A strong onboarding program is essential for any business. It sets up employees for success and can support retention. This is especially true for contact center agents. Whether onboarding takes place on-site or remotely, these onboarding tips for contact center agents are sure to make the process seamless and effective.
Why Onboarding Matters
Onboarding is the first experience new hires have, and it sets the stage for future engagement and retention. According to a survey, great onboarding improves employee retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent. Conversely, a negative onboarding experience results in employees being twice as likely to seek other jobs.
Turnover is expensive, so to keep this from happening to your contact center, you should develop a strong onboarding strategy that prepares employees for their role and acclimates them to your company culture.
The Best Contact Center Agents Onboarding Tips
Every onboarding program will be unique based on your business model and culture. However, some fundamentals can improve the process and drive engagement.
Develop an Onboarding Strategy
The first tip to better onboarding is documenting your strategy. It will be useful as you scale up so that the experience is consistent. Your plan should include:
- Defining what agents need to know about the company, products, and its customers
- How you’ll deliver training sessions
- Communication best practices for sharing information
- Setting expectations for new hires
- The documents and resources that should go in your contact center knowledge base
Set Expectations Before Day One
When someone begins a new job, they often have little information about what happens next. Before their first day, you should develop welcome materials that map out some of the activities and training for the days ahead. This allows employees to be prepared and not feel anxious about what to expect.
Foster a Positive Company Culture from the Start
Company culture plays a vital role in shaping employee satisfaction and retention. From day one, emphasize your organization’s values and goals. Share success stories, highlight team achievements, and make your new hires feel like they belong. Creating an inclusive environment fosters collaboration, trust, and loyalty, which in turn supports agent retention.
Create a Knowledge Base
New hires need resources that are easy to access. Organizing information into a knowledge base is a good solution for this. This repository can include steps and processes documents and other media like videos.
If your training program isn’t in a centralized hub, employees could waste time hunting for them, which is frustrating. Instead, use a secure file sharing platform that’s cloud-based. Aggregating content in this approach assures that agents can access it from anywhere with an internet connection.
Include Interactive Training Exercises
Call center agents spend their time interacting with customers, so they need practice. Instead of only providing passive ways of learning, you should supplement this with more interactive options.
You can develop various modules that create real-time experiences so that new agents build their confidence through every interaction. In addition, having different types of training supports lots of diverse learners.
Match New Hires to Mentors
Having a mentoring program for your call center agents could make them feel comfortable and accelerate their learning. Call center work can sometimes be isolating because interactions are primarily with customers, not other employees.
Assigning an experienced agent to new employees creates a “buddy system” that helps bring them into the fold. Those mentors can foster growth and offer support. They can also answer questions about processes, challenges, and culture.
Extend Onboarding Beyond a Week
Contact center agent onboarding shouldn’t last just a week. The first week will be more intense with training on how to serve customers best, the company’s products or services, and call center software. As agents begin to settle into work and find their rhythm, don’t stop acclimating or coaching them.
The mentor network will go beyond the first week, and training opportunities should continue for all agents. While independence and initiative are great attributes for agents, you shouldn’t leave them to fend for themselves. Set realistic agent performance milestones that are months out to ensure effective onboarding.
Inform Agents of Performance Metrics that Matter
Contact center software enables the tracking of many KPIs (key performance indicators). Thus, it’s crucial to advise new hires of these metrics that matter so they can have insights into how you gauge contact center performance.
The data you collect from call center operations should be shareable with your teammembers. It’s valuable information that can support better outcomes. In addition to metrics, your supervisors can also listen to calls and then provide collaborative coaching to agents that highlight what they are doing well and areas where they have the opportunity to improve.
Ensure They Have What They Need for Success
Contact center agents all require fundamentals for success. The knowledge base and other training materials are a big part of this, but so are the operational aspects. They need robust software that makes their job easier, along with a computer ready to go and a professional headset. If your agents are remote, be sure to ship them these things ahead of their start date.
Check-In with New Hires at Intervals
If you want to understand if your onboarding process is effective, ask those going through it. For example, you can survey your new hires at 30, 60, and 90 days to understand how they are doing. They could offer feedback that helps you address gaps or confirm you’re handling onboarding effectively.
Analyze Attrition and Turnover Rates
To optimize agent experience and improve long-term employee retention, it’s important to regularly analyze attrition and turnover rates. High turnover can indicate issues within the employee onboarding process, work culture, or overall job satisfaction. By tracking these metrics, you can identify patterns and address potential problems before they escalate.
Start by looking at when employees are leaving and conducting exit interviews to gather feedback. This insight can help you improve onboarding practices, adjust agent workloads, or refine management strategies to enhance job satisfaction. Regularly reviewing retention rates and turnover trends ensures you’re creating a positive work environment, which is key to maintaining a productive and loyal team.
Provide Continuous Learning Opportunities
Onboarding shouldn’t be a one-time event. To keep agents motivated and engaged, offer ongoing learning and development opportunities. Whether it’s through webinars, advanced training courses, or workshops, these initiatives can help agents refine their skills and stay up-to-date with industry trends. This commitment to learning enhances the overall employee engagement and promotes long-term career growth within the company.
Offer Well-Defined Career Paths
Demonstrate to new agents that they have room to grow within your organization. Outline clear career paths and professional development opportunities during the agent onboarding process. When agents understand that their work will lead to advancement, they feel more invested in their role, improving retention rates and overall job satisfaction.
Empower Your Contact Center Agents with Engaging Onboarding
Happy, well-trained, and valued call center employees are key to company success and positive customer interactions. That all starts from the moment they begin work. With these contact center onboarding tips, you can build or enhance your program and improve agent engagement and performance.Don’t forget about having the right technology. Explore how our contact center software works and how it supports agents.
Rob Oscanyan
Robert Oscanyan is a Senior Director of Product Marketing at Intermedia, where he focuses on helping businesses improve their customer experience using Intermedia's award-winning cloud communications solutions. Rob has over a decade of experience spanning market research, messaging, and elevating the voice of the customer. In his free time, he constantly creating new adventures with his wife, seven kids, and a small army of pets.
October 1, 2025
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