A Checklist For Evaluating Your Coaches

A Checklist For Evaluating Your Coaches WHY EVALUATE COACHES Coaching your frontline workforce is one of the top activities that influences contact c...
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A Checklist For Evaluating Your Coaches WHY EVALUATE COACHES

Coaching your frontline workforce is one of the top activities that influences contact center productivity, performance and customer experience. The quality of coaching has a direct correlation to agent engagement, attrition, FCR and CSAT, yet when it comes to the quality of the coaches themselves, few contact centers have a structured approach for evaluating their coaches. HOW TO EVALUATE COACHES

In order for coaching to drive the intended results in the contact center, you must ensure that coaching is consistent, intentional, positive and constructive. This means that there must be someone “coaching the coaches” by observing them on the job as well as sharing coaching feedback with them on what they do

well and how they can improve their skills. This responsibility often falls to contact center leadership. Unfortunately some contact center leaders do not have agent skills coaching experience, which means they may have a difficult time evaluating their coaches. Others don’t have a consistent way of checking how their coaches are engaging and assisting the agents in the improvement process. The checklist below provides you a structured approach for evaluating coaches. Observe your coach silently during one of their sessions with an agent and take notes using this list so you can effectively coach them on their skills afterwards. It also provides you with the opportunity to plan next steps with them so they continually improve and setting timeframes for crucial follow-up with them.

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COACHING EVALUATION CHECKLIST

Manager/Director: �������������������������

Date: �������������������������������������

Coach:������������������������������������

Channel Coached:��������������������������

Monitoring Skills: _

Consistent skills scoring for all agents

_

Accurate skills scoring

���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Planning for Coaching: _

Materials and calls ready for playback

_

Completed agreed-upon work to assist rep

_

Side by side coaching at agent desk

_

Role play with agent

_ Reviewed training information and discussed with agent _ Spot-checked calls since last session & gave instant feedback to agent _ Reported progress & plans for agent to management after last session ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Greeting CRS: _ Welcoming _

Noted improvements made by agent

_ Asks agent what they are working on and what they need help with ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Rapport: _

Shows interest

_

Engages with agent

���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

Body language: _

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Eye contact

_ Gestures _

Facial expression

_

Nervous or relaxed and confident

���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Choice of words: _

Positive word choices

_

Focused on skills

_

Professional word choices

���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Making interactive/ asking questions: _ Stop at customer “moments of truth” to get agent input _

Ask how, what, why open questions

_ “Tells” only when agent isn’t hearing opportunity ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Handling negativity to coaching or agent excuses: _

Attempt to overcome negatives

_ Keeps agent focused on the customer experience ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Getting agent commitment: _

Asks agent how they can help as coach

_

Asks agent what they want to improve

_ Commits to follow-up, additional training/coaching action with agent ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

Motivating the Agent to improve:

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_ Says encouraging things during and at end _ Tells agent customer feedback received or positives overheard during customer interactions ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Ending session positively: _

Thanks agent for customer focus / improvements

_

Confirms next steps to assist / be available to assist

���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Agent’s coaching attitude and commitment: ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Reviewed coaching skills with coach on (date): ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Coach’s coaching attitude and commitment during our meeting: ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Next coaching observation planned: ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Goals for Coach Skills Improvement: ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

A Checklist For Evaluating Your Coaches INTRADAY AUTOMATION: TURN INSIGHTS INTO ACTIONS

time, significantly enhancing coaching velocity, delivery and productivity.

Once you have insight into what coaching issues you need to address, becoming a highperforming contact center requires the ability to turn insights into measurable actions. Few organizations take the effort and time to evaluate their coaching, and even fewer are able to successfully take action on their insights. These organizations are not intentionally choosing to disregard their findings. Most contact centers believe that coaching is an essential part of an effective frontline. Having effective coaches is equally important.

Intraday Automation not only finds time for supervisors and coaches to have one-on-one conversations with agents but it also assigns training and communications tasks to agents based on their performance. Turning data into real-time actions is a unique and powerful way to impact frontline agent performance.

Many centers have identified that coaches feel pressured to complete coaching sessions quickly to protect the service level and ensure agents are available to meet customer demand (as they should). Unfortunately, time constraints associated with keeping agents available to take calls as well as other manual processes that need to be completed by the coaches and supervisors are par for the course in the contact center environment. Many centers cite the inability to manage an agent’s off-queue time or the drain on resources to manage schedule exceptions. For some, it’s just the perceived lack of time because of customer demand. Intraday Automation is a new, emerging answer to this problem. Intraday Automation turns data into actions and makes real-time adjustments to frontline workforces. In every center, there are slivers of idle time that can be used for productive activities like one-to-one coaching sessions, training and communications. Intraday Automation utilizes this data and turns idle time into productive

Whether the insights you gain from appraising your contact center operations are about how to improve coaching, ways to increase productivity, or what’s leading to a decrease in CSAT, Intraday Automation empowers you to turn these insights into profits by making realtime adjustments to your frontline workforces, including call center, back office and retail.

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A Checklist For Evaluating Your Coaches

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Authors

MELISSA KOVACEVIC

KYLE ANTCLIFF

Customer Experience and Coaching Consultant

VP of Marketing

Since 1983, Melissa has partnered with Contact Centers

Kyle is a thought leader on how a real-time workforce

and Retail Teams to help them develop strategies,

delivers a better customer experience. Before

operational processes and skills to successfully

joining Intradiem, Kyle was Chief Operating Officer

blend People, Process and Technology for Customer

at TALENThire (workforce management) where he

Experience success. Her results-based “Coach the

oversaw 85% annual growth. Prior to TALENThire, Kyle

Coach” program for service and sales team front line

served as Vice-President International for Marketworks

leaders focuses on real world “onthe job” coaching with

(eCommerce). Kyle graduated from Purdue University

participants. Melissa has written hundreds of articles on

with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information

industry best practices for contact center, tech support

Systems and holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg

and other publications worldwide.

Graduate School of Management.

ABOUT INTRADIEM

Intradiem is the leading and only complete Intraday Automation software-as-a-service company for frontline workforces, including Contact Center, Back Office, Retail and Mobile, focused on helping companies improve customer experience, grow revenue and decrease costs. Intradiem’s patented technology makes real-time adjustments to customer-facing workforces by interpreting data from existing, siloed systems and triggering actions based on changing business conditions. These real-time adjustments equate to significant business benefits. More than 50 global brands and 200,000 frontline workers trust Intradiem’s solution every day. www.intradiem.com 678-356-3500