There are two options to consider when establishing your approach to contact center training programs: off-the-shelf and custom call center training courses. The key differentiator between off-the-shelf and customized training lies in the level of personalization and adaptability to the unique needs of a specific organization.
Off-the-shelf contact center training courses and custom call center training solutions each have pros and cons. An organization’s choice between the two often relies on various influencing factors, including budgetary constraints, implementation timelines, and the complexity of its specific contact center operations. This blog dives into the pros and cons of off-the-shelf and custom contact center learning and explores best practices for making the right decision for your operation.
Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training
What is Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training?
Off-the-shelf call center training is ready-made with content focused on generalized, foundational, or universal topics. Because these programs are designed for a broad audience and are ready for immediate deployment at any given moment, the training is purchased “as is” without any customization to your specific practices or brand.
The Pros of Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training
1. Off-the-Shelf Training Programs Create Cost Savings
The lower upfront cost of off-the-shelf call center training programs is one of its most celebrated benefits. Because the training vendor only needs to invest once in developing an off-the-shelf training course, they can sell it to you at an enticingly low price point while continuing to profit indefinitely from continued sales. Moreover, purchasing off-the-shelf content saves you money on hiring, training, and providing benefits for an internal training team.
2. Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training Programs Can be Implemented Immediately
Unlike custom courses that can take months to develop, off-the-shelf call center training can be implemented immediately after purchase. Therefore, you don't need to worry about wasting time testing your training software or facilitation methods, and your employees can immediately realize the course's benefits.
3. Off-the-Shelf Training Eliminates the Need for a Dedicated Internal Curriculum Development Team
Depending on the scope or scale of your contact center operation, hiring a dedicated in-house call center training development team can significantly strain your time, effort, and financial resources. An internal training development team requires the resources of your talent acquisition department and your leadership’s time to train those individuals. You can also anticipate notable financial impact from paying for their time and expertise. Moreover, the recurring costs of the tools and resources required for the team to continue operating can take a major toll on your budget.
4. Off-the-Shelf Training Programs Deliver Content That Meets the Industry Standard
Since off-the-shelf call center training programs have a broad audience and are sold to many customers, the content is designed to upskill all learners to generalized and universal industry standards. Therefore, so long as the teachings are executed successfully, you know your operation will be able to perform to the standard industry benchmark
Most companies seek to stand out, not blend in with their competitors. This means that companies with a vision for greater success are training their people to operate above the industry standard, and you will need to upskill your people more comprehensively to achieve a higher mission and exceed the mark.
5. Contact Center Industry Experts Develop Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training Programs
In most cases, off-the-shelf call center training is created by experienced SMEs who are well-versed in the topics, know which information must be covered to improve contact center performance, and how to deliver it in an easily digestible format. The result of utilizing training backed by field experts is increased knowledge retention and recall, which improves your contact center training ROI. Moreover, it also means that you don’t have to invest in hiring and developing your SMEs to access that same realm of knowledge.
The Cons of Purchasing Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training
1. Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training Cannot be Custom Branded
In most cases, off-the-shelf call center training programs cannot integrate your specific branding elements into the content. This includes logos, color schemes, and other elements that align with your company's image, which inhibits your ability to establish credibility internally.
2. Content May Not Align with Your Business Objectives When Using Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training
While the content may be standard for your general industry, off-the-shelf call center training programs are unlikely to support any unique operational initiatives or goals. For example, a customer service skills course will educate your agents on delivering the industry standard for customer service. Still, if your specific goal is to provide personalized customer interaction with every query, the curriculum will not support that distinct vision.
3. Off-the-Shelf Call Center Cannot Be Personalized to Your Unique Operations
Generic off-the-shelf call center training content may enable a certain baseline, but that baseline will not reference your distinct operations. As a jumping-off point, a generic curriculum might be a decent resource for background. However, without personalization to your organization's brand, goals, organizational structure, products and services, and SOPs, the content's applicability to your operation is significantly limited.
As a result, your contact center customer service agents won’t have insight into how this knowledge translates to their day-to-day work. You’ll have given agents some building blocks but no information about what they should build or how to build it. Thus, you cannot expect this training to help drive progress toward your business’ vision for success.
4. Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training is Limited by Licensing and Subscription Requirements
Subscriptions and licenses for off-the-shelf call center training require regular renewal, which can range anywhere from every month to every couple of years, requiring you to budget for reinvestment and additional licensures for new employees as your call center grows. You must also prepare for these licenses or subscriptions to increase over time. These unknown increases can make it difficult to budget for renewals and may require you to reinvest in finding a new vendor at a lower price point.
5. Off-the-Shelf Call Center Training Curriculums Have Revision Constraints
Off-the-shelf call center training programs cannot meet the needs of organizations whose curriculums require a regular revision schedule. Curriculum audits and revisions are especially critical if your business operates within an industry that must function and perform within a system of compliance regulations.
If any official entity governs your operation, or if you handle sensitive customer information (personal, financial, or medical details), you must be prepared to realign with new regulatory mandates as compliance requirements evolve. Your off-the-shelf contact center training content will not develop alongside these changes, meaning you will undoubtedly have to purchase new training to ensure you meet all compliance requirements.
Custom Call Center Training
What is Custom Call Center Training?
Custom call center training refers to training content tailored to meet the specific needs and requirements of your distinct call center operation. Custom contact center training courses are designed to address your unique functions, challenges, and goals to drive progress toward achieving greater performance.
The Pros of Custom Call Center Training Programs
1. Custom Call Center Training Allows You to Customize Both Content and Branding
Because call center training content is developed to align with your specific products, services, and processes, you can be confident that the training materials are directly relevant to the tasks and responsibilities that your call center agents handle daily.
Look for a custom contact center training vendor that can include specific training activities, such as scenario-based training practice sessions, so your employees can learn best practices in executing their skills while still in the learning environment. This customization enables your employees to immediately translate their learnings to day-to-day activities, improving speed-to-competency, utilization, engagement, and improvement to customer experience-centric performance metrics.
This customization is also critical when conducting new hire onboarding training. Off-the-shelf call center training will never be able to meet your needs when training new employees on items such as internal policies and procedures.
2. Custom Call Center Training Aligns with Your Business Objectives
Custom call center training aligns with your business objectives to ensure employees have the skills, knowledge, and mindset to support your organization's success effectively. It creates a sense of purpose, enhances engagement, and maximizes the impact of training efforts on business outcomes.
3. Custom Call Center Training Supports Operational Scalability
As your company and success grow, so will the scale of the workforce you need to train, the topics they need to be trained in, and the depth of content your custom call center training curriculum needs to cover. Off-the-shelf training is a one-size-fits-some solution that doesn’t grow alongside you, whereas custom call center training can be continuously audited, adjusted, and augmented to ensure support through all stages of operational growth.
4. Custom Call Center Training Offers Flexible and Diverse Delivery Methods
The need for flexibility in delivery methodology for your custom call center training extends beyond the decision to conduct training in-person or virtually. According to Indeed, there are 15 different training delivery methods, often used concurrently for optimal learning, and the ideal method for a particular course depends on the training’s purpose and the participants’ specific job roles.
Off-the-shelf training is often sold in a singular hands-off format and is typically designed for digital consumption. This approach leaves much to be desired if you want to see any ROI on your training investment. Take the time to find the right training vendor to incorporate a combination of these 15 delivery methods to ensure you see the promised performance results.
5. Custom Training Programs are Compatible with Your Learning Management System
spend resources on live facilitation or exert additional effort to track participation, certification, training regulation, and compliance requirements, etc. Additionally, your employees will already be familiar with the training delivery platform, which saves time and money in system training and ramp.
The Cons of Custom Call Center Training
1. Custom Call Center Training May Have a Higher Upfront Cost Than Off-the-Shelf Training
Custom call center training may have higher upfront costs than off-the-shelf courses. This is due to the time and effort it takes for your training vendor to learn about your needs and organization, storyboard and build out unique content, and brand the content to your company standards.
2. Custom Call Center Training May Have a Longer Implementation Timeline Than Off-the-Shelf Training
Because custom call center training takes time to create and process through your review and approvals cycle, it has a more extended purchase-to-implementation timeline than off-the-shelf training.
3. Custom Call Center Training Requires Finding the Right Partner
Choosing the right contact center training partner is critical to the success of your training program. The process of vetting training vendors may feel tedious, but partnering with a team of experts that truly understand your industry and operational approach is the key to maximizing ROI on your training investment. To further ensure success, prioritize vendors with a proven track record of helping similar organizations achieve their training and performance goals.
How to Choose Between Off-the-Shelf and Custom Call Center Training Programs
Choosing off-the-shelf or custom call center training programs should rely on your resources, objectives, and customization required to achieve desired outcomes. Some contact centers may opt for a blend of both approaches to balance cost-effectiveness and customization.
When deciding whether to invest in off-the-shelf or custom call center training programs, your team should evaluate several critical needs:
- What is the budget?
- What are the overall objectives for this training program?
- What specific contact center challenges does this training need to solve?
- What is the timeline for launching the new call center training program?
Diverse Call Center Training Services to Meet Every Operational Need
Since 2007, Insite’s training and contact center operations experts have developed and facilitated an extensive catalog of training courses. We offer the flexibility of both off-the-shelf call center training programs and custom call center training solutions. This versatility enables you to access immediate, cost-effective solutions for standard training requirements and leverage our expertise for tailor-made courses that meet your specialized training needs.
Our dedication to continuous improvement ensures that our training content stays current in the fast-evolving landscape of the contact center industry. With Insite as your call center training partner, you can effortlessly and confidently equip employees with the skills to excel, unlock their full potential, and drive sustainable business success.
Implement the Right Call Center Training to Achieve Breakthrough Performance
Connect with one of our experts today to learn more about how our off-the-shelf and fully customizable contact center training programs can help you surpass performance goals for unprecedented success. Are you searching for additional call center training course resources? Browse our comprehensive catalog of call center training programs.
