3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

The call center and its agents can be very valuable assets to the organization, as long as they operate efficiently. One of the best proven tools to drive efficiency in the call center is coaching agents to improve their time, call resolution and customer service.

In a recent BPA Qulaity Monitoring White Paper (News - Alert): Agent Coaching - Why and How to Make it Effective, Craig Antonucci, Director of Client Strategies, explores coaching as an integral part of a successful quality program. While some have argued coaching is too costly, Antonucci demonstrates how an effective program more than pays for itself.

Throughout the call center industry, there are some who argue that coaching is counterproductive when compared to cost. The problem, generally, is not that the activity cost too much, but instead it is not integrated properly into the improvement of the entire system.

There are specific pitfalls that can create an effective coaching program, including a failure to engage the agent in the process; the agent doesn't own or understand performance metrics; criteria is not objective; discrimination or favoritism evades review and correction; or recording and monitoring are done secretly, leading to low morale.

To overcome such pitfalls, coaches should enhance coaching techniques; there should be a focus on being fair and thorough in evaluations; things should be measured the right way; the coaches should be seeking value in the activity and not coaching just for the sake of coaching.

Effective coaching should result in improvements in call center activities. To help design a coaching program that will achieve this goal, the following questions should be asked:

• Are supervisors prepared to coach?
• How targeted and actionable is coaching?
• Is coaching consistent across supervisors?
• How often is coaching taking place?
• Are agents given the tools to take ownership of performance improvement?

The BPA Program allows customers to track and capture all coaching activity within the same online tools and databases in which the Quality Monitoring is conducted. As a result, supervisors and managers can conveniently manage the Quality Program and coaching is conducted through the use of audits performed by BPA Analysts.

Check back next week as we explore how coaching can become a part of the larger picture and how it can be used to improve the system and the agent. The overall result is an improved call center, which is a definite perk for the bottom line.