Put Me In, Coach! Management Mastery with Employee Coaching

When it comes to managing employee performance, one-on-one coaching can offer advantages not found with any other method.

A common philosophy in the business world is that employees aren’t loyal to a company, they’re loyal to a leader.

A good leader is someone who knows the strengths of their team, motivates them to improve, and inspires faith in a common cause. To meet these goals, leaders often have to get up close and personal with their staff to learn where their sticking points are and how best to enhance their performance.

This is best done by consistent and regular coaching sessions with agents that focus on teamwork and building the skills that make the contact centre strong.

Don’t Be a Stranger

Part of being an effective manager is getting to know your team.

While you might be the head honcho, your staff are the ones representing your contact centre to the majority of callers. If a quality customer experience is something you’re aiming for, you can’t afford to be a stranger to your team.

Knowing your team is more involved than the occasional water cooler chit-chat, though. Engage with your agents on a deeper level to learn their strengths, weaknesses, and habits. This will give you the insight necessary to utilize their skills where they will be most effective, and also help build their confidence in themselves.

Gathering the Pieces

A survey by Manchester Inc. via Monte Wyatt of 100 executives found that good coaching gave an average ROI of nearly six times the cost of the coaching. But effective coaching is a process that relies on information. Without examples of past performance to guide you, the practice of coaching can’t take place—before you leap to start designing your coaching sessions, make sure you have enough relevant feedback to make it worth their while.

A good first step in this goal is to listen in on agent’s calls. Live calls are the best way for managers to assess the performance of their employees. Hearing how agents respond to customers while under pressure can tell you how effective their communication skills are, and can also give you a peek into how quickly they think on their feet when problems arise. If they stumble when the heat is on, it’s a safe bet that they would benefit from more thorough coaching.

While you’re at it, utilize direct feedback from your callers! Most of them won’t sugar coat their assessment—giving you the honest feedback necessary for effective growth. Heck, you can even have agents assess themselves. It’s often easier to learn when we can identify the behaviours that need attention on our own, rather than having someone else tell us.

One-on-One Coaching Sessions

As the name implies, coaching sessions should be private, person-to-person interactions that allow managers the freedom to address any point of concern they have with employee performance. Effective coaching will follow several guidelines:

Confidential: Agents will be more comfortable knowing that their potential shortcomings won’t be revealed for the whole company to hear. This makes them more receptive to feedback, both good and bad.
Tied to data: Employees don’t just need feedback, they need concrete, actionable This usually comes in the form of performance evaluations based on data gathered by CRM systems or performance assessments done manually by supervisors. Numerical benchmarks shouldn’t be the entirety of your coaching strategy, but they can be helpful for highlighting specific areas where agents are falling short.
Collaborative: An effective coach won’t just bark orders; work together with your agents to develop a strategy for improvement. Agents who play an active role in their own development goals are more engaged and aware of company expectations. They’ll also be more motivated to reach benchmarks that they have personal investment in.
Instant: One of the things that separates coaching from run of the mill training is that coaching should happen in real-time, as close to the relevant experience as possible. While training is often scheduled in advance, the best time to learn is directly after a mistake occurs. Coaching offers the opportunity to address issues as they come up, rather than saving them for a performance evaluation several weeks down the line.

All-Star Coaching

Coaching is a skill that takes time and effort to develop. Most managers aren’t given specific instructions on how to coach their agents, creating a situation where good coaches are hard to come by. A good coach that is able to motivate their team to greater heights with personalized knowledge of their strengths, concrete feedback, and a mindset focused on collaboration can make all the difference in employee satisfaction and increased performance.

Interested in more ways to engage your employees and coach them to maximum success? Check out our free white paper!