By Q. Malloy

| 17 Sep 2020

Agents, People management

Training for call center agents – Useful guide

In today’s increasingly competitive and digital world, having a well-trained team makes all the difference. Investing in your call center’s training not only improves the customer experience but also boosts team motivation, reduces turnover, and drives better business results.

If you lead a call center team, you probably already know that the quality of every interaction depends on how well-prepared your agents are.

That’s why this guide offers resources, free courses, corporate training, and internal development programs to help you design effective training plans tailored to your team’s needs — whether for new hires or experienced agents.

What Is a Call Center and What Does an Agent Do?

A call center is a phone-based customer service hub that handles client contacts, whether it’s answering questions, managing complaints, or selling products.
The main difference between a call center and a contact center is that call centers focus on phone calls, while contact centers also handle chats, emails, and social media.
Typical tasks of a teleoperator include:

Handling incoming and outgoing calls.
Resolving issues and logging information.
Following protocols and meeting targets.

Master every essential call center term.

Read the Glossary

Why Is Proper Training for Your Agents Important?

Having strong call center training for your team allows you to:

Reduce errors and improve customer experience: Well-trained agents handle calls better, resolving questions and issues efficiently and kindly.
Develop key skills: Training strengthens active listening, conflict management, and the use of technological tools—essential for professional service.
Speed up onboarding of new agents: A structured training program helps newcomers quickly understand processes and protocols, shortening their learning curve.
Increase motivation and reduce turnover: Confident, competent agents feel more valued and engaged, which lowers burnout and attrition.

Additionally, training encourages internal promotion by preparing your team to take on greater responsibilities and helps improve key customer service quality and efficiency metrics (KPIs).

Types of Call Center Training You Can Implement

Free Call Center Courses

Platforms like Coursera and Udemy offer a wide range of free courses focused on training call center agents, which you can easily recommend to your team to strengthen their knowledge and skills. These courses typically cover basic customer service topics, communication techniques, and the use of digital tools—ideal for complementing internal training.

One of the main advantages of these courses is that they are accessible to anyone with an internet connection and are completely free, making it easy for all agents to train without adding extra costs for the company.

However, a significant drawback is that these courses often provide less personalized support. Without tutors or instructors available to directly answer questions, some agents may feel less supported during the process and find it harder to clarify specific concepts or apply what they’ve learned to concrete call center situations.

Paid and Specialized Courses

If you are looking for advanced training tailored to your team’s needs, there are several paid courses and specialized programs that can make a real difference:

Consulting C3 is a specialized consultancy offering customized training for contact center professionals. Their programs cover communication skills, telephone sales techniques, leadership, conflict resolution, and team management. They also provide training for managers and care for vulnerable people.
Edutin Academy offers many free courses, with affordable certification fees. Their training focuses on communication, conflict management, customer loyalty, and practical simulations in real customer service environments.
SC Training (formerly EdApp) is an LMS platform offering customizable courses for call center teams, with mobile access, microlearning, gamification, and live videoconferences. Their courses include call preparation, vocal etiquette, handling difficult customers, and leadership, with certification and progress tracking.
International providers such as Universal Class, Bonfire Training, ICMI, and COPC offer online and live courses with international certifications and modules on management, leadership, and strategic planning, both self-paced and instructor-led.

Common features of these courses include:

Certification upon completion, sometimes with international recognition
Access to videos, readings, and practical exercises
Real-case simulations and continuous assessments
Availability for agents, supervisors, and managers

Internal Call Center Training

Most companies invest in their own call center training plans for new agents, usually lasting between 1 and 4 weeks. These onboarding programs are designed to effectively integrate employees by combining learning about company culture with acquiring technical skills and soft skills.

Typical content includes:

Introduction to the company, its mission, values, and structure
Provision of resources and access to technological tools
Technical training on products, software, and internal procedures
Supervised practice and simulations of real calls to gain experience
Development of soft skills like effective communication, conflict management, and teamwork

This comprehensive approach helps agents start confidently and quickly, ensuring consistent and quality customer service from day one.

Free Trials and Software Demos

Incorporate practical sessions with the call center software your team will use. For example, CloudTalk’s demo consists of a meeting with an account executive who explains how the platform works, answers questions, and shows how to get the most out of it. This experience helps supervisors and managers better understand the tool and prepare their agents more effectively.

Call Center Training Guide: How to Train Call Center Agents?

Let’s dig into the best practices for training call center employees.

Run a Kick-off Meeting

Start the training process with the right energy. Introduce managers involved in delivering customer support. That way, employees can get familiar with supervisors and find out what are their fields of expertise. It’s crucial for new hires to know who can answer their potential questions and save the day if needed.

Moreover, give your employees space to introduce themselves and network so that they can feel more comfortable in your team. A friendly and open atmosphere is crucial for successful onboarding and work.

Explain Your Business Vision and the Industry Specifics

Every new employee should get familiar with the company’s mission, values, policy and key functions of call center. Once everyone in the team has a consistent vision of your business, you can build strong relationships with customers as one team.

Additionally, educate the participants of the training on the industry you’re working in. It’s essential to identify the customers and share some insights on their common issues.

As every company is different and has a diverse target group, you need to fill in your new employees, even if they worked in a call center before. Save their time on discovering such things on their own and let them know your customers even before the first interaction.

Show the Trainees How It’s Done

The best way to teach someone is to present an exceptional example. While training call center employees you should make the most of your previous experiences.

Play the call recording to show how to handle some cases in practice. You can even choose the interactions with the troubled customers when your agents stayed calm and turned a frustrated customer into a satisfied client.

You can also involve your top-performing agents in training to share their practical tips and encourage your new employees.

On top of that, hand your team call scripts so that they can get familiar with the expected call scenarios. Remember to save some space for improvising and modifying the scripts if needed. Ask your trainees for an opinion on the scripts and if they have any ideas for improvements. Let them know you’re open to suggestions.

Pay Attention to Phone Etiquette

While training, the new agents focus not only on the factual knowledge but also on the soft skills. It’s the time to go through phone etiquette and establish what you’re expecting in that area. Make sure your team understands how to communicate with potential and existing customers with adequate respect.

Clarify the KPI’s

Onboarding is a great time to explain your expectations towards the call center team. Set up key performance indicators for your call center such as average handle time, call accuracy, productivity, punctuality, attendance, and customer satisfaction.

Remember not to focus on the numbers only. Assure your employees that they have a proper amount of time to adjust to the new positions, and they can always ask their supervisors for help.

Tracking KPIs should give you more information about the team’s performance and identify occurring problems. When you notice decreasing effectiveness, it’s time to organize additional training and get your team back on track.

Spice the Training Up

Involve a few people in the training process, as well as interactive forms of training such as video and recordings. The change of a speaker once in a while can be more engaging and interesting for the audience.

Therefore, you can ask best-performing agents to handle some aspects of the training and prepare presentations with their own tips. When it comes to explaining the business vision, you can ask the PR manager to help you introduce the company’s mission statement, etc.

Ensure that every coach involved in the training has perfect presentation and communication skills so that they can effectively pass the knowledge.

Practice Makes Perfect

To engage your audience and let them try the theory in practice, you can run trial calls. Remember to comment on the conversation, explain what was right and what needs improvement. Don’t expect everyone to make perfect calls during the training, but make sure the employees understand your point and know what to work on in the future.

Introduce Call Center Software

Last but not least, teach your new employees how to use call center software effectively. They may have been working on similar solutions before, but every call center tool is different and provides different features. For example, CloudTalk offers several options to automate call center service, such as:

Make sure everyone in the team is familiar with the call center software of your choice and up to date with the latest improvements. Organize an additional training session every time a major software update is implemented and keep your team informed.

How to Train Your Call Center Agents for Success

To help your team stand out, training is essential. A strong onboarding program combined with ongoing training ensures agents thoroughly understand your products, company policies, and develop key skills like empathy, communication, and effective call management.

Additionally, using specialized software like CloudTalk makes both training and daily performance much easier. CloudTalk offers tools to record and monitor calls in real time, allowing supervisors to provide precise feedback and support whenever needed. Incorporating these features into your training plan enables agents to learn hands-on, continuously improve, and gain confidence—resulting in more effective and professional customer service.