So we have been talking about the impact that live coaching with our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) has on the quality of calls they produce along with their initial productivity.
Some people just seem made for this job. They have the gift of gab, their words flow smoothly, and they just have a naturally keen ability to deal with people. Others need some encouragement and development to reach that status (and that is OK) – your job as a coach (more so as a leader) is to identify the good things your Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) does and foster a sense of collaboration and desire to keep improving.
In my opinion, one of the most crucial parts of coaching a Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) is following up with them and checking on what you asked them to improve on in your initial coaching session.
Here are some of my own methods that help me develop my Conversational Marketing Experts:
High-impact Follow-up Coaching Tips
- At the end of your first coaching session, set a date and time to do a follow-up, and stick to it.
- Ask your rep to take ownership of their areas that need work, and ask for a date by which you can expect improvement to have taken place. Remember to be reasonable and S.M.A.R.T about goal setting, and hold them to it on their coaching form.
- Have a specific area of improvement that you are listening for based upon your initial coaching. Example: Second-attempting, rebutting, information verification, etc.
- Reinforce the good things your rep already does in his or her calls.
- Personally take a few calls for them, and have them listen to you doing what you want them to work on and how to do it correctly.
- Begin to pinpoint specific areas that need to be improved upon by focusing on metrics that directly affect back-end performance.
- Continue to listen in and do live monitoring specifically on actionable items that you and your rep have agreed needs improved on over the next day(s) following your follow-up.
There you have it. It is as easy as that. Coaching and training people to improve can be an expensive cost to any contact center, but what price do you put on creating high-quality calls? Do a majority of your reps make calls that you can show your clients without shame? If you want to be able to say yes to that question, consider how much of your coaching is actually followed up upon.
What are some ways that you make sure your reps are improving their call quality?