Voice Training for Call Centre Agents

Grow your voice, grow your confidence grow your brand

1. Back ground and Motivation

• Do your call centre agents project confidence and competence?
• Do they invite confidence in your brand?
• Do they feel like they are making a difference to themselves and to others?

Growing the power of the voice leads to growing the agent’s personal power and the power of your brand.

In everyday face to face conversations 7 % of what we communicate comes through our words, 55 through body language and 38 through vocal tone and quality. But when the face of the person talking is absent, as it is when talking on the phone, body language falls away and the effect of vocal quality jumps to 82%.

However, the average call centre agent handles around 1000 calls per day and maintaining a warm, friendly yet efficient sounding tone all day becomes difficult. Unless your voice is trained, it will respond unconsciously to your thoughts, feelings and the state of your body by default.

Instead, what if call centre agents could

• Sound personable and professional at all times, irrespective of accent, personality or mood
• Communicate eagerness to assist as well as sound warm and friendly
• Always speak clearly and slowly so that they are easy to follow
• Do all of this automatically so that they can keep their minds on solving the caller’s problems.
• Maintain a personal sense of power and accomplishment in spite of difficult calls.

Such improvements will:

• Ensure consistent quality throughout the day and across the team of agents.
• Make each call more time efficient as agents will repeat themselves less often
• Instil confidence in callers that they are being served with competence, efficiency and care.
• Humanise the experience for each caller by allowing agents to sound more authentic.
• Build brand loyalty by inviting trust and attention.
• Build the personal sense of confidence and competence of agents.
• Reduce staff turnover by increasing personal job satisfaction.

2. Playing Mantis Voice Training for Call Centre Agents

Playing Mantis offers a full day voice training course for call centre agents to help them understand the importance of voice quality and provide tools for improving and maintaining their own vocal standard. 

Cost depends on group size and level of customization required.

The Workshop will train agents to:

• Hold a posture that enables positive  connection and clear communication with callers.
• Use breathing to control the pace and clarity of their speech.
• Develop a tone of voice that invites attention and instils trust.
• Shape sounds skilfully so that every word is heard without strain.
• Infuse well known scripts with meaning and depth, keeping it alive for each caller.

Course material

Since it takes 6 weeks for the voice to automatically assume the new behaviour instead of reverting to unconscious responses, each trainee can be issued with an audio CD containing 2 training routines for developing and maintaining the desired vocal behaviours. The CD comes with a booklet containing a summary of all the important techniques and reminding trainees of their own discoveries regarding their individual voices.

3. Programme designer

Dr. Petro Janse van Vuuren is a masterful story teller and a dynamic , inspiring facilitator. She has been training and coaching voice work and participative teaching methods for the last 18 years, both as a trainer of actors and as presentation skills teacher.

She has worked with a wide range of clients including call centre agents, radio hosts, environmentalists, evangelical ministers, microbiology lecturers, and rap artists.

Petro has written various academic articles and has published two books on speaking with confidence. She has presented at various local conferences.

4. Testimonials

The most important thing I learned is ‘act it until you feel it’. Agents do not have to feel good or confident to sound confident. The confidence comes as you allow yourself to be open and vulnerable to the caller. Chantel Wilks, Learning Facilitator for Call Centre Agents, Capitec Bank.

This course has a way of demonstrating the goal immediately, and although good speaking only comes with practise, the first important switch, realising how we could and should be speaking, can successfully happen in the first morning. – Gertrud Tönsing, Lecturer, Lutheran Theological Institute, Pietermaritzburg

I enjoyed the method of teaching. Found myself very relaxed and in a space that made me comfortable. The facilitator is very warm and her tone of voice encourages. – Melaine Sukhraj, PA

What I learned from the workshop is voice control and confidence when you get on stage – how to have more strength and energy and give a positive message. – Reza Rust ‘Zati G’, Rapper for RIP

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