Guest Post: Chris Kontes
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the call center: coaching, while massively important, isn’t that fun for call center managers and agents alike. Many call center managers avoid coaching, reporting that coaching one new skill takes at least 10 hours; even so, most managers believe coaching is the most important thing they could be doing.
Coaching is a vaguely defined term in contact center environments. For one contact center, coaching is limited to providing feedback to agents after customer interactions, while for other contact centers, coaching involves a broader approach that includes coaching sessions, on-the-job training, and mock calls.
Coaching can also be quite taxing for contact center managers, particularly because it’s time-consuming and emotionally draining. However, good coaching is indispensable, and because it’s such a time-draining process, you’d want your coaching to actually be effective and turn into tangible results with a positive ROI.
Let’s explore the hurdles that stand in the way of effective coaching, and show how the right approach can help you get past them.
What is Call Center Coaching and Why is It Important?
Call center coaching is essential for maintaining service quality, meeting KPIs, and boosting employee productivity and satisfaction. It involves educating agents on their duties and how to perform them effectively, using tools like constructive feedback, assessments, and playbooks.
Unlike performance reviews, which evaluate past performance, coaching focuses on improving future performance. Both are essential and complementary: Quality Management assessments can inform targeted coaching sessions.
Coaching typically begins with identifying an agent’s problem area, such as a lack of technical knowledge. The agent must fully understand the issue, its importance, and how addressing it will improve their performance and customer satisfaction.
Hands-on practice with real-life examples and mock calls is crucial for effective coaching in contact centers.
You Need Call Center Coaching, Even if it Isn’t Fun
Contact center coaching isn’t always “fun”, though you can make it less boring by designing interactive educational activities for your agents. Still, it’s important to incorporate some form of coaching into your contact center’s agenda.
And we’re not just talking about onboarding here. Many contact center managers assume that training ends after the onboarding process, but without ongoing coaching, your agents will feel less engaged.
Not to mention, they’ll have a hard time figuring out how to improve their performance or overcome their weak points, which can also negatively impact your service quality and customer satisfaction scores.
Coaching Builds Trust and Maximizes Employee Engagement
Coaching builds mutual trust between call center managers and agents. Training your agents is a great way to show them that you’re actually invested in their personal and professional development, which motivates them to excel at their jobs and increases engagement.
At the same time, knowing that your agents are well-trained for the job makes you confident in their ability to do their job effectively. You may also consider collecting feedback on your coaching program to demonstrate your openness to negative feedback and commitment to maximizing the program’s value.
Coaching Improves Contact Center KPIs
Investing in well-designed coaching programs can directly have a positive impact on your contact center performance and relevant KPI targets.
By providing agents with the knowledge, practice, and resources they need to go above and beyond in their jobs, you’ll be able to meet your KPI targets, such as FCR (First Contact Resolution, CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), and AHT (Average Handling Time).
To maximize the benefits of your coaching efforts, consider creating personalized training programs for each individual. By focusing on your agents’ unique strengths and weaknesses, you can help them improve their skills faster and overcome the problems they struggle with the most.
Effective Call Center Coaching Helps Agents Hit Their Targets
You can’t expect your agents to hit their targets if you don’t show them how to do it. By continuously training your agents and communicating issues as they arise, you’ll empower them to reach their goals faster.
Tools like call recording and speech analytics software help you identify the reasons behind low scores and evaluate contact center agent performance effectively. They also allow you to create customized training programs for each agent.
The Challenges of Good Call Center Coaching
We’ve all dealt with call center coaching challenges, and even though you might feel alone in your struggles, the truth is most of these issues are pretty common. Do any of these call center coaching techniques ring a…phone?
- Good coaching preparation takes A LOT of time. Smart call center coaching methods takes serious preparation. After all, nothing is more awkward than a bad coaching session between managers and agents. Being stuck in a conference room with disengaged agents isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time, so preparation and planning are key. But even armed with contact center training program outlines, managers have to put in work before a session. In fact, most managers spend 5x as much time prepping as they do coaching.
- Coaching wreaks havoc on contact center bandwidth. During coaching sessions, call center reps and agents need to stop customer interactions and speaking with prospective customers, which is their job. With so many call centers already at capacity, that’s a no-go.
- Coaching doesn’t scale. Let’s say a call center manager with 100 agents has an excellent 30-minute coaching session with an individual agent. Naturally, the call center manager might want to provide that training for the rest of the agents. But that could take literally 50 hours — that’s more than two full days, and well over a full work week. So even if you were to crack the call center coaching code, it’s still almost impossible to deploy at scale.
These are a few of the most common challenges with call center coaching, but there are plenty more.
Top 8 Call Center Coaching Tips
Here are some tips that can help you make the most out of your training sessions:
1. Dedicate Time to Prepare for Your Coaching Sessions
Preparation is the foundation of a successful coaching session. Dedicate around 70% of your coaching effort to preparation, and leave the remaining 30% for the actual interaction. Before the session, set clear, measurable goals, create a structured framework, and align your approach with other managers or teams.
Inform agents about what they can expect and how to prepare. Tailor each session to the agent’s performance data, using analytics tools to focus on areas needing immediate improvement. A well-prepared session ensures your time is used productively, enhancing the impact of the coaching.
2. Identify and Analyze Call Center Performance Trends for Each Call Type
Understanding an agent’s overall performance is valuable, but breaking it down by call type reveals deeper insights. For example, an agent might handle technical support calls effectively but struggle with payment issues.
Categorizing calls—such as customer service, inbound sales, or returns—helps you identify specific challenges and address them through targeted coaching. It also makes it easier to align your coaching efforts with each agent’s strong and weak points, maximizing its effectiveness.
3. Use Real Call Recordings for Teaching
Real examples are highly effective in demonstrating performance improvement. Instead of discussing general service quality issues, use actual call recordings to illustrate key points.
Let agents listen to both successful and challenging calls to identify what went well and what could be improved. They can also learn from top performers’ calls to enhance their own handling of complex interactions.
4. Monitor Performance in Real-Time
Real-time observation can be very effective in identifying an agent’s strengths and weaknesses. Listening in on live calls enables you to assess issues like poor communication, difficulty with scripts, or non-adherence to policies.
Use call center software to monitor calls without the agent’s knowledge, ensuring an accurate assessment without added pressure. Additionally, observe their work habits at their desks to spot potential time management or workflow issues that could lead to a poor customer experience. Combining real-time insights provides an in-depth view of the agent’s performance and opportunities for improvement.
5. Develop Targeted Action Plans
After each coaching session, work with the agent to create a specific, measurable, and time-bound action plan. This may include activities such as completing e-learning modules, shadowing a peer, or reviewing additional call recordings.
A structured action plan ensures that the agent has a clear roadmap for improvement. Setting SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—keeps agents focused and helps track progress effectively.
6. Deliver Effective, Tailored Feedback
Feedback is at the heart of coaching, and it’s in your company’s best interest to make it specific, data-driven, and timely as regular feedback sessions help maintain motivation and focus on continuous improvement.
Use both quantitative metrics (such as call duration or success rates) and qualitative insights (such as customer feedback or quotes from calls) to provide balanced feedback. It should not only address areas for improvement but also include an action plan for the agent to follow.
7. Keep Agents Motivated
Motivation plays a key role in helping agents reach their full potential. During coaching sessions, aim to inspire and encourage open dialogue. Use open-ended questions and provide balanced feedback, emphasizing both strengths and areas for growth.
And while monitoring live calls is essential, you need to make sure it’s done discreetly to avoid creating stress for the agent.
Addressing performance issues in both call handling and work habits can help your agents feel supported and motivated.
8. Continuously Track Progress
Coaching doesn’t end after a session. Follow up with agents regularly to ensure they are progressing toward their goals. Use conversation intelligence tools to monitor performance in real-time, receiving alerts when agents deviate from scripts or encounter difficulties. Continuous tracking allows for timely adjustments to coaching plans, ensuring sustained progress and a higher return on investment in your training efforts.
Coaching Strategy Example
There are a few call center training principles to keep in mind: keep your coaching short, focused, and fun.
1. Keep Your Call Center Coaching Short
Don’t hesitate to keep the call center coaching session under 10 minutes and hyper-focused on a single coaching objective – it will save you time, be a lot more fun, and call center agents are much more likely to remember and apply what they’ve learned.
2. Keep Coaching Focused
It’s easy to try and cover too much in a coaching session. After all, there are always a million things we could be doing better, from talk speed to active listening, objection handling (sales), or average handle times (customer service).
For example, let’s say you’d like to coach an agent on opening statements. Let’s break introductory statements down further, like this:
- High-Level Call Center Coaching Goal: “I want to coach my agents on Introductory Statements.”
- Drill Down 1: “Specifically, I want the tone of their conversation to be better.”
- Drill Down 2: “And their opening statements have a few parts. Let’s focus on the first sentence of the opening statement.” Rather than coaching “opening statements,” you’re now coaching on “tone” in the first sentence of a conversation. Plus, it sets up the foundation for further call center coaching sessions, since you can easily map out micro-coaching sessions that build on each other.
3. Keep Your Coaching Fun
Short and focused lend themselves well to the fun. In a warm and fun tone, ask the agent to practice the first sentence of the conversation 10 times over (one practice run for each minute of the session). Make it fun and informal; agents might think it’s silly, but it keeps them energized and, more importantly, excited about future call center coaching sessions.
Common Call Center Coaching Tools
There are many ways to approach coaching in your call center. These include:
One-on-One Coaching
One-on-one coaching is invaluable for your agents’ growth.
Since one-on-one training meetings are so personal, they can make agents feel more appreciated and engaged. They also provide an opportunity for the agent and trainer to get to know each other and discuss job-related challenges more openly.
In larger call center facilities, it may be hard to fully rely on one-on-one coaching. Still, you can integrate it as a part of your overall coaching strategy.
Shadowing is also considered a type of one-on-one coaching. But instead of it being a formal training session that involves a trainer and an agent, the trainee just spends the work day with another more experienced peer to benefit from their expertise. The main advantage of this approach is that it’s easier to implement and requires fewer resources.
Call Center Simulation Training
Utilizing call center simulation and role-playing enables your agents to practice what they’ve learned in your coaching sessions.
In a typical role-playing session, the agent talks with another fellow agent who acts as the customer in a mock call. The agent that assumes the customer role may be given a script to follow, while the other agent is given guidelines on how they can handle the situation.
Further, it’s crucial to provide the agent with positive feedback and constructive criticism of their performance after every mock call. The end goal is to help the agent handle different situations more effectively.
Mock calls help minimize risk and enable agents to practice their skills and gain confidence before interacting with real customers. They can also be very useful when introducing new products or policies.
Another great way to utilize simulation calls is to design them based on customer feedback. For instance, if a particular customer says that agents are unable to handle payment issues properly, you can focus your mock calls with your agents on this particular area.
Real-Time Guidance
Providing your agents with real-time guidance and coaching during live calls can help them navigate complex situations and learn how to understand the customer’s intent and resolve their queries accordingly.
There are two types of real-time guidance that you can combine for coaching call center agents:
- Manager coaching: Call center managers can listen to the agent’s conversation with the customer and intervene when the agent asks for assistance.
- AI-enabled guidance: AI-enabled conversation analytics solutions assist agents in real-time during calls by conducting speech and sentiment analytics and providing the agents with multiple response choices to help them tackle tricky situations.
Try Balto for Call Center Coaching
Balto empowers your agents with AI-enabled guidance and assistance during live calls in real-time, enabling them to handle complex situations more effectively.
Access insightful analytics about your agents’ performance and identify the root causes of poor scores. Gain a deeper understanding of each agent’s strengths and weaknesses to spot potential areas of improvement and tailor your coaching programs accordingly.
Get a free demo to learn more about how Balto can boost your coaching initiatives. Start unleashing the real potential of your agents!