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Chapter 13 of the Call Centre Motivation Workbook
What is Coaching?
Education is a fantastic motivator! It shows you really care about the development of an individual's development. And it helps call centre staff agent experience a sense of progression in their skill sets.
In a call centre situation, coaching involves the coach listening to a live or recorded call and either offering advice to the agent as the call progresses, or critiquing the call afterwards, or a mixture of both. But it doesn't end there!
In addition to pointing out an agent's strong points and development areas, the coach takes on responsibility for ensuring that the trainee continues to develop and grow. This is best achieved through a formal coaching process, where the trainee can also take ownership of his or her education.
Coaching is also about timeliness. The active coach, for example, will be aware that the major parts of telephone staff's skill sets have a measurable shelf-life.
Here are some aspects to look out for:
- Openings become sloppy after a month without coaching
- Listening skills erode after three months
- Questioning styles swing towards closed questions after three months
- Objection handling becomes lackadaisical after 6 weeks
So the active coach will be making an extra effort to listen out for skill erosion at predetermined intervals as a means of preventing complacency setting in.
Summary
Coaching is:
- Real time teaching
- Listening to calls
- Imparting knowledge and offering advice
- Critiquing calls
- Taking responsibility for the telesales agent's development and growth
- Carrying out timely, targeted analysis
In order for coaching to be motivational on an ongoing basis, it is important that a system is used to show the agent's development. Most organisations use a simple document to do this. For example:
| Name: | Date: | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Previous Experience: | |||||||||||
| Previous Training: | |||||||||||
Marks out of 10 for skill |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
Answering the phone |
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Opening the conversation |
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Probing the prospect's needs |
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Listening skills |
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Using features & benefits |
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Trial closing |
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Handling objections |
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Final closing |
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Trial close |
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Upselling |
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Cross-selling |
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| Name: | Date: | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Previous Experience: | |||||||||||
| Previous Training: | |||||||||||
Marks out of 10 for skill |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
Answering the phone |
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Listening |
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Empathy |
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Probing |
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Recommendations |
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Check for understanding |
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Ending |
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And once we have carried out a number of coaching sessions, the agent gains a sense of linear improvement from analysing his results.
You can later use these results when you carry out formal appraisals. Please be aware that coaching takes a lot of time and many managers fail to recognise this.
A typical telesales call of say, 6 minutes, will require at least a further 15 - 20 minutes of playback, analysis and critique to be of any value to the agent.
In this way, both coach and agent will be able to hold a frank dialogue on how to improve, develop or change the agent's behaviour.
If you are demonstrating leadership, and appear to want to develop your agents rather than just policing them, you'll find that they are eager to grow their skills and keen to show them off to you in their coaching sessions.
How to Critique a Call
First, remember that most people will feel some hurt over the fact that they are not perfect, so we need to build up trust with them to minimise this.
To do this, make sure that the coaching session is seen to be fun - a bit of a treat.
You should be prepared to laugh with the student at his/her mistakes.
Second, invite the student to critique his own performance. Draw information by using open questions to encourage him to explain how he feels he can improve and allow him to answer in his own learning style.
Give your own feedback in the student's learning style, making sure you are pitching your advice at a level that is comfortable for him.
For example, you would speak in simpler terms to a beginner than to an expert.
Try to avoid showing off your own advanced ability as this is likely to undermine the student's confidence.
