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Merced Systems Quarterly highlights constructive information, tips and announcements for optimizing your Performance Management initiatives. In this edition, Matt Katz, an expert at helping operations use performance information to increase quality, productivity and customer satisfaction, explores the critical role of coaching in performance management.

Top Three Coaching Musts in the Contact Center

As a key element in performance management, coaching in contact centers can lead to significant gains in customer satisfaction, revenue, and productivity. Unfortunately, in many contact centers today, coaching is not managed with the strategy and rigor it deserves. Below are three considerations intended to help you take a more critical eye to your operation's current coaching practices.

Examine your coaching "culture": In many organizations, coaching is more intuitive than it is based on fact and data, resulting in a lack of guidance on specific performance improvement targets. Take a step back and ask yourself, "Is coaching in my operation tuned and empowering? Does it force accountability? Is it tied directly to overarching company goals?" If you answered "yes" to these questions, then your organization is probably receiving positive returns on its coaching strategy. If you answered "no," it is important to develop a true "coaching culture" to improve employee performance, reduce attrition, and improve agent motivation.

Consider how you target agents for coaching: Is your organization targeting the right population of agents to coach? Or is your operation spending a disproportionate amount of time on the typically smaller populations of "best" and "worst" performers, rather the largest population of agents — the "mid" performers, with the greatest potential for improvement? Further, even the most motivational of coaches can be ineffective if they do not coach the right agents on the right metrics at the right frequency. Coaches and supervisors must also have the right tools to tailor their coaching activities to the specific needs of each individual.

Evaluate the training and resources provided to coaches: Do your supervisors and coaches have the tools and resources they need to be effective? Does Management have visibility into and control over coaching activities to help steer strategic enterprise goals? Supervisors need easy access to comprehensive performance data, and a clear set of best practices to develop their teams. But they also need a consistent follow-up strategy to evaluate agent improvement, as well as the ability to gauge their own effectiveness as coaches. Finally, with quick access to centralized information and the specialized tools needed to document and track their coaching activities, coaches across the entire operation will become more efficient, and thus have more time to spend on coaching.

While we hope the considerations above help you shape your path to improved coaching practices, the most important element to operational success is developing and committing to a true coaching culture at all levels of the organization. This includes ensuring coach and agent compliance with standard coaching practices, clockwork regularity of coaching sessions, and the ability to accurately measure progress and effectiveness. To gain more perspective on current industry Coaching practices, download Merced Systems’ Coaching Best Practices and Benchmarking Study and The Art of Coaching in the Contact Center.

Matt Katz Vice President, Business Consulting Merced Systems Matt Katz has over 15 years experience developing and leading software, financial services, and management consulting firms. Prior to Merced Systems, he served as Vice President of Strategy with Wells Fargo Bank.

We welcome feedback and comments, so please reach out to us at info@mercedsystems.com.

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