Today’s technology can help your center reap the benefits of coaching.
By Jerome Brown, Solutions Marketing Manager
Agent Coaching: A Key Component of Quality Service
While many contact center managers would probably list “delivering a superior customer experience” as their number-one goal, their actions seem to say otherwise. Faced with mounting pressure to handle calls efficiently, they tend to overlook a critical component in delivering high-quality service: agent coaching.
Unlike training programs, which are typically deemed essential because they provide agents with the fundamental skills and knowledge to perform their jobs, coaching programs are often perceived as optional, “nice to have” activities in the contact center. Instead, many centers rely solely on monitoring calls, which—while vital—is not the same as coaching.
Monitoring helps identify areas in which agents excel or struggle. This is useful information, but insufficient for driving improved performance. Coaching takes the next step by providing agents with specific information and techniques to help them perfect their skills. Ignoring, deferring, or conducting coaching haphazardly can hurt agents from a professional development and motivation standpoint, as well as suppress core performance issues that may impact your bottom line.
Using the Right Tool for the Job
Perhaps some of the reason that coaching has been considered a nicety, rather than a necessity, is because of its “fuzzy” nature. Time is a scarce commodity in contact centers, and coaching sessions not only require time, but also have been difficult to quantify, track, and report on. Many agent-supervisor interactions within the contact center are conducted face-to-face and typically are not captured. Worse yet, many centers perform no post-interaction follow-through to determine how well agents have absorbed the information from the coaching sessions and applied it on the job.
Making coaching measurable and actionable is a critical step in building an effective performance management program. And one of the newest, most exciting advances in coaching is software that provides contact centers with the ability to track, manage, and report on non-electronic learning opportunities or engagements.
Effective coaching solutions go beyond simply offering agents personalized tips on how to improve and extend their skills. Today’s technology ties coaching together with scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs), quality evaluations, training, and other benchmark metrics to introduce a true, more formalized learning process.
Using a coaching solution, organizations can initiate, deliver, and follow up on personalized, one-on-one coaching between employees and supervisors. The solution helps agents and managers work collaboratively to review evaluations and provide feedback, whether in planned, one-on-one sessions or during ad-hoc conversations. Either way, the session and the results can then be reflected as part of the agent’s improved competency ratings and overall performance. Features to look for include:
• Automatic triggers—By leveraging performance benchmarks, coaching solutions can automatically trigger coaching “events,” sending an email or pop-up alert to the appropriate manager if employee scores drop below the thresholds defined for acceptable performance.
• Desktop Alerts—To help ensure coaching sessions are conducted in a timely manner, managers and agents are notified via desktop alerts when coaching sessions are added or scheduled.
• Intuitive Interface and Forms—Intuitive interfaces allow managers to easily view coaching events for their teams, schedule coaching sessions, and attach relevant performance information to the online coaching form. This helps expedite the sessions while providing employees with specific examples of behaviors or skills that are commendable or need improvement.
The Impact of Workforce Optimization
Most contact centers use a variety of software to address different customer service functions, such as scheduling agents or recording interactions for quality. Workforce optimization (WFO) solutions can enable this disparate software—including quality monitoring, workforce management, speech and data analytics, customer feedback surveys, performance management,
eLearning and coaching solutions—to work together. The result can provide unprecedented visibility into contact center performance.
For example, a WFO solution can capture evaluations and the associated agent screen navigation tied to recorded interactions, and managers can attach them—along with KPIs—to the coaching form. This allows managers to provide agents with real, relevant examples during coaching sessions. Workforce management solutions can complement coaching by enabling managers to schedule coaching sessions with agents at the most opportune time, without jeopardizing service levels.
By unifying disparate customer service software—including coaching solutions—WFO solutions can deliver actionable information that helps centers improve their performance, extend employee skills, and deliver a better customer experience.
About the Author
Jerome Brown is the eLearning and coaching solutions marketing manager for Verint Witness Actionable Solutions. He has 14 years of experience guiding learning solution implementations at top 1,000 global businesses.
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