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I want to share a technique that helped me shift from telling to asking, leading my team member to self-discovery…

Front-line leaders are expected to coach their agents on delivering great customer service, but it is such a broad term they struggle to explain what it means. Please continue reading to find some advice on how to make it clear and specific and to be able to coach to it effectively.

Q: I am a senior call centre manager with six team leaders reporting to me. I am committed to transforming the mindset of my team to spend time on activities that directly improve the customer experience. One specific way that I believe I can achieve this is by changing the way we approach calibration sessions. I feel we get very little accomplished in these meetings and want to know if there is a better way of using this time?

Oprah Winfrey once said, “Stay curious, keep learning, and always strive to be a better version of yourself.” This statement epitomizes a growth mindset philosophy and contact centres who embrace this belief, use collaborative coaching as their mechanism to spark this thinking with agents.

Customers feel cared for and valued when their experiences are personalized to their needs, lifestyle, and personal choices. To make this a reality, organizations must enable Team Members to have access to deep insights about buying behaviors, usage patterns, and preferences.

Q: I know that coaching our agents is beneficial but every time service levels go down, my director cancels our coaching efforts. I can’t make any progress with my agents! How do I convince my director that coaching should not be cancelled regardless of service levels?

Q: I recently took on the new role of pioneering a home agent program for our call centre. How can I ensure that the agents selected FEEL the same sense of “team” that travels with working in a contact centre?

Does this sound familiar? “Sigh. I feel like I’m on a scorecard rollercoaster! I feel happy and optimistic when a couple of my scorecard metrics start to improve.

“Then, in the following month, I feel disheartened when these same metrics start to slide. On top of that, despite my coaching efforts, other metrics on my scorecard are at a standstill. I feel a lack of control over my results! It’s incredibly frustrating!”

A strong culture provides remote team members with a sense of belonging that can counteract feelings of isolation.

Q: We are thinking about getting our feet wet in social media in our contact centre. Is now a good time to get started and if so, what are some best practices? Signed, Twitter twit!

Q: I’m hearing more and more about collaborative technologies actively being used in Contact Centres. Can you please give me advice on how to get started? Signed, “Feeling Overwhelmed”

Leading, coaching and managing hybrid teams calls for a conscious change in mindset.

The Covid-19 pandemic created significant shifts in how we work. As businesses scrambled to set up employees to work from home, there was little time to be proactive and consider future implications.

Being an inspirational leader was challenging enough in the past. However, new challenges have
surfaced with the transition to virtual teams.

Q: I was reading your SwitchGear Insights blog and was very interested to see content around coaching. My question is specific to top performing agents – is there any value in coaching them?

Q: While contemplating New Year’s resolutions for 2011, it occurred to me that setting professional resolutions is just as important as the personal ones. I’d love your perspective on what we in the industry could do differently.

The era of full-day, face-to-face training is over. In March, most contact centers shifted to a hybrid or fully work-from-home model. Virtual training has become the standard practice. But for most trainers, using technology like MS Teams, Google Meets, WebEx, Skype, and Zoom has been like jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. The learning curve was steep. It meant a paradigm shift in how we train people.