certain skills that are difficult to test in conventional one-to-one interviews. One of the skills is Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence is the skill behind empathy. While anyone can show empathy through acknowledging the customer’s issue, taking ownership of the customer’s problem and offering reassurance, only someone with high Emotional Intelligence will know how much of each is required, for each customer.
It’s important to get a sense of how people react in certain situations…
Jacqui Turner, the Founder of Turner Corner Learning Solutions, says: “It’s important to get a sense of how people react in certain situations, as ideally you want to find candidates who have the capability to reassure the customer and recognise the right actions that need to be taken, instead of just understanding their problem.”
How can you do this? Try using recruitment days whereby you introduce potential advisors to the contact centre before running activities and starting a conversation or two where empathy is required. How recruits react in these scenarios will give you a hint of their natural empathy levels.
DPD are one company which offers recruitment days.
