How are people getting trained for live customer calls without turning training into a giant pile of docs
I help with training for a customer support team and one thing I keep running into is the gap between training and the actual job. We can give new hires solid onboarding. We can build a decent knowledge base. Can also run mock calls and have managers review recordings. Then they get on a real call with an annoyed customer and suddenly half of that training goes out the window. The hard part seems to be recall, an agent might know the policy but not remember it fast enough. Or they know the process but miss one step because they are trying to listen to the customer and search for an answer at the same time. We've also got a pretty big gap between our best reps and everyone else.
The top reps seem to know when to explain something differently or ask another question. That stuff is much harder to turn into a training module than basic product knowledge. Post call coaching helps but it also feels a bit like telling someone where they went wrong after the damage is done. And managers can only listen to so many calls anyway. I've been looking into more real time coaching tools like Cresta where agents get hints or guidance during the conversation based on what is happening. In theory I like it because it could reinforce training while someone is doing the actual job. But I can also see agents feeling like they're being watched by a robot all day if it's handled badly. What are your thoughts on this?