Contact center executives know that the heart of their operation is, and always will be, the people who answer the phones. Why, then, is this business-critical task not managed like the critical process it is? Coaching agents to higher levels of performance and enabling supervisors and team leaders who manage agents to be efficient and targeted in their limited coaching time are essential activities that are often overlooked in process improvement initiatives, and rarely managed as core competencies.

To explore this paramount question in your organization and uncover your operation’s strengths and weaknesses, consider this list of questions and recommendations as a starting point.

1) Examine your coaching “culture.”
When agents are going to “be coached,” is that a positive or negative experience? How do agents benefit, and are coaches motivated to make this process more than a compliance checkmark? How are coaches evaluated, recognized and rewarded for good coaching?

2) Consider how you target agents for coaching.
How does your organization pursue coaching, and is it “one size fits most” in its approach? How does the organization identify “who” to coach, “when or how often” to coach and “what to coach on” so that corporate and division goals are executed consistently across teams, sites and geographies?

Supervisors must have the proper tools to both identify an individual’s opportunities as well as determine the most effective coaching methods for each employee. This includes tailoring the coaching frequency, delivery method (e.g., side by side, informal discussion, subject matter experts) and topics to reach an agent with development methods attuned to his or her needs.

It’s also important to ensure agents are coached to behaviors and not just numbers. It’s essential to use each coaching and development session to build upon strengths, track follow-up and build consensus with each individual employee.

3) Define the outcome you seek.
Is the time spent coaching low, middle and top performers connected to the outcomes or a change in performance results? Can you identify the successful methods used to motivate agents and determine coaching effectiveness for each of these groups? Does the coaching delivered to each of these employee segments focus on the numbers, or on the real behaviors driving those numbers?

The operation must identify which employee segments have the greatest potential to improve in order to best determine in which agent populations to invest. Without the appropriate analytics and strategies in place, operations typically over-invest in top and bottom performers while under-investing in middle performers – overlooking an employee segment that can often deliver significant performance improvement to the organization.

4) Evaluate the training and resources provided to coaches.
Does your organization provide adequate skill building and support to develop new and tenured coaches? Are there courses in “conflict resolution” and “constructive feedback,” or do they consist of root-cause investigation, managing agent performance variation and a library of best practices?

Coaching the coaches is as important as coaching frontline agents. Operations must have the necessary tools in place to identify the most effective and least effective coaches in their organizations. Contact centers must also be able to guide coaches through critical best practices including documenting sessions, tracking follow-up and creating individual action plans to ensure consistent coaching delivery across teams, centers and the operation as a whole.

5) Treat coaching like a true process.
Until time is spent to define the coaching process, implement controls for consistent execution and optimize its use for improved operational performance, you risk relying on an ineffective process as the key lever driving performance improvement within your operation.

By Merced Systems, Inc. (http://www.mercedsystems.com)