To Coach and Protect

How Effective Coaches Can Protect the Training Investment

For More Information Contact:

Impact Learning Systems InternationalP.O. Box 14110San Luis Obispo, CA 93406Toll Free: 800.545.9003Local: 805.781.3283Email: info@impactlearning.com www.impactlearning.com

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To Coach and Protect

How Effective Coaches Can Protect the Training Investment

he term coaching in its broadest sense can be used to describe many different managerialand motivational functions, but in its most common usage coaching refers to the practice of giving feedback to employees in order to help them achieve improved performance. This isfundamentally what coaching is

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helping people to do a better job.Giving feedback goes hand in hand with the practice of measuring performance. First you monitoran employee, then you coach, and then you

monitor again. It’s an ongoing process. If you’re doing itright, you should be seeing your employees’ performance continually improving. And while training

is very important to the success of your call center, it is not a substitute for coaching

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both trainingand coaching must be implemented together if you desire to see a noticeable change in your

employees’ b

ehavior, abilities, and morale.Coaching can be one-way (meaning you do the talking) or two-way (meaning you and the rep have aconversation about performance). Typically, one-

way coaching occurs right after you’ve heard a callor otherwise measured performance. It might also occur after you’

ve monitored several calls ore

mails over a period of time and want to give feedback on trends in the rep’s pe

rformance. In one-way coaching, you go out to the call floor and give quick verbal feedback to the rep or you send a

coaching comment through your call monitoring software’s feedback mechanism.

One-

way coaching works well when circumstances don’t allow y

ou to take agents off the floor formore extensive discussions. In contact centers where e-mail is the primary form of communication,the majority of your feedback may be via e-mail with only occasional face-to-face feedback.Voicemail is also a quick way to give spot feedback.Two-way coaching refers to more in-depth feedback sessions where you and an agent sit down to

talk about trends in performance, a particular situation that’s troubling the agent, or some other

issue. Two-way coaching also takes pla

ce during quarterly performance reviews or “chats” about

why a particular behavior has not changed. Two-way coaching should take place in your office or insome other location away from the contact center floor.

Giving feedback to your employees isn’t a luxury. It isn’t a maybe. It isn’t a one

-of-those-days-

I’ll

-get-around-to-doing-it aspect of your job. Giving feedback to your reps is one of the two or threemost critical things you do as a contact center manager. Several studies have shown the dramaticresults of pairing coaching with training. One, for example, found that training alone increasedproductivity by 22.4 percent, but when training was followed up with coaching, the figure soared to

88 percent. (Source: “

Executive Coaching as a Tool: Effects on Productivity in a Public Agency

,”

Public Personnel Management, vol. 26, issue 4, winter 1997, p. 461)