Radclyffe Consulting, LLC

CSRs Not Open To Feedback or Coaching

Dear Liz,

We have two CSRs on the team that become extremely distraught when they receive the invitation to a coaching session. They go into their manager's office and also go up to the coaches and state "Oh my gosh, what did I do?" and they also discuss it among the team. I have had discussions with both of them stating coaching is a learning environment and is used to help us improve our phone skills. During coaching, I state the positives before moving onto the improvements needed. Do you have any other suggestions regarding handling this situation? Is there a particular personality that responds this way to coaching?

Trying To Create A Positive Coaching Environment in New Jersey

Coaching Doesn't Have To Be Painful

Many front line supervisors, managers and call quality coaches really dislike coaching CSRs.  That's why all there are so many excuses.  Here's what I hear:

• It takes too much time
• I have too many projects
• I have too many direct reports
• We don't have recording equipment
• Our recording equipment doesn't work
• I'm in so many meetings
• We're implementing a new CRM system or a new phone system or workforce management
• And so on.....

While I agree, time limitation is always a factor, when you lead a contact center the service you provide is your product.  Why would you let the "product" go out the door to a customer without checking the quality?

Call Handling: Taking Control

The most popular question I am asked is how to get CSRs to improve their call handling, specifically call control. Listed below are some ideas on how to quickly improve call control:

• Have CSRs take immediate control of the interaction by making a strong "take ownership" statement - "I am glad you called today, I definitely will be able to take care of this for you."
  
• Next, have the CSRs immediately ask permission to ask questions to get more information (remember, the person asking the questions is the person in control of the interaction) - "So that I can get this resolved for you as quickly as possible, would it be okay if I asked you some questions?"
  

Employee Engagement: How Important Is It To The Bottom-Line?

One of the most frustrating factors in a contact center environment is keeping CSRs motivated and passionate about what they do.  There are two kinds of CSRs: those who love what they do almost as a "calling" and those who stay because, well, what else would they do?  A favorite saying of mine, "You can stay or you can leave, but you can't stay AND leave," really says it all, doesn't it?  I'm talking about those people at work that you wish would leave, because they are no longer interested or engaged in the department's mission.

The next time you are requesting money for training, coaching or team building, provide some of these interesting factoids from Gallup:

• Disengaged employees cost US Business between 270 billion and 343 billion dollars a year
• Disengaged workers are 10 times more likely (48%) to say they will leave the company within a year than engaged employees (4%)
• Companies that had a lower percentage of disengaged workers outperformed the S & P by 24% over a 3-year span
• Only 4% of disengaged employees will advocate the company to others compared to engaged employees (75%)
• Only 10% of disengaged employees compared to nearly 80% of engaged employees will recommend the company's products and services to others