What is Agent Coaching?
As we begin exploring these differences, I think the better question would be “What is coaching?”
One must first have a basic understanding of what coaching is before applying it to the art and science of the contact center world.
I can personally think back throughout my professional career, my time playing sports, and my experience with educators, and I can count the real “coaches” from my life on one hand.
The basic definition of a coach is to train or instruct a team or player.
But as most of us know it, coaching is focused on improving performance and developing an individual. Coaching activities have both organizational and individual goals.
Now take that and apply it to business.
Simple, right?
Well, not so much. Let’s explain.
What separates the best coaches
Some of the best coaches…
1. Tailor their approach
2. Are phenomenal at asking questions
3. Stick to their principles
Let’s take a look at the sports world. John Wooden took the approach of finding “unique ways of inspiring his players with just a simple, calm approach to success.”
Some people respond to “yellers”. But the majority don’t.
When I think back to the best coaches from my past, they did not yell and they did not degrade. They inspired me to become better through their actions and their words; not through a fear of repercussions.
Now let’s look at the Chief Operating Officer or Vice President of Operations.
Their goals are focused on moving the company forward. But they need to find ways to inspire those around them in order to achieve those goals.
Agent Training vs. Agent Coaching
Agent coaching tends to be broken for three reasons:
1. How people “coach”
2. They mix training and coaching
3. The wrong people are doing the coaching
Training is the process of learning the skills you need to do a particular job or activity: a training course. Training can be handled by an individual, in a group setting, or with a coach. It encompasses a broader range of activities than coaching itself.
Enter Operations Leaders.
Organizations have realized that the person responsible for the lines on an Excel spreadsheet and the levers pulled to drive a business forward are often now the same people who should be interacting and coaching agents daily.
They intertwine coaching, training, and scaling.
This is where managers come in.
The issue – most managers don’t receive any training on how to coach.
Most managers are top performers, which doesn’t always mean they will be good managers.
We did a podcast with Kevin Dorsey around this topic, and if this individual is capable of taking the behavioral characteristics of what made them successful as a rep and transitioning their focus to a larger team view this can work. Unfortunately, that transition usually flops and the team’s quota attainment drops.
Pressure is heightened, stress levels elevate and what should be coaching quickly turns into dictatorship and RIFs or even reps leaving.
On to the next.
How do we take managers and turn them into coaches?
Plain and simple, we shift our perspective on what matters when we transition them into the role.
Stop focusing on how to build reports, accurately forecast pipelines, or run call review sessions. We should be having them watch TED Talks on leadership.
Like this one from Jocko Willink on Extreme Ownership.
We should be putting books in their hands like Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek.
We should allow them to miss quota for a couple of quarters.
We should reward them for leadership traits.
When we allow individuals to begin to think about gaining the trust of their team first before hitting quota.
It allows us to calmly think about what success looks like and plan for the long term.
Need some other inspiration?
Why your agents don’t apply their sales training