Coaching employees is an essential managerial task that is crucial to cultivating effective teams. Optimizing your company’s coaching efforts require dedicated managerial support, consistency, and the right knowledge.
Use these eight steps to coaching your employees to ensure that your team is delivering the best service possible to your customers.
Number one: preparing for coaching sessions 
This involves:
- Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound)
- Develop being a solid coaching framework
- Collaborating your approach to coaching with other managers or internal Rock Stars
- Including the owner in understanding your strategy
- Informing employees about what they can expect and how they can prepare for coaching sessions
Number two: identifying performance trends based on call type
Knowing your employee’s performance is “average overall” is not as helpful as knowing that they excel with customer returns and struggle with more technologically advanced customer service questions.
Breaking down employee performance based on:
- call type (example, customer service, outbound sales, inbound sales, returns, refunds, etc.)
- disposition (example, bug, lost shipment, warranty, order inquiry, billing error, etc)
Analyzing this information will provide you with a more comprehensive understanding of performance trends so that you can provide a more targeted coaching experience to employees.
Number three: detect performance issues based on live observations and monitoring
There’s no better way to identify strengths and weaknesses than to observe employees interact with customers. Listen-in on live calls to identify any performance issues (such as subpar communication skills, difficulty adhering to company policies, failure to adhere to required greetings and procedure problems procedures Or, problems processing specific transactions, etc.)
Leverage clarity phone features that allow you to listen in on live calls without the employee or caller knowing so that you can assess the employee’s performance without his or her anxiety getting the best of them.
You should also observe employees at their desks so that you can identify when work habits or time management issues are contributing to decrements in performance.
Using the qualitative data that you compiled from these observations, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of performance strengths and weaknesses to enrich the feedback you provide to employees.
Number four: evaluate a few calls to obtain more reliable data
When evaluating recorded and live calls, it is ideal to analyze a few calls rather than just digging deep into one call. This will ensure that you are analyzing a more representative sample of an employee’s performance and thus will offer more reliable data.
Evaluating a few calls will allow you to identify trends across calls, pinpoint consistent issues, and discover huge red flags. This will allow you to be confident that your counsel is focused on true performance issues and armed with ‘real examples’ you witness or listened to you can provide informed advice to your employees.
Number five: allow your customers to do the coaching
Sometimes there’s nothing more impactful than providing feedback from a customer’s perspective. During your coaching session provide data compiled from post-call surveys from your customer satisfaction surveys customer emails or call recordings.
Make sure you indicate positive feedback as well as constructive present criticism. Doing so will allow your employee to learn from the people that are that matter most: the customers.
Number six: provide effective feedback
As a coach, providing effective feedback is of utmost importance. Make sure that when you provide feedback, it is:
- Specific – tie your feedback to a specific performance issue
- Data-driven – make sure your feedback is based on qualitative meaning numbers metrics
- Qualitative – such as notes from call recordings customer feedback, etc.
- Timely – provide feedback as close to the event you are referencing as possible
- Tied to an action plan – make sure your employee knows exactly how to improve their performance
Providing effective feedback will go a long way to ensuring that the employee understands what is expected from them and is motivated to increase their performance.
Number seven: develop targeted action plans
After providing feedback collaborate.
Collaborate with the employee to develop an action plan. This may include requiring that the employee receive more intensive coaching, complete e-learning modules, retraining materials, work with a peer mentor, review additional call recordings to pinpoint areas for improvement, and or revisit the issue during the next coaching session.
In order to be effective, action plans should include the following:
- Specific measurable goal: “complete e-learning module on-call etiquette
- Specific Timeframe: ”beginning tomorrow and completed before the end of the workday on Friday, October 23, 2016
- Distinct Duration: two hours to complete module
- Work Hours Allotment: “between four and five each day”
- Support Resource: “shadow Jamie, customer support agent”
- Resolution Liaison: identify any anticipated roadblocks to achieving their goals and engage in preemptive troubleshooting by identifying who they should go to.
Ensuring that your employees have a comprehensive understanding of how they should improve is essential to enhancing the performance.
Number eight: follow up with the employee before the due date of the action plan
Before employees are scheduled to complete the suggested changes, monitor their performance and check in with them. During this check-in session, make sure they are on the right track and ask if they have any questions. This will enhance the likelihood that they will successfully make the suggested changes in the allotted timeframe
Providing your employees with great coaching is an important step in providing your customers with superior customer service.
But the first step is giving your employees and easy to use communication platform to engage customers. Find out why employees love using clarity’s void cloud-based phone system.
Learn first-hand why managers and employees alike love using Clarity Voice
Learn more about Clarity ‘unique ability to help you monitor and motivate employees while you multiply your company’s profitability.
