The Positive Coach Approach: Call Center Coaching for High Performance

By Sally Cordova and Judy McKee

The Positive Coach Approach is truly unique in that it provides a clearly charted course of action. It’s a course for anyone charged with the task of improving call center performance in the form of customer satisfaction, increased sales, shorter call times, and greater employee satisfaction. This book is a teaching guide that will lead you through what to do, why to do it, and how to do it.

 

This method of coaching eliminates:

   - Stress on coaches and agents

   - The need for constructive criticism

 

The Positive Coach Approach is:

   - A proven way to get more and better results

   - A kinder approach to performance improvement

 

   

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 6, 2007
• ISBN: 9781467086615

Sally Cordova

Sally Cordova is a seminar leader, coach, trainer and author. Her personal philosophy of education and commitment through positive expression comes clearly throughout her Coaching Training Programs. She worked her way through university and received her degree in Business Administration and Accounting. She is the author of the High Five Coaching program and the certification training associated with it. Through her advanced education with various leadership and managerial training programs, she learned through trial and error, what works and what doesn’t work. With her roots in customer service she soon learned the value of management with a positive attitude. She has been continually involved in this effort for the past twenty-five years. Email [e-mail]  or visit our website at www.TrainYourCallCenter.com Judy McKee is a nationally known motivational speaker, seminar leader, sales trainer and author. She is a pioneer in the telemarketing industry. She began her career as a telephone sales representative and knows the business thoroughly. She is the author of Scriptwriting for Effective Telemarketing and Maximizing Customer Contact and The Sales Survival Guide. She has been a consultant in the call center industry for the past thirty years. Her expertise in the art of telephone sales and positive coaching has put her in demand by corporations and small businesses nationwide. Judy communicates a totally positive approach to selling, coaching and solving problems. Email [e-mail] or visit our website at www.TrainYourCallCenter.com

Book preview

The Positive Coach Aptproach

Call Center Coaching for High Performance

Sally Cordova and Judy McKee

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© 2010 Sally Cordova and Judy McKee. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 9/12/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4259-7838-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-8661-5 (ebook)

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

To Jim McKee, our mentor and coach. He taught us life lessons as well as management lessons during all of our lives together but most of all he believed in us with all his heart.

Chapter One

Introduction to Positive Coaching

Early in her training career, Judy McKee discovered that she, along with many other call center trainers, found trainees were interested and seemingly committed to adapting and using newly learned skills, techniques and attitudes. The trainees were pumped up full of fire, ready to take on the world, etc.

As part of Judy’s usual mode, she made follow-up calls to centers a few days after training was completed to see how things were progressing. Sadly, in many cases she found that most of the trainees were slowly but surely slipping back into their old comfortable ways of handling calls. This situation was disappointing for the call center manager, and left supervisors and agents with unfulfilled expectations of increased performance.

After finding this slippage occurring much too often, Judy did some soul searching and closely examined the training process as carried on in most call centers. It didn’t take long for her to isolate the missing link that she saw as the primary obstacle leading to the lack of long-term training success.

She realized that what undoubtedly contributes most to the cooling down phenomenon is the complete lack of ongoing positive coaching of the learned skills after the trainer has left the scene.

Judy’s supposition is supported by statistics. Call centers where upper management support is strong, coupled with a structured positive coaching program, experience performance increases ranging from 20 to 90 percent, and agent turnover rates well below the call center norm.

Judy partially resolved this obstacle by including in her training programs a day of coaching. Both Judy’s coaching style and method were very positive. When I joined McKee Motivation, I started out as a coach and used Judy’s positive method.

Then, the most amazing thing happened. As I was coaching, managers and supervisors would observe and ask, How did you get Bob to perform like that? He was so willing to talk to you and admit errors and make corrections. I can’t get him to do anything I want. After hearing this sort of comment many times, and talking about how valuable a positive coach training would be for so many managers, Judy asked me to develop her method of coaching into the program we call The Positive Coach Approach.

In this book, we can only ask and hope for more active participation by upper managers during training programs, so they will know and understand the skills and attitudes their people are learning. By showing their interest during the training process, managers lend heavy credibility to the importance of learning and adapting to the data presented.

And, here is the good news: Any manager or coach, who’s willing to learn and adopt the techniques set forth in this book can dramatically improve call center agents’ performance quickly and permanently. Using this exceptional approach to active ongoing coaching, managers and coaches can accomplish astonishing, miracle-like results!

The Positive Coach Approach is truly unique in that it provides a clearly charted course of action. It’s a course for anyone charged with the task of improving call center performance in the form of customer satisfaction, increased sales, shorter call times, and greater employee satisfaction. This book is a teaching guide that will lead you through what to do, why to do it, and how to do it.

This method of coaching eliminates the stress on coaches and agents that’s typically associated with the perceived need for constructive criticism. In other words, it’s a guaranteed, proven way to get more and better results through a kinder and gentler approach to performance improvement. The process works best by using pre-recorded calls that coaches and agents listen to together to mutually assess positive aspects as well as define challenges for improvement.

Positive coaching is an easy way to guide agents to attain rapid and lasting performance improvement in both of the important elements of call handling: compliance and skills.

1)    Compliance. These are requirements that are imposed by legal necessities and/or company policy. Compliance items are those that are most strictly monitored by quality control organizations on the lookout to catch ‘em doing something wrong. Positive coaching makes correcting compliance items seem like less of a policing action by eliciting agreement, understanding and a willingness to make required changes to comply.

2)   Skills. These include communication, human interaction and persuasive ability skills, and it’s the area where the biggest payoffs in increased revenues and customer satisfaction can be achieved. If every agent making or taking calls in a center could be perceived by customers as a knowledgeable, qualified consultant, can you imagine what an impact that would have on revenues and company image? Positive coaching preceded by effective skills training can make that capability a reality!

The Positive Coach Approach has been designed to stand on four major foundational imperatives. To become proficient in it, managers and coaches must understand and embrace the philosophy and background of the process as outlined in each foundational block.

Foundational Imperative #1: Four Building Blocks

Managers and coaches must adhere to the attitudinal elements (or ingredients) that make up the Four Building Blocks of positive coaching: intention, relationship, discipline and skill. By intending to be successful, developing mutually beneficial relationships, practicing self-discipline, and use appropriate communications skills, you will become a positive coach.

Foundational Imperative #2: The LAMA Technique©

This technique will no doubt become your most useful and rewarding tool in interacting with everyone in your life, agents as well as peers, subordinates, superiors, family and friends. For our purposes, the LAMA Technique will enable you to initiate and maintain a constructive dialog with agents, thereby avoiding the tendency to talk down to, preach or criticize instead of coaching. Your skillful use of this technique will allow you to affect great changes and improvements in the performances of agents you coach.

Foundational Imperative #3: Eight Guiding Principles

The Eight Guiding Principles are the basic philosophy employed in establishing the what to do, why to do, and how to do elements of the Positive Coach Approach. These principles will facilitate your efforts to create and maintain a safe and consultative environment, build self-esteem, maintain an adult training environment, delegate responsibilities accordingly, set appropriate timelines, reach bilateral agreements, and ask the right questions.

Foundational Imperative #4: The High Five

The High Five is a clearly defined set of five steps that provide coaches with a fail-proof agenda for conducting successful coaching sessions. This is one of the truly unique elements of this coaching book. Many instructional books will tell you what you should do, and why you should do it, but most fail to focus on telling you how to do it! If you follow the High Five, you are assured of successful, positive coaching experiences every time!

Chapter Two

Today’s Management Issues

Managers Are Rarely Trained to Coach.

Throughout the call center industry, managers traditionally have been trained in leadership, administrative and management skills. Does it seem like something is missing? You’re right! Call center managers are seldom trained in coaching skills...and certainly not in positive coaching skills. Coaching is all about improving agent performance; it’s up to managers, trainers and coaches to make sure agents have every tool to do their job well.

The necessary tools are found in TRAINING and POSITIVE COACHING.

Because agent performance is the challenge that you will be dealing with most often, it’s important to understand why coaching is the answer. Training and coaching go hand-in-hand. Once training is complete and the information on the how to is conveyed, it takes coaching to turn that information from ideas and concepts into performance.

Why is Coaching the Answer?