LEADER DEVELOPMENT 

Pillar 3 is having a Coachable Call Structure

Team members need an easy to understand Call Structure that sets out the key steps, in the proper sequence, they need follow to achieve positive outcomes whether handling customer service calls,
booking appointments or making sales.

An effective Call Structure crystallizes the steps when handling or making a call; and when done correctly is easy to learn and really easy to coach!

Just imagine how more quickly you’d improve the overall performance of your Call Center team if you had a call structure for your team to follow that Team Leaders could use to coach team members to
follow.

The 4th Pillar is Call Monitoring and Calibrated Scoring

To be effective coaches, Team Leaders need to have a clear understanding of the challenges team members are facing when making or handling calls.

The best way to understand where coaching is needed is to listen to team members’ calls and score each area of the call structure in those calls.

It is imperative that Scoring Guidelines are created and calibrated with all Team Leaders to ensure consistent call scoring across the call center.

The best way to ensure Scoring Guidelines are calibrated correctly is to get all your team leaders into a room, listen to a few recorded calls together and have each of them independently score each call.

Then compare and discuss their scores to ensure everyone understands the appropriate scoring levels for each call component, to make sure they aren’t too strict or forgiving in the scores they give.

This way team members will generally have the same scores for the different parts of your call structure and you’ll find this really helpful if you move them from team to team to ensure they get consistency on
the scoring of their calls.

Pillar 5 is Corrective and Nurturing Feedback

Providing positive and corrective call performance feedback is critical when coaching team members to ensure they are protecting your brand and well trained to be friendly, helpful, giving accurate information and following call handling processes effectively.

Team Leaders need to be trained in providing nurturing and corrective feedback on calls they’ve scored to make sure team members really understand where they need to improve and are open to being
coached.

Aside from providing corrective feedback, Team Leaders should also be coached to identify what was also great about the call they scored. That way when providing corrective feedback, along with call deficiencies, they can highlight positive aspects of a call to reinforce those actions with team members, so they will occur again.

Providing feedback in this way will be seen by team members as an instructive and motivational experience they can look forward to.

The 6th Pillar is Team Member Skills Audits

Team Leaders need to conduct a Skills Audit of each of their team members every quarter to have a timely and clear understanding of the coaching and training needs for each of their team members.

These audits can be done more frequently, particularly if there are chronic under performers or when new team members join their team.

Skills Audits cover all sections of a Call Structure and other areas such as: Product Knowledge, Systems Knowledge and Administration.

Team Leaders should also add notes to each area to remind them of the coaching and training requirements to help them when they develop Coaching Plans for team members.

After they’ve completed an audit, discuss the areas team members need coaching or training and decide with your Team Leaders how best to deliver any required training or coaching.

If many team members need help in any specific area it may be better to have a group training session, that’s where keeping notes on each audit section can come in handy.

Pillar 7 is Team Coaching Plans

Coaching Plans keep Team Leaders focused on covering the areas each of their team members need improvement. It’s just a simple plan that outlines which areas need work, what coaching is required, when it will be delivered and who delivers it.

This pulls everything into a road map Team Leaders can follow that focuses on the specific areas of coaching needed for each team member.

Of course, some team members are really, really good operators who won’t need a lot of coaching, but they can still improve in some areas. And, you’d be amazed at how many really good operators want their Team Leader to listen to their calls and work with them because they’re feeling they may be falling short.