Land Mines of the New Coach
1 Sep, 2004
By: Anne NickersonCoaching agents to meet customer and employer needs is not an easy task. In fact, it’s reported to be one of the most difficult—albeit most critical—roles a supervisor or team leader in a contact center plays. In a recent survey, Contact Professional asked field coaches what is working for them and where the land mines are. The most challenging issue across the board, as reported by 67 percent of the respondents, was getting support from management for adequate time to prepare for coaching and deliver consistent feedback, with specific blocks of time each week dedicated to coaching. While that’s no surprise to anyone in the coaching trenches, perhaps it’s time to re-examine the critical role coaches play in the success of the center.
Coaching and High Performing Agents
Talk to anyone in the field, and you’ll discover that there is a disconnect between how much time should be devoted to coaching and the actual amount of time spent with agents. This was confirmed in the CP survey, with 81 percent of respondents noting it was important to devote between 25 percent and 65 percent of time to coaching agents; however, only 4 percent were allocating at least half of their work time to coaching.
Consider this scenario: An agent hobbles through a call, gives inaccurate information and further angers the customer, causing potential market damage and a negative impact to customer loyalty. Not only is the customer upset, but over time, the agent becomes disenchanted with their job and soon leaves the position. Has anyone won in this scenario? A resounding no!
Now let’s take a look at the same scenario, but this time with the involvement of a coach. An agent begins to sense that they don’t know how to best take care of their customer. They look around for the nearest coach, and call for help. The agent politely puts the customer on hold and then briefs the coach on the call. The coach quickly gives a few options for how to handle the call, and the agent is able to come up with a great solution that makes the customer happy. The agent releases the call, and the coach is ready to give feedback on how the call went, as well as answer any further questions the agent may have.
Some key factors that support the retention of high performing agents are the opportunity to be successful at their job, to be challenged and to develop new skills. Coaching addresses all of these needs on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, the coach can add on to the repertoire of skills that training doesn’t always have the time to focus on.
Some learning points make more sense after the agent has experienced the job for a short time. Skills that coaches often work on shortly after training include how to effectively work with difficult customers and situations, as well as how to overcome customer objections. It’s no surprise that more and more calls are difficult, since customers who have opted out of the self-service queue usually need special attention that is out of the ordinary. Add to that today’s better-educated customers, and coaches who can offer “just in time” suggestions are in high demand.
Great sales and service happens when there is a well-oiled process in place that supports agents in all aspects of their job. Whether it’s giving feedback about adherence to schedule or praising a job well done, constant communication between all members of the leadership team, with commitment from representatives, ensures that agents are effectively developed and ready for any issue that gets thrown their way.
Locating the Land Mines
Once an organization understands that coaching is critical in the performance process, it becomes necessary to understand what roadblocks are in the way of supporting new coaches. Veteran coaches consistently indicate that they need the following to be most effective:
- Supportive training
- Clear goals
- Weekly check-in sessions with other coaches
- Adequate blocks of time designated for coaching
- Tools to track information
- Recording equipment
- Fewer administrative tasks
Similarly, in the CP poll, inadequate training was cited as one of the biggest impediments to successful coaching. Forty percent of respondents indicated that the greatest skill required was the ability to give feedback, while another 24 percent said that the ability to offer real-life examples of the desired behaviors and then following up that the behaviors were performed was needed, especially to gain trust and credibility with agents.
Contact centers historically have been negligent in providing the appropriate level of training support to their coaching staff. This field observation was underscored in the CP survey, as 19 percent of respondents reported that there was no training in place for coaches, and only 30 percent indicated they received training specific to the coaching role. An interesting trend reported (by 13 percent of respondents) was the role of a designated Master Coach responsible for specific training of other coaches, facilitating calibration sessions, and trending results.
It is helpful for new coaches to meet with their boss and ask for a written plan of what they believe your important goals are. Without a plan, it’s easy to be going down the wrong path. For example, let’s say the company’s goal is to increase productivity without jeopardizing quality. If you don’t ask how this translates to your coaching and the job agents are doing, you may direct your agents to improve how they use their screen flow, and your boss might have meant to increase the number of items per order.
Cleary, almost every new coaches know what a great call sounds like, or how to write a customer-focused e-mail. However, it’s very different to effectively hear, see and direct the behavior of agents (especially if the agents are former peers) to close skill gaps and improve performance. The coach suddenly has to identify and translate what behavior needs adjustment, and then articulate the performance expectation so that the agent understands what specific behavior to change. By having weekly check-in sessions with each other, coaches learn how to refine their listening skills and can practice giving feedback that is clear and helpful. This process also helps coaches calibrate with each other so that agents receive feedback that is consistent and fair.
To determine if your coaching is effective, a great question to ask agents is “What behavior have you recently mastered, and what’s your new goal?” If an agent can answer both of these questions, your coaching has been effective. Unfortunately, the answer often is “I don’t know.” This most often points to the issue of the average amount of time spent coaching agents each week. Most coaches in the field will tell you that they never have ample time to devote to coaching. In the CP poll, 42 percent of respondents said that they coach less than once a week, while another 42 percent coach 2-5 times per week—findings consistent with what is reported in the industry. For those that did coach often, the duration of each session was between 3-10 minutes. Not surprisingly, only 11 percent coached in 1- to 2-minute sessions, and 15 percent coached more than 20 minutes per session.
4 Steps to Success
Like anything that needs to be done well, effective coaching requires a commitment to a sound process or methodology. To be successful in today’s high performing contact center, adopting a simple coaching process, such as the one outlined below, can assist both novice and seasoned supervisors.
- Set goals with an action plan
- Observe the behavior in action
- Offer specific feedback
- Follow-up
Step 1: Set Goals With An Action Plan
The first part is setting up goals and a behavioral action plan with each agent, which often takes thoughtful pre-planning and time for a short meeting. A behavioral action plan is very specific to what the agent will actually do or say and is measurable and observable by the coach. For example, improve listening skills is a great goal, but is too broad for an action plan. “Restating a customer’s request in your own words” is a behavior that is measurable and observable.
Step 2: Observe the Behavior in Action
Part two is actually observing the behavior in action. This can be done remotely, or side by side. It is important that you focus on the goals and behaviors that have been agreed to as you hear the call or see the e-mail. Timing here is crucial. If an agent takes 60-100 calls in a day and is doing something wrong, you certainly don’t want the incorrect behavior repeated multiple times. The best scenario is to give feedback directly following the interaction, or to play a recording of the interaction for the agent before you offer feedback.
Step 3: Offer Specific Feedback
Giving feedback is equivalent to offering a gift to the agent, so it needs to be wrapped in a package that is enticing and easy to open. The temptation is to observe the whole interaction, and then give feedback on everything. Not only will this depart from your agreement with the agent, they probably will remember next to nothing about what you said.
Let’s take this out of context for a quick example. Consider you’re taking your first lesson learning to drive a car. You’ve ridden in a car and watched someone successfully drive, you’ve driven on some back roads with a friend, but you’ve never driven in traffic or on the highway. If the instructor said, “You didn’t put your seat belt on, or adjust your mirrors, and when you put the car into drive you need to remember to look both ways, don’t go too fast, obey all road signs, as you enter the highway from the on ramp, gradually accelerate, put your signal on, look before you merge into traffic, check your speed limit, be sure you have enough gas, and make sure you check the oil often so the transmission doesn’t blow.” What would you remember, let alone actually do? Would you be able to determine the critical behaviors for your success in driving in traffic on the highway?
Laugh at this example if you’d like, but if we take it back to the call center and listen to how we offer feedback, the similarities are startling. To avoid unsupportive feedback, it is helpful to have an agreement ahead of time with the agent regarding how you will be giving them feedback, what’s in it for them, and what you want them to do with what they hear. It’s also important to have some type of tracking system so you can determine progress the agent has made, as well as to note your focus before you meet with different agents.
Step 4: Follow-up
Finally, there are many modern systems to help record and track interactions that are helpful to coaches both as a mechanism to trend progress and as a training tool when used in concert with offering feedback. However, even a simple tracking method, such as having a folder for each agent or a spreadsheet documenting progress, is essential to maintain and sustain impact and improvement. The caution is to not let such a system replace talking with agents. We’ve become so dependent on e-mail that it is enticing to provide feedback in this quick and easy manner. However, initiating conversation and discussing ideas shows you are in a partnership with the agent, rather than just “policing” them.
Leadership Link
So if coaching is so critical to success, and agents shine with their increased abilities and skills, why doesn’t it happen more often? Nearly 80 percent of the respondents in CP’s poll indicated that their organization’s senior leaders do support a strong coaching process. The problem is that there are many competing goals, and it is often left to the individual coach to determine what takes priority and how to turn that into tangible action. While many coaches are hindered with administrative tasks, more organizations are finding ways for specific tasks to be done by someone else so that time is made available for coaching. However, sometimes administrative tasks are blamed, when time management, lack of confidence in giving examples, inability to handle agent push back, or lack of interest in developing others are the true culprits.
It’s important to note that not all good supervisors and team leaders are automatically good coaches. This is why it is critical to have a succinct selection process to determine your best potential coaches. Analogous to how coaches should have a development and action plan for their agents, managers need to have a similar process for coaches, along with available training resources to support coach development.
Examples abound of what it takes to be a great coach, many of which are listed in the Coach Readiness Checklist on page XX. However, it is key that they have an ability to build rapport and communicate with others in a fair and consistent manner, keeping in mind their true goal -- to unlock another’s potential. When it’s all said, effective coaching boils down to one thing -- your coach’s role is fundamental to the success of the agent, and ultimately to the success of your organization.
Part 2 -- Don’t Coach From the Seat of Your Pants!
Editor’s Note: Not by the Seat of My Pants! is a compelling, real-world story of the trials, transitions and leadership lessons of the call center supervisor. It provides leaders, managers and supervisors an inside look at the interplay of roles, goals and changing expectations that can thwart the efforts of even the most qualified candidates. Through its tips, techniques, tools and practical examples, this book helps readers identify what it really takes to be successful in this high pressure, high stress, high turnover job, and how to create the environment for enthusiastic, productive, satisfied employees.
Meet Chris, the main character of the book, along with Coach Stephanie as they work together to discuss some pointers in providing feedback to agents so its not by the seat of the pants!
It’s not always about being nice, is it?” I asked.
Stephanie grinned. “No, it’s not exactly about being nice, but rather being clear and positioning information in a way so the other person can hear the message’s intent. We’ve got a few more minutes before I need to get to another meeting, but I think this will help answer your question, and give you some guidance around giving feedback.”
As she turned back to the white board, she said, “All feedback is positive when delivered with care. The feedback is received with care as well when it’s tied to a developmental goal that you’ve discussed. I use the word CARE to help me remember how to stay positive.”
She turned to the white board and jotted down the letters CARE, with a description following each letter:
Clearly describe behavior
Address reactions to the behavior
Realistic expectations shared
Expected results
“Let’s say that you need to let someone know that they missed a sales opportunity,” she said. “You need to put your finger on what behavior they didn’t use so that it is measurable and observable so they can understand what they need to do differently. For example, they missed the opportunity because they didn’t clarify and review with the customer what they said they needed. That would be the behavior you describe. And you want to start out positively. It could go something like this,” she said as she wrote on the white board.
She drew a quick diagram, and filled in the blanks with an example:
CARE MODEL: GIVING FEEDBACK
Clearly describe behavior:
Sue, I’d like to share with you a way that helps me determine if I have a sales opportunity. Try reviewing with the customer what they said they needed.
Address reactions to the behavior which will let them know you heard them, and will set you up to offer one of our solutions.
Realistic expectations shared: Try saying something like: “Mr. Customer, I understand you’re having a difficult time managing your inventory, especially during your busy season. Is that correct?”
Expected result identified:I often write down key points the customer makes during the conversation so I can remember the points to review. I’d like you to give it a try, and I’ll check back with you to see if you’ve been able to increase the sales opportunities on your call.”
“Wow. This is exactly what I’ve been missing! Thanks for letting me know about the CARE way of giving feedback!” I said.
“You’re welcome. I want you to know that it can be used to praise someone for a job well done also. How about you write down a few examples that you use before we next meet, and we’ll see how it’s working for you?” Stephanie suggested.
To buy or learn more about this book, visit www.callcentercoach.com and click on the book icon.
