Regularly and consistently coaching call center agents is crucial to cultivating and maintaining an efficient team of customer service professionals. When the agents are highly knowledgeable, well-trained, and well-skilled, they are more likely to provide high-quality support and delight customers in every interaction. That can ultimately increase customer satisfaction and improve customer loyalty.
What is Coaching for Call Center Agents?
Call coaching is a common practice in call centers and contact centers that aims at improving the performance and efficiency of call center agents in handling customer interactions over the phone. It involves providing tailored feedback and personalized guidance to agents on how they can improve their call-handling skills, how to deal with different types of callers, how to handle various types of customer issues, and deliver a better customer service experience in each interaction with customers. Call coaching can be conducted in real-time or through a post-call review of call recordings.
The Goal of a Call Center Coaching Manager
The goal of a call center coaching manager is to provide regular coaching sessions to call center employees to ensure they perform at their best while keeping customers satisfied with the level of service provided to them. The first step is identifying specific areas where agents need to improve their skills or expertise through call monitoring. Once the areas of weakness and opportunities for improvement are identified, the coaching manager conducts one-on-one or group coaching sessions to address them. The most essential aspects call center coaching managers should focus on are:
- Extensive product/ service knowledge (to ensure agents can answer versatile questions about the company’s products or services and resolve complicated issues).
- Professional phone etiquette (including how to properly start and end a conversation, how to put a caller on hold, how to transfer and escalate calls, etc.).
- Customer service soft skills (such as active listening, empathy, efficient verbal communication, problem-solving, conflict resolution, and other skills).
Why is Call Coaching Important?
Having regular call coaching sessions is critical to efficient call quality management and ensuring agents are able to maintain the expected level of service delivered to customers. This is especially important during the onboarding stage, helping agents gain more confidence and develop the right skills to provide consistently high customer experience. Some of the specific benefits of call center coaching include:
- Improved agent performance and efficiency: Coaching ensures agents are well-prepared and skilled to efficiently handle any type of inquiry, which results in reduced average handle times and increased first call resolution rates.
- Better call center team collaboration: Group call coaching sessions and peer-to-peer coaching can foster teamwork, lead to better collaboration among team members, and improve interpersonal relationships within the team.
- Enhanced team morale and reduced turnover: A supportive and encouraging coaching environment helps improve team morale and employee engagement, increase job satisfaction, and reduce agent turnover rate.
- Enhanced customer service and experience: Coaching helps agents enhance their soft skills, handle difficult interactions, and defuse customer complaints, which ultimately improves customer satisfaction and customer experience.
- Increased sales and profitability: Developing agents’ sales skills through call center coaching and training can increase sales and improve the overall productivity and efficiency of inbound and outbound call centers.
Types of Call Coaching
1. Real-time call coaching
With real-time coaching, a coaching manager listens to real-time calls through call monitoring features, which are typically part of call center software tools, and provides immediate guidance and feedback to the agent, helping them handle challenging conversations, resolve customer issues, and deal with complicated customers.
2. Post-call coaching
Post-call coaching is provided to call center agents after the interactions are already completed. As call center software usually allows recording customer calls, a coaching manager can listen to the call recordings, deliver feedback to the agents, and suggest ways to improve their skills and better handle similar situations in the future.
3. One-on-one coaching
One-on-one coaching is a personalized coaching session between a coach and a call center rep where the agent is given targeted support and tangible guidance on improving their performance. One-on-one coaching proves to be one of the most effective methods as it provides more confidence and comfort to agents.
4. Group call coaching
In the case of group call coaching, a coach leads a training session with multiple agents and provides feedback and suggestions to the group as a whole instead of focusing on individual reps. It allows creating a collaborative environment where agents can share their experiences and best practices.
5. Peer-to-peer coaching
With peer-to-peer coaching, two or more agents collaborate with each other. They may role-play by acting out specific examples of customer calls to improve their skills, call-handling techniques, and strategies. This way, newly hired agents can efficiently learn from senior, more experienced team members.
Tips for Effective Call Coaching
When coaching call center agents, you shouldn’t only focus on providing negative feedback and pointing out the agents’ weaknesses, poor performance examples, and skill gaps. Instead, you can use a more efficient ‘sandwich’ approach that involves delivering a piece of negative feedback ‘sandwiched’ between two positive ones. Starting and ending a coaching session on a positive note will soften the blow of negative feedback and ensure the session goes smoothly in a comfortable and supportive environment.
FAQs
What is a coaching call?
A coaching call is a virtual coaching session between a call center coach and a call center representative (usually working at a remote location) conducted to enhance the rep’s skills and improve their call-handling techniques and performance. Regular coaching calls are essential to ensuring remote agents get the same level of support and assistance as their peers working in an office environment.
What are group coaching calls?
In the call center context, a group coaching call is a virtual coaching session between a coach and a group of call center agents. These calls provide the opportunity for the agents to develop new skills and enhance their knowledge, which will help them efficiently handle customer interactions, show outstanding performance, and deliver a consistent customer service experience.
