In the contact center game, it’s important to keep your eye on the ball – nothing is more important than agent performance.
But the game has changed. The traditional contact center experience may have been like a team of athletes, with agents driven by the live-wire energy and competitive spirit around them. Yet now agents are often working hybrid or remote – and essentially disconnected from that motivation. So, the critical coaching they receive to improve their performance must evolve, too.
Coaching is not new to organizations, of course. Yet a recent NICE survey showed that in the wake of the pandemic and remote work– arguably when it is most needed – 42% of those asked, reported their company was doing less coaching.
Even more alarming, of those who did receive coaching, 58% felt they got very little from the sessions they received. That may be because the majority of companies didn’t offer personalized training, and instead used a one-size-fits-all, inflexible solution.
Either way, this sort of coaching is a colossal waste of time and money – and certainly, the resulting feelings of frustration and futility contribute to low agent morale and retention.
Despite all this, there is some positive new momentum in coaching methodologies. NICE, for example, is focusing on soft skills, not just hard skills. This means that beyond facilitating training for agents on the raw knowledge they need, NICE is enabling coaching in fields such as communication skills, active listening, and how to establish a rapport with customers on various channels. Any athlete will tell you, learning how to merely handle the equipment only goes so far – it’s their fitness, judgment, angling, and in-the-moment calls that matter most.
Coach John Wooden, the famous winning American NCAA basketball coach, once said, “Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.” The optimal coaching develops both the agent’s ability and ‘character’ as they interact with customers.
In keeping with its next-level approach, NICE offers personalized coaching sessions, coaching to the root cause of the agent’s issue. A basketball player missing too many shots may be distracted, fatigued, or injured. Coaching the player is only effective if the coach understands the specific reason and knowledgeably targets it. So too, a supervisor, seeing an agent’s higher-than-average handle time, wants to coach to the root cause of the behavior – whether it’s a lack of knowledge or distraction or burn out – not just offer vague, all-purpose fixes.
NICE also provides lots of motivation, incentives, and gamification around the coaching to keep agents continually invested in their own improvement going forward. This changes the dynamic of improvement, so that agents are not always feeling wrangled by a supervisor. Instead, they are driving themselves to be better.
57% of the managers surveyed said that gamification helps to improve performance, increasing overall happiness and engagement. The fact is that people prefer to not feel pushed by others, but rather at the helm of their work, progress, and growth –or as Coach Wooden noted, “Discipline yourself, and others won’t need to.” The best agent coaching will be organic and feel self-driven, internally-motivated – not forced.
NICE Performance Management is at the forefront of technologies that provide contact center agents with personalized, meaningful coaching that works toward substantial professional improvements – because we understand that ultimately this makes for happy – and successful – players.
To understand the importance of coaching in the contact center, download the report.
Learn how you can Empower your team with NICE WEM Prepared Agents Solutions.
For more information about the need for coaching in the Great Resignation, read our blog ‘Athletes of the Contact Center in The Great Resignation’