10 Fun Call Center Training Games

1. Break the Ice

Before you jump into training, break the ice. Give everyone a chance to meet everyone else—pairing up
new recruits with experienced colleagues and mixing up departments. The ultimate goal is to build a
cohesive team.

There are many great ice-breaking ideas that you can use. Here are a few of our favorites:

 One Word Ice Breaker: Divide everyone into random groups of four to five. Then, ask each group
to come up with one word that best describes working in a call center, dealing with a frustrated
customer, or successfully handling a difficult situation. Lastly, have each group describe their
word and discuss it.

 Ask a Silly Question: Kick off your training with a list of silly questions that everyone has to
answer. The crazier, the better. Examples include, “What vegetable would you be? Who is your
imaginary friend and why? What is your favorite time of day and why? If you could remain one
age forever, how old would you be?”

 Pair Ups: Put everyone into pairs and then get them talking. There are three rounds. First, the
pair has to find something they have in common outside of work. Second, they have to share
something they’re proud of at work. Third, they have to share about a time where they
experienced great customer service.

2. Are You Listening?

After breaking the ice, it’s important to test the listening abilities of your call center agents. The key is
not to tell them that you are testing how well they listen. Instead, sneak it into the icebreaker game as a
competition. The key is to ask trick questions.

For example, you could start by telling a story.

You are piloting a ferry, which leaves Janson at 9:30 a.m. with 73 people on board. It stops in Sheraton to
drop off nine passengers and pick up six more. It then heads to the Boardwalk to drop off five more
people and pick up 23. Finally, it arrives in Seattle one hour later. What’s the driver’s name?

Many agents will get this question wrong because they get so caught up in the minute details that they
miss the very obvious answer—they are driving the ferry. This is a great chance to talk about how not to
get distracted by extraneous information and to stay focused on what’s most important to the customer.

3. Telephone

You can also play the telephone game to test listening. Have all of your agents get into a single file line.
Then, whisper a “top secret” company mission in the first person’s ear. They then have to whisper that
same message to the person next to them and so on and so forth. The last person says the message out
loud to see how much it’s changed.

The key to making telephone a successful call center training game is to repeat the chain over and over
again, trying out different methods. The goal is to find a way to transmit the information in a clear and
concise way that sticks and makes sense. And then discuss how easy it is for communication to break
down and what you can do as a call center agent to make sure your messages aren’t being lost or
misunderstood.

4. Do You Remember?

Often, call center agents think that they’re better at remembering customer details than they are.
Instead, they need to get into the habit of writing down pertinent information and listening deeply to
ensure that they are actually internalizing all the pertinent details.

A great game to demonstrate this is “Do You Remember?” where you'll test your agent’s ability to
remember key facts. In this game, divide your agents into two groups and then line them up facing each
other so that each person has a partner. Then, give them two minutes to ask and answer the following
questions:

 What’s your name?

 Tell me about your favorite hobby.

 What’s your mom’s first name?

Repeat the exercise for three rounds and then ask each participant to write down all the pertinent
information they can remember about each person they interviewed. Once you read the results, spend
some time talking about the importance of writing down details for quality customer service and only
dealing with one problem at a time.

5. Angry and Happy Customer

It’s important to put your call center agents into the shoes of your customers. The more they can get into
the mind of the customer—whether they are deliberately rude, demanding, vague, happy, or excited—
the better.

For this game, divide your agents into teams of three or four people. Then, have each group write down
one “angry” customer statement and one “happy” customer statement. They should then pass these
statements to the team to their left. In the second round, give teams ten minutes to come up with a
response and backstory for both statements.

The idea behind the game is to help your agents come up with a reason to explain the customer’s
happiness or anger and then to outline an appropriate response. This will help you find which agents
demonstrate the most emotional intelligence. The more practice you give your agents when it comes to
dealing with customer emotions, the better they’ll be able to identify and handle those emotions in real
situations.

6. Can You Draw?

To test your agents’ ability to ask the right types of questions, pair up your agents and have them
complete a drawing test. First, have one agent draw a house. Then, have the second agent try to draw
the same exact picture based only on the questions they ask. This is great soft skills training for effective
questioning.
7. Bad Role Play

Sometimes, the best way to teach your call center agents is to show them what NOT to do. In this simple
role-playing scenario, encourage your agents to respond to a customer situation in the worst way
possible, and then you respond as the customer. Ask your other agents to point out the mistakes and
come up with a better response.

8. Say It Again

Often, customers may not understand what a call center agent is trying to say, and so the agent must be
able to rephrase their response and try again. In this game, use a transcript from a customer call and
highlight 3-5 crucial words. Then, have an agent read the transcript aloud using a different word than the
one highlighted. This will help them think on their feet and communicate better.

9. Build a Tower

Various Ted Talks have illustrated the “build a tower” or “marshmallow challenge.” In small teams, ask
your agents to build the tallest free-standing tower possible with just 30 pieces of dry pasta, one
marshmallow, one meter of tape, and one piece of string. This will teach your team creativity,
communication, resourcefulness, and teamwork.

10. Customer Service Charades

Phone and online communication leave a lot to be desired. Without body language, you can miss a lot of
what the customer is trying to say. A game of customer service charades will help your agents get better
at communicating by demonstrating what happens when you’re missing information and then coming up
with strategies to close the gap.