Contact Center Coaching Best Practices: Outstanding Agents Strengthen Your Brand

Coaching is a highly effective tactical activity that has powerful strategic implications for contact centers. At a fundamental level, coaching is a supervisory function that has a direct and immediate positive impact on agent performance. It also plays an important role in agent satisfaction and retention, as it shows that managers value their contributions. From a strategic perspective, coaching improves service quality and the overall customer experience. It also improves agent productivity and reduces operating expenses by teaching agents to perform tasks and respond to inquiries more effectively. However, the most significant contribution from coaching is one that is often difficult to measure: its impact on customers and the company’s brand. Agents who are clearly satisfied bring a level of energy to their jobs that is reflected in their voices and how they treat customers; they make callers want to do business with a company that employs such highly satisfied and dedicated employees.

Implementing a winning coaching program requires commitment, dedication, best practices and the ability to deliver the program fairly and consistently on an institutionalized basis.