Coaching

Call Center Coaching: 5 Steps to Effectiveness

Published:

September 11, 2019

Updated:

January 19, 2024

Authored by

Melissa Pollock V.P. Client Success | AmplifAI

Are your call center coaching methods failing to deliver? Do you find that your frontline agents continue to make the same mistakes, even after repeated coaching and feedback sessions?

We're going to examine why your agents continue to repeat errors despite your consistent coaching efforts. Sometimes it's 'how' we're doing the coaching (not always the agents fault).

In this article we'll be exploring the key elements of effective call center coaching and the overlooked coaching methods, and interpersonal skills that create the environment for effective coaching sessions.

Many of the insights for our guide were gleaned from the webinar: "How to Supercharge Agent Performance With Effective Call Center Coaching"

Featuring: Jim Rembach, President of Call Center Coach, and Melissa Pollock, VP of Customer Success at AmplifAI.

Topics we're covering:

5 Procedural Challenges to Effective Call Center Coaching

Before diving into the 5 steps to coaching effectiveness, we first need to cover the procedural and interpersonal skills (or lack thereof) that are contributing or even causing barriers to coaching effectiveness.

Inconsistent and ineffective coaching is a huge problem in call centers. Despite everyone's best intentions, agents don't always improve, and it's frustrating for both them and their supervisors.

A major contributor to this problem is the widening skill gap driven by digital transformation.

Agents are increasingly required to master advanced relationship-building, multitasking, and problem-solving skills. If coaching methods don't adapt, agents will struggle to keep up – a concern voiced in a recent McKinsey survey where,

94% of senior customer-care executives anticipate rising skill demands in the coming years.

These skills gaps make it important to address the 5 procedural challenges that create barriers to effective call center coaching.

1. Lack of Standardized Coaching Methods

Lack of standardized coaching methods is a major procedural challenge in call centers. Without a consistent approach, agents receive conflicting feedback, supervisors struggle to provide targeted guidance, and overall coaching becomes ineffective.

This inconsistency undermines agent development and frustrates everyone involved.

‍To address this issue, call center leaders need to consider:

• Implementing a standardized call center coaching approach (like one-call/one-case or trended coaching).
• Choose a method that best supports overall call center goals.
• Select a coaching model (Balanced, GROW, Oskar, Clear, Fuel, etc.) that aligns with these goals.
• Provide comprehensive training for supervisors on the chosen coaching approach, model, and how to deliver effective feedback.
• Develop a centralized system for documenting coaching sessions, follow-ups, and outcomes for easy tracking and analysis.
• Establish clear expectations for how and when agents will receive feedback, both to improve performance and recognize achievements.
• Develop a system to evaluate coaches' coaching effectiveness regularly.

2. Unclear Coaching Expectations

Unclear coaching expectations create confusion and frustration in your call center. Without defined goals, agents don't know what to prioritize, resulting in supervisors struggling to provide meaningful guidance.

This lack of direction undermines coaching effectiveness and hinders agent development.

To address this procedural challenge, call center leadership should clearly communicate the following:

Highlight the value of coaching for development

Position coaching as a tool for agent growth and engagement alongside any necessary corrective guidance.

Set reasonable expectations for coaching frequency

Define how often agents should generally expect coaching sessions and what factors could impact this.

Identify priority KPIs for coaching focus

‍Align coaching priorities with overall business goals while still allowing supervisors some flexibility to address individual agent needs.

Provide guidance on target groups for coaching

Clarify if coaching is meant for all agents equally or if it will prioritize certain groups (new hires, under-performers, etc.)

3. Poorly Defined Coaching Logistics

‍Many contact centers lack clear guidance on the logistics of call center coaching, which is similar in nature to performance coaching, leaves frontline leaders uncertain about where and when to coach.

This ambiguity leads to inconsistency and frustration for both agents and supervisors, hindering coaching effectiveness.

To address this particular procedural challenge, call center leaders must clearly communicate the following:

• Designated coaching spaces: Define where coaching should occur (quiet rooms, supervisor desks, zoom calls etc.) to minimize disruptions and ensure a conducive environment.
• Coaching tools and technology: Specify if coaching sessions should involve reviewing calls on a computer or can be more informal conversational sessions.
• Optimal times for coaching: Provide guidance on the best times of day for coaching (avoiding high-volume periods) and, if applicable, days/times to avoid.
• Initiation and scheduling procedures: Establish a clear system for scheduling coaching sessions, whether initiated by agents or supervisors, and define how to handle cancellations or rescheduling.
• Flexibility: Allow for some personalization based on individual agent needs and supervisor styles, while still maintaining consistency in core logistical expectations.
• Remote coaching guidelines: If remote coaching is part of your operation, define specific expectations for technology, timing, and overall structure.

4. Limited Performance Data Visibility

A lack of visibility into performance data hinders both agent development and coaching effectiveness. When agents rely solely on supervisors for feedback, progress tracking becomes difficult, and opportunities for real-time improvement are missed.

To address this challenge, call centers must:

• Provide agents with direct access to performance data: Implement tools that allow agents to see their metrics, including comparisons to top performers, in real-time or near real-time.
• Reduce supervisors' manual workload: Utilize systems that automatically track coaching sessions, follow-ups, and performance trends, reducing the administrative burden on supervisors.
• Empower agents for self-improvement: By providing visibility into their own performance history, agents can identify areas for improvement and take ownership of their development.
• Enable data-driven coaching: Give supervisors access to trended agent performance insights, enabling targeted coaching interventions and identification of recurring issues for proactive solutions.

5. Ineffective Coaching Tracking and Analysis

Without a robust tracking system, your call center can't fully assess the impact of coaching efforts or support the development of your coaches. This lack of data makes it difficult for leadership to identify areas for improvement and provide coaches with the feedback they need to grow.

To address this

1. Start tracking coaching sessions with a focus on the agent coached, areas addressed, and specific outcomes.
2. Track key metrics to measure coaching effectiveness over time. Examples include agent performance improvement, average handle time, first call resolution, and CSAT scores.
3. Use insights from this data to provide targeted feedback and development opportunities for coaches. Celebrate successes while addressing areas where additional training or support may be needed.

The pinnacle of achieving real-time improvement is EFFECTIVE coaching, but effective coaching can only be realized through a combination of procedural infrastructure+people leadership skills.

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The infrastructure provides a consistent framework for all parties to operate within known parameters, leadership skills are vital for fostering a culture of development over compliance. Together, they form the backbone of a successful and impactful coaching program in call centers.

And that leads us into the second major challenge preventing contact center leaders from delivering effective coaching.

Interpersonal and Leadership Barriers to Effective Call Center Coaching

The Cost of Leadership Failure

DDI reports that a staggering

‍80% of contact center agents leave their jobs due to poor leadership, citing their supervisor's behavior as the primary reason.

This alarming statistic underscores the impact that leadership skills have on employee retention, engagement, and overall call center performance.

The financial cost of high call center turnover is substantial. The cost of replacing an agent can range from $3,000 to $30,000, depending on experience and training requirements. Additionally, the loss of productivity and customer satisfaction during the transition period can further erode profitability.

But the negative impact of poor leadership goes beyond just the bottom line. It creates a toxic work environment that harms morale, reduces engagement, and ultimately hinders the call center's ability to deliver exceptional customer service.

By investing in leadership development programs and equipping supervisors with the necessary interpersonal skills, call centers can empower their agents, create a more positive work environment, and reap the rewards of improved retention, engagement, and performance.

Difference between managing and leading in call center coaching

In call centers, the environment is often one of continuously changing priorities. On top of that, the responsibility for coaching agent performance may fall into different operational areas – across training, production, and quality.

That means every one of us involved in agent performance have to become more effective at the more high-value activities – like engaging and developing our people.

Regardless of how small or large your ownership is for agent development, there are 3 core truths of which you must be aware:

1. Managing call center coaching is not leading performance
2. Focusing coaching sessions on negative performance increases negative performance
3. Call Center Coaches must be leaders

Let’s consider how each of these concepts can be prohibitive to delivering more effective call center coaching.

Managing is Not Leading

Managing the coaching process is about administering and supervising coaching procedures and tools. Although as Peter Drucker once said,

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done.”

To empower our people to perform better, we have stop focusing on the wrong things! Marcia Daszko, a protégé of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, and author of PIVOT DISRUPT TRANSFORM, says:

We must stop setting numerical goals and targets and expecting individuals to meet them.

The unfortunate reality however, is that most call center coaching programs are deeply rooted in holding agents accountable for meeting goals and targets (and less so for the behaviors that drive attainment.)

The resulting effect is that employees operate with checklist-style, compliance-focused adherence, rather than as empowered, engaged and innovative contributors who share ownership for customer experiences and business outcomes.

Ultimately, we must create a system, and leaders, that enable our people to collaborate, develop skills, and effectively serve customers. If you find you’re not getting the results you want, look to what you’re focusing on in your coaching sessions first, versus assuming your people are the problem!

The higher goal of our coaching programs should be to facilitate a coaching process, and encourage a coaching mindset, where frontline agents and supervisors own their performance and their contribution towards serving customers.

Jim Rembach, President of CX Media

Addressing Negative Trends in Call Center Coaching

In his book, It’s the Manager, Chief Scientist of Workplace and Well-Being, Jim Harter, shares that our brains are hardwired to critique others. And traditional call center coaching programs reflect these instincts; they’re designed to rate employees and to “correct” their weaknesses.

While we may be wired to give criticism, we aren’t wired to receive it. The approach to correct weaknesses often fails to actually improve performance – just 21% of employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.

In order for a contact center coaching program to create a development culture instead of a compliance culture, coaches must be careful not to turn ongoing conversation into ongoing criticism.

Constant criticism makes it almost impossible to build trust, which makes it difficult for employees to accept critique with an open mind, and makes engagement highly unlikely. This is why a standardized model and methods, and training on those methods, are essential for coaches to deliver on the relational needs of their people – and keep them receptive to hearing corrective input when needed.

What best differentiates actively engaged from actively disengaged employees? It’s the time Supervisors spend focusing on Agents’ strengths, compared to the time they spend focusing on their opportunities.

Harter points out that there are times when giving constructive feedback is needed to help agents improve their performance – but coaches need to ensure the feedback they deliver is heavily tilted towards what employees do best.

Managers who excel at coaching have learned how to lead strengths-based and engagement-focused conversations

Gallup

Leadership's Impact on Call Center Coaching Effectiveness

Although distinctly different, “manager” and “leader” are often used interchangeably. But those responsible for managing the call center coaching program also have to lead the engagement, performance and development of people!

MIT defined coaching as a sophisticated management style that requires developing a relationship that empowers employees by building confidence and competence.

Leadership is that intentional relationship between the leader and the led. Respect, confidence, caring, and meeting needs are all required in order to build trust with team members so we can help them see their opportunities while ensuring they remain open and receptive to hearing feedback and discussing alternate approaches.

“Our contact center glosses over development for frontline leaders,” is something we commonly hear from senior executives.

But you can't build a great contact center by allowing or tolerating mediocre leaders. Everyone responsible for Agent development must also be developed themselves!

In one study, DDI reported that business outcomes of mediocre leaders in leadership roles can be devastating:

1. 69% admitted the promotion of the wrong leaders resulted in loss of employee engagement
2. Nearly 2/3rds experienced loss of productivity
3. 1 in 4 respondents indicated their business suffered a loss in profitability
   

Let’s be clear, everyone responsible for the performance improvement of people is in a leader role. But being a leader, and developing leadership competency, are two different things.

If we want to empower our people, develop them to their potential, and engage them to put forth effort and innovation, we cannot continue to enable and tolerate mediocre leadership skills.

Remember, the best mechanism for performance improvement in your contact center is effective coaching. And effective coaching requires a formula consisting of defined and communicated Procedural Infrastructure + interpersonal leadership skills. Coaching software can be a valuable resource for developing these essential skills.

When you put together a proper system, and develop interpersonal leadership, then you can transform your contact center into one that delivers effective coaching within a culture of development, not just compliance!

There's good news for contact-center leaders. Once they understand the issues that hamper coaching effectiveness, new digital tools can help address them by improving the availability, targeting, and delivering of coaching inputs.

McKinsey & Company

How do you develop coaching competency and consistency, at scale, across your programs, teams, sites and at-home environments?

You leverage technology to augment both your processes and your people!

5 Steps to Increase Call Center Coaching Effectiveness

Having covered the major procedural, process, and people-related challenges in maximizing call center coaching effectiveness, we're now turning to explore how integrating the right call center coaching software in your contact center and following the five key steps below will increase call center coaching effectiveness.

1. Create a Standardized Coaching System: Define and communicate the coaching expectations, procedures, and methods.
2. Train Effective Call Center Coaches: Focus on leadership skills and the ability to follow through.
3. Provide Transparency into Call Center Coaching Performance: Keep track of coaching frequencies, behaviors, and action plans.
4. Establish Key Metrics for Measuring Call Center Coaching Success: Evaluate whether individuals improve following coaching sessions.
5. Improve Your Call Center Coaching Leadership: Focus on improving the competency and effectiveness of your coaches.

This approach offers a holistic solution, addressing each step collectively rather than individually, thereby enhancing the entire operation and its people.

As a practical example, we will delve into how AmplifAI's coaching effectiveness capabilities have been transformative in leading enterprises both direct and BPO contact centers.

Automate supervisors’ administrative tasks! Many of the activities that keep supervisors and team leaders off the contact-center floor are prime candidates for automation

McKinsey & Company

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1. Create a Standardized Coaching System

We start by building your coaching methods, tactics, and behaviors, into a standardized coaching form. From there, AmplifAI manages an automated, full-circle workflow that drives Coaching Effectiveness:‍‍

For Agents

• Coachings post to an open commitment table, and a coaching history table – so Agents don’t lose sight of what they agreed to work on, and can reflect on prior coachings and results ‍

For Supervisors

• Coaching history stays with the Agent, regardless of switching teams or programs – so changes don’t mean ‘starting over’ every time, and prepping for the next session is as easy as revisiting the last session ‍
• Follow-Up & Recognition Tasks are automatically distributed to Supervisors depending on whether Agents improved or not post-coaching – so what’s asked of people to work on, is held accountable, but without manual tracking‍
• Coaching Effectiveness scores and rankings show Supervisors the results of their coaching efforts – so they know who they helped to improve or not, and how that compares to their peers on the same program‍

For Leaders

• Coaching activity and effectiveness visualizations highlight trends by program, site, and supervisor – so leaders can easily see who coached, how often, who got coached, metrics and behaviors coached most, and coaching effectiveness

Features of Data-Driven Coaching:

Coaching History

2. Train Effective Call Center Coaches

Training effective call center coaches is simplified through best practices housed in AmplifAI and proactively pushed to Supervisors to help them increase their coaching competency.

We’ve worked with some of the best and most innovative customer care organizations over the last two decades to build a set of simple but powerful coaching guides and tools that empower frontline supervisors to be better coaches and leaders.

We streamlined that content into a set of short, engaging Micro-learning videos that are ~5-minutes in length, single-skill specific, and incorporate video animations, graphics, audio and captions, to deliver precise bits of learning that quickly build skill and spread best practices.

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Example: Inside Sales Micro-Learning; Behavior: Following The Inbound Script; Skill Set: Collecting Customer Information; Series: Effective Inbound Phone Calls

Our foundational Introduction to Performance Coaching Series includes six titles, and best of all – we are offering this series complimentary, to the first 100 organizations that sign up – so sign up today to secure your place in line!

3. Transparency in Call Center Coaching Practices

‍Few organizations have scalable mechanisms across onsite and at home teams that give visibility into who coached, who got coached, metrics and behaviors coached, and whether performance improved or not.

AmplifAI provides all that visibility and more, in dedicated views for each level of user, displaying individual, team, site and program level trends on coaching activities and results.

Visibility into coaching activities allows you to:

• Understand coaching trends
• Inspect your coaching processes
• Recognize or reinforce expectations
• Identify outlier and top performing coaches
• Know which coaches needs development to be better coaches

Coaching Export showing behaviors and sub-behaviors coached, by manager, with effectiveness

4. Establish Metrics for Measuring Call Center Coaching Success

‍Even fewer organizations have any insight into which coaches are actually helping people improve, and which are not.

AmplifAI supercharges Coaching Effectiveness, with:

• A continuous algorithm that calculates coaching effectiveness for every Supervisor
• Effectivity scores based on how often Supervisors’ coachings helped people improve
• Stack-rankings that display scores across peer Supervisors on the same program
• Dashboards that display coaching activities and coaching effectiveness scores at the individual, team, site, and program levels

Having visibility into coaching effectiveness is absolutely essential to evolving your operations to one of higher engagement, elevated experience, and improved performance – because you can’t improve what you can’t see!

5. Improve Your Call Center Coaching Leadership

The foremost strategy for elevating engagement and performance throughout your enterprise, given a well-established procedural infrastructure, is to enhance the coaching competency and effectiveness of your coaching leaders. This step is pivotal in the overall coaching process, assuming a critical role in your operational success.

Recognizing the importance of this, we emphasize the necessity of assessing your coaches' performance and effectiveness. If your organization does not currently have a system for this, integrating such a process is a key feature we offer in your AmplifAI implementation.

AmplifAI facilitates this assessment through:

• A customized 'Coach-the-Coach' form embedded within the system for comprehensive evaluation.
• The capability to record coaching sessions using accessible devices like tablets or laptops.
• The utilization of automated actions driven by insights from coaching performance assessments.

These tools and processes are designed to continuously develop the skills of your coaches, ensuring they're equipped to foster a culture of development and improvement within your call center.

AmplifAI Your Call Center Coaches

AmplifAI transforms frontline leaders coaching effectiveness score by liberating them from the cumbersome tasks of manual data analysis, interpretation, and distribution. This results in up to 40% more time available for coaching and developing personnel, significantly enhancing operational efficiency.

• With Agents having direct access to performance, coaching commitments and coaching history, they’re empowered to self-identify gaps and take independent action even before supervisors’ coach them – resulting in increased employee engagement and accountability!
• The embedded coaching form and workflow ensures coaches are consistently applying your methods, that you have consolidated documentation, and the ability to easily inspect process.
• The post-coaching workflow and progress-tracking ensures everyone has visibility into coaching commitments, history and results.
• The continuously updating Coaching Effectiveness Score and ranking keeps supervisors informed of the impacts of their developmental efforts.
• Coaching dashboards highlight for leaders which coaches need coaching skill development!

Take The Call Center Coaching Effectiveness Assessment

Not sure where your frontline leaders and supervisors currently stand in their coaching effectiveness?

Explore our extensive library of coaching effectiveness guides, starting with our Coaching Effectiveness Assessment, designed to deliver a clear picture of your team's coaching strengths and areas for improvement. Stop guessing and start enabling your leadership team's coaching effectiveness today.