What is the value of coaching in the contact center?

Im not expert but I have worked in customer service for over two years, from my beginning I was inexperienced and now I can say I am extremely confident on the phones, I have the ability to resolve customers queries in a fast and effective manner whilst's taking a general interest in them and making their experience better.

In my opinion, coaching your rules and policies is the easy bit which everybody seems to get and eventually when your on the phone your employees start chinese whispers.

I think you should coach your employees on how to emphasize with the customer. I think this is the most important part because I have realised,

by letting the customer rant
by listening to the customers stories
it calms them down

The next best thing you can teach your employees is being sympathetic, when your customer rings up to state he's lost his job and cannot pay his bills, most companies would state "I'm sorry we cannot do anything", "you have to pay your bill or otherwise" or "there's nothing we can do sorry" - Now as a customer I've noticed they tend to get upset when you talk in a negative manner, which results in arguments, employees time and extreme dissatisfaction with the company image.

What you should teach your employers is to emphasise

A answer I would give to the customer losing his job and cannot pay his bill is

"I'm sorry"

I'm afraid no policy in place which will allow you to freeze your payments.

The customer will most likely rant

I would then go on to say I'm sorry to hear you've lost your job, I can understand how difficult, stressful this time must be for you and am sorry to hear you cannot pay your bill. Unfortunately the payment has to be made but I certainly understand what your going through.

Simply by being sensitive to the customers needs, they go away, no arguments and usually say "its al right, its not your fault, its management, im not having a go at you etc."

I believe the above is best way to keep customers happy even if you can't do anything for them. I managed to get a extremely irate customer off the phone who was waiting for our company to send him a letter which took 3 months.

I'm not expert, working in call centres for two years, my scores were above 90%, customers left were extremely happy, even if I could do anything to help them. Customers were happy, my manager was happy, I was happy. I believe you should spend most your time coaching employees on being sympathetic because that simply does not existing in call centres, people want to talk to a "person" not a robot reeling of lists of policies and manners so in short training your employees being empathetic leaves your customers feeling valued and more loyal.

Proper coaching on the right factors is the single most important activity that must occur in EVERY contact center. Unfortunately, in a world where supervisors are stretched to shove more activities into an already full schedule, coaching is often the one item that quickly falls to the side. Another factor to the coaching dilemma is the skills of how to coach and what elements should be coached are frequently misunderstood or not defined.

To implement a successful coaching program, there are several key elements:

1) What are your performance metrics? Do your metrics focus on what elements the agents have within their control? Do your metrics capture the customer experience and the objective that the agent needs to achieve (e.g., First Contact Resolution, Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter, Collection Rate?) Do your reports provide supervisors with the tools they need to trend an issue quickly and determine the correct elements to coach?
2) Are your metrics provided frequently enough that coaching is valuable? For example, it is really pointless to coach an agent on a call that occurred over 60 days ago.
3) Are your supervisors trained to coach? Are they coaching on content (and have no understanding of the content) or are they coaching on soft skills, such as empathy with the customer, conflict management, etc?
4) Do your supervisors have the time and motivation to coach? Are your supervisors also measured by the performance metrics of their agents?

In order to determine the value added, you can baseline your existing metrics (again, only if they are appropriate), attrition, and attrition costs. A successful coaching program will improve your positive attrition (the number of promotions of your agents into other positions within the company), reduce your negative attrition and hiring costs, and most importantly, improve the value of your contact center in resolving the needs of the customer.

The beautiful thing about a coaching program is that there is little to no technology to buy and you are investing in the most valuable and costly asset every organization has – its people.