Want to hear your call center team making enthusiastic, energy-packed calls? Consider coaching, an underutilized call center solution.

Coaching Is a Call Center Solution and a Necessity

Coaching used to be viewed as a luxury to offer as part of  call center software, but today it’s a more recognized and appreciated tool for seeing productivity gains, improving staff turnover rates and improving customer service outcomes. Investing in coaching your call center employees also sends a very important message – that you care about their development as professionals.

Major Organizations are Trying It

Did you know targeted coaching can be a cost-saving call center solution? When your team feels more equipped and empowered to handle customer challenges, they move more quickly through tasks and may be more comfortable encouraging higher customer sales. Major organizations like Coca-Cola Enterprises and Sprint have used principles of coaching and active wait time into their customer service operations, noting results in customer feedback and productivity.

Don’t I Just High-Five the Employees? No …

Is coaching just giving your call center team a pat on the back? No. It’s a highly complex process that is strategic in nature and part of an aggressive management course of action for your call center. In terms of measurability, you may be able to measure its effect on staff performance quickly – but the far-reaching impacts of coaching on the way your call center interacts with customers may be immeasurable. When your agents are happy with their work and the difference they’re making, that’s definitely noticed and appreciated by customers, making coaching a call center solution worth considering.

Make Wait Time a Great Time

When coaching is implemented in your call center, you will provide your agents with detailed and quick feedback regarding their call processing. There are call center solutions offered by vendors that make coaching success simple and streamlined, including Knowlagent. This provider offers shrinkage tasks during down time, making call center wait times a useful and productive arena you can use to build your team’s strengths. The product is offered on-demand, and addresses the core principles behind call center coaching – including developing the right combination of coaching techniques and establishing a call center atmosphere that’s receptive to what coaching has to offer.

Call Center Solution for Prioritization

Specifically, coaching software that includes shrinkage activities for your call center can employ tools like an Activity Queue, a Knowlagent option. This means the time your staff spends without a customer on the line is busy, productive and beneficial. The software can define activity types, telling your agent exactly what tasks can be done in between calls. In terms of time allocation, this is a call center solution that helps your staff organize and know ahead of time how many minutes or hours are needed daily, weekly and monthly for each kind of task they’re undertaking.

The software can also help agents prioritize which tasks are most critical, and what can be done next. Your management team can then make the specific task assignments as they are equipped with this knowledge. In another engaging feature, Knowlagent lets you put specific, prioritized tasks into specific call center agent’s activity queue. The call center solution from Knowlagent is also able to collaborate with any application, and the tasks the software helps you assign can be carried out in multiple systems.

Coaching, Too, Starts With a Plan

To begin implementing coaching as a call center solution, list out what are the best skills and the areas for improvement for your team. Look at your agents’ past evaluations if you need help identifying areas of concern. You may also find it beneficial to sit down with your agent and talk together about what they feel are areas where improvement is needed. Now that you have this information, it’s time to put your plan into action, implementing technology tools like those offered from Knowlagent and other vendors.

As a Call Center Solution, Coaching is Measurable

Measure the impact of your coaching efforts and their viability as a call center solution by conducting brief customer surveys, either on the phone and with your email correspondence. Also compare your rates of retention as you strive to keep your talented call center agents in your shop instead of a competitor’s, once your coaching program is in full swing. Like all business processes involving change, learning to coach – and implementing coaching strategies into your call center environment – may take a few months to launch before you fully see your results.