Coaching plays a big role in any contact center since it’s so important all agents be the best they can be. But coaching isn’t only about training frontline associates on the technical aspects of their job. Call centers also coach on the customer service skills agents and CX teams need to handle any situation that comes their way.
While almost every contact center leader will say coaching is important to their business, not all coaches are created equal.
And on top of that, many call centers don’t:
For an industry that relies so heavily on coaching, it’s surprising how much room there still is to improve the coaching at contact centers.
When it comes to call centers, coaching efficiency is all about making sure the process for training frontline agents is as effective and productive as possible.
Good contact center coaching is about finding the right balance between time spent coaching and the performance improvement of each agent. High coaching efficiency means the training is working well, and frontline associates are quickly getting better at their job.
The role of coaching in contact centers falls a lot on the individual team leads, supervisors, and managers.
Tasking someone with coaching doesn’t immediately make them a good coach. Just because a frontline associate has outstanding KPI metrics doesn’t mean they have the ability to coach others. But for most contact centers, coaching ability isn’t a factor – or isn’t a major factor – in selecting a new supervisor hire.
So what are the qualities of an efficient contact center coach?
Make sure your supervisor candidate has great communication skills. This means they’re able to listen carefully to others and respond with clear, meaningful conversation.
Call centers might have a library of coaching collateral. However, if the supervisors don’t have the ability or tools to identify the cause of an associate’s poor performance, even the best coaching resources aren’t efficient.
Delivering good news is easy; delivering bad news isn’t. A good contact center coach will be able to provide actionable feedback to help improve their frontline agents. Actionable feedback is clear, focused on a specific task, and time-bound.
Effective coaches are familiar with the specific procedures and protocols of their organization, whether it operates in-house or as a business processing outsourcing provider. Great coaches use this knowledge to guide agents in achieving success within the established system.
Creating a coaching plan isn’t as simple as telling an associate, “Lower your AHT.” Instead, efficient coaches help their frontline agents with a strategy of tactics to lower their AHT. And then the coach continues to follow up with the employee on the progress, changing tactics that are or aren’t working.
Employee experience is directly impacted by an employee’s supervisor. According to a survey from Gallop and WorkHuman, Managers who provide regular employee recognition, tend to have employees that are 56% less likely to be seeking new job opportunities, 4x likely to be more engaged, and 5x as likely to see a path to grow within their organization.
Gallup’s analysis of the study data shows that an organization of 10,000 people with an already engaged workforce can save up to $16.1M in turnover annually when they make recognition an important part of their culture.
Understanding if your coaches are efficient can be tricky. But if you’re not tracking each supervisor’s coaching efficiency, you might be setting some of your best frontline associates up for failure.
How do you measure coaching success? Here are a few tips to get started:
Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with the goals and objectives of the coaching program.
Regularly monitor the progress of your representatives and agents to determine if coaching efforts are having an impact. Be sure to compare all the agents a manager is coaching to get an accurate result.
Want to know if a coach is doing a good job? Ask the people being coached. Employee feedback can help identify areas for improvement for individual coaches and the coaching program as a whole.
Our team has worked with a lot of contact center coaching programs. Based on our experience, here are 20 questions you should use in your routine assessment of coaching effectiveness.
Are you trying to improve the coaching effectiveness of the frontline supervisors at your contact center? If so, it’s helpful to have a variety of coaching measurement tools.
This free coaching assessment will help you calculate an efficiency rating for your call center coaches. Then you can use the results to track each coach’s progress over time.
Understanding the effectiveness of your call center supervisors is essential, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
It requires a complicated combination of clear goals and objectives; personalized and regular feedback; the use of data and analytics; and a variety of coaching techniques. At the end of the day, it’s a lot for any call center leader to manage.
But it doesn’t have to be so complicated.
If you want to amplify your organization’s coaching performance, simplify your data analysis process, and create a better employee experience for all your frontline team members, let’s chat.
A practical toolkit tailored for call center leaders seeking to refine their coaching methods. Each guide within this bundle addresses a specific aspect of coaching, equipping you with actionable strategies and insights to enhance your team's performance and effectiveness.
Here's what's included:
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