If Tyler sees someone who is stressed during their chat he will sit down and help them by discussing the importance of soft skills. He also gives students tips and best practices on how to bond and make a personal connection with the customer during a chat to improve performance and make each call the best experience it can be for the customer. Tyler will often pull an example of an exceptional chat and one that needed improvement to show a student, with real-life examples, how he or she could do better in certain areas to improve their next chat. For example, Tyler will show a student chat agent how a chat was opened, to display how the student communicated with the customer. Tyler also adds that he likes to go over what a student is doing well during a chat to act as a positive reinforcement.

Mason Stanford, another supervisor, helps students in a different way. Mason keeps a positive environment on the floor during calls. This positively allows students to move calls forward to completion while confidently maintaining the flow of conversation in order to get the customer where they need to go. Most of the calls on the floor Mason works consist of leaving voicemails. Mason says he cares about the student’s performance and would do anything he can to ensure students are successful in this environment. He does this by taking an interest in students’ lives outside of work, because, as he see it, if they are doing poorly at school that will also affect their performance at work.

“Despite being a supervisor and wanting them to succeed, they can’t perform their best if they aren’t performing well outside of work,” says Mason. “By asking the student, ‘How are you doing at work? How are your classes?’ I can help them with professional and personal development if needed.”