Skill gaps are growing – because of the continued digital evolution and increasing necessity for contact center Agents to apply deeper relationship-building, multi-tasking, and problem-solving skills.
In a McKinsey survey of more than 50 senior customer-care executives, 94 percent said that they expected the skill demands placed on their contact center agents to increase over the next five years.
Despite the need for a higher-level of customer-handling proficiency, frontline leaders remain challenged with effectively developing Agents’ skills, in real-time. The best mechanism for achieving real-time improvement is coaching, but there are several procedural challenges that prevent coaches from being more effective, thereby stagnating and even damaging employee and customer experiences.
Many contact centers neglect to define and communicate standardized methods for how to coach in the contact center (Which means frontline Supervisors each do their own thing, ultimately perpetuating inconsistency and Agent frustration). What must be decided:
Operations leaders often do not clearly communicate coaching expectations: (Which means every Supervisor does their own thing, which breeds inconsistency and increases in frustration) What must be communicated:
Many operations are not directing frontline leaders where and when to coach: (Which means every Supervisor does their own thing… resulting in inconsistency and Agent frustration). What must be communicated:
Most enterprises haven’t begun to source solutions so Agents can have direct access to performance data: What must be changed:
Rarely do contact center leaders have a way to quantify who was coached, on what, or whether it was effective: (Which makes it impossible to hold Supervisors accountable, or to grow their coaching competency) What must be made accessible:
The best mechanism for achieving real-time improvement is EFFECTIVE coaching. But effective coaching is achieved only through a formula consisting of procedural infrastructure – so everyone can consistently operate within known parameters – and people leadership skills, which helps build a culture of development, as opposed to one of compliance.
And that leads us into discussion of the second major challenge preventing us from delivering effective contact center coaching – the top interpersonal or Top People Skills Challenges!
Procedural Challenges is the first part of Melissa Pollock's Call Center Coaching Effectiveness: 5 Steps To (Finally!) Realizing A Return On Coaching.
The future of success in your contact center is contingent on how you impact performance in ways that are both immediate and sustainable. And it doesn’t matter whether your agents are on-site, at-home, full-time, part-time, or temporary – you must deliver on performance.
Coaching is one of the most significant tools we can use to deliver on the engagement and performance of our people – but we must develop our processes, our people and leadership skills, and our technology tools, in order to overthrow the pervasive challenges to achieving greater coaching effectiveness and supercharging contact center performance!
Melissa Pollock Customer Success at AmplifAI
Jim Rembach President at CX Media