Once again, we find ourselves in the middle of the summer. Unlike many other functions, which are experiencing quite a slowdown, service organizations can get hectic as summer activities (e.g., travel, shopping, etc.) inevitably up the contact volume. During this time, many organizations start hiring seasonal reps and working to get them up to speed as quickly as possible. However, the cost of ineffectively onboarding all those new hires can have much further reaching consequences than a few minutes delay in your speed of answer.
Our colleagues over at the CEB Sales Leadership Council wrote a very popular blog on onboarding, so we thought we’d adapt it for our folks in customer service.
The key to getting your new hires on the road to productivity as quickly as possible is to have an effective onboarding plan. Yet, we often see some crucial components missing from many service organizations’ onboarding plans. As you finalize your onboarding plans for your newest class of service reps, make sure you include these three oft-overlooked aspects:
- Pre-Start Activities
Who says that onboarding can only begin once your rep has her laptop and security badge? If you have a month or two between when your new hires commit and when they actually take their seat, take advantage of the excitement they’ll be feeling after signing their offer to have them begin learning about your organization. The CEB Recruiting Leadership Council suggests sending new hires materials that highlight information about your company, encouraging hiring managers and future colleagues to invite new hires to team social events, and maintaining regular communication to address any questions they may have.
- A Social Component
It’s important to help new hires develop strong network connections within your organization early on. Building a community amongst new and recent hires allows reps to not only form deeper connections and become more engaged with the organization, but also helps to reinforce skills and lessons learned in training. And post-work happy hours aren’t the only way to build community. Chatter groups and dedicated listservs allow disparate groups of reps to stay engaged long after onboarding is over, providing a platform for them to share success stories and drive the enterprise contribution that CEB research has found so important to employee productivity and organizational success.
- Clear Ownership
Because so many stakeholders are involved in onboarding (HR, L&D, frontline supervisors) it’s easy for various onboarding activities to slip through the cracks if no one is tracking new reps’ progress in their onboarding activities. With no one to report to or to hold them responsible, new reps have no compulsion to invest time or effort into onboarding other than their own self-motivation. CEB has found that making managers responsible for checking in on new hires’ progress in onboarding activities allows to contextualize reps’ training and creates important opportunities for coaching moments. Furthermore, monitoring new reps’ progress early and frequently allows the service organization to take corrective measures against chronic underperformers early on.
And 1 Thing You Shouldn’t Have
In addition to these 3 things many organizations overlook when putting together an onboarding plan, there is also one thing that most onboarding programs have that they shouldn’t: excessive administrative activities. Traditional onboarding plans tend to emphasize logistics and corporate processes, along with anything else that various corporate stakeholders have determined might be good for new hires to know. The effect of this deluge of information, however, is that new reps quickly become overwhelmed and are unable to prioritize what is most important to learn and remember. Instead, onboarding should focus on training reps on common customer inquiries and developing the most needed service skills that will enable them to do this effectively.
To learn more about developing an effective service onboarding plan, visit the Onboarding topic center and check out our Effective Onboarding guideline.
CEB Resources: