Observations

We’ve upskilled over 140 Team Leaders across various organisations all over New Zealand and find Team Leader’s current coaching capability levels often fall into these groups.

• “I coach my people but I’m not confident what I do is best practice”
• “I live and breathe coaching each day and see it as the most important part of my role”
• “I have coaching skill but it’s not valued around here so I don’t bother”
• “If I’m honest with myself I avoid coaching and prioritise everything else”
• “I mainly coach on compliance to the rules and catching people out”
• “I spend lots of time with my people but it’s not outcome focussed/ documented”
• “I mainly coach on process and system use as that’s what I’m an expert on”
• “I enjoy praising my people but lack the confidence and skill to coach for improvement”

Our Approach

We’ve found a 4-phased contact centre coaching programme works best to maximise results and embed a long-term change in practices.

Build on great foundations

Build on strengths and add new coaching practices & approaches – we don’t through away what’s working already, we integrate today’s coaching strengths
Plan a new approach to coaching (one on one sessions with each TL)

Establish new practices

Establish common coaching practices across the contact centre
See best practice coaching approaches demonstrated
See how Lean thinking and process management can be embedded into the new practices
Learn more about best practice leadership & customer experience practices

Coach for results

Receive mentoring to focus coaching to lift business performance
Receive coaching to improve own coaching practice and upskilled in Lean thinking and process management
Keep using common leadership & coaching practices and deepen understanding

Transition to BAU

Receive further mentoring to embed coaching practices
Share success stories and celebrate success
Transition responsibilities to leaders to keep them going post the programme, skilled in process management techniques
Our goal is to come back years later and see the same dedication to coaching, as during the programme

Feedback

We build skills, we build confidence, we strengthen a community of leaders, we enable improved results – here’s some examples of peoples’ feedback.

“I can’t thank you all enough for what you have done for my team and I. You have helped renew our passion and drive, and why we do what we do. You have equipped me with some amazing tools and also validated some things that I have already been doing.”
– Team leader

“THANK YOU. I really mean it. I had hit a roadblock with this particular agent around his performance and didn’t know what to do next. Having the chance to calibrate on his calls in calibration really prepared me to coach him afterwards”.
–Team Leader

“I was asked in my review what the two things were that had the biggest impact on our people in my centre this year was. I named the coaching programme as number 1. ”
– Contact Centre Manager

“It was so cool to be
able to understand how my agent’s behaviours contribute to our NPS and FCR results to the extent that I could coach one of my agents to realise this too”
– Team Leader

What makes the Connections’ approach different?

We develop team leaders’ capability to lead by:

• Introducing thought provoking content every week and encouraging leaders to agree to make small changes each week, that over a number of weeks create significant change.
• Supporting and coaching leaders “on the job” to embed the changes they have committed to.
• Creating the environment where contact centre leaders support and learn from each other to become a strong community of leaders.

We work alongside team leaders to:

• Coach their team to encourage leaders to coach, showing them how well great coaching is received by team members.
• Build their confidence and introduce new approaches so they are renowned for being a trusted and respected coach.
• Facilitate weekly calibration sessions to align team leaders on what “great” is like and align on improvements that will make interactions more effective.
• Build trust to help team leaders work on and practice the hard conversations they may have been putting off.
• Provide a fresh set of eyes to see strengths and improvement opportunities.
• Embed Lean thinking and process management into their approach.

We work with the agents directly to:

• Support team leaders to launch the renewed coaching programme to their team, assisting to embed that this approach works best when reps take responsibility for their own improvement.
• Coach reps to help them improve, particularly “good” reps to help them shift from good to great (research confirms this to create the biggest overall increase in performance.)
• Coach reps directly, increasing the number of coaching conversations in a short period of time to build momentum and deliver improved results.
• Facilitate agent calibration sessions to align on what makes a great interaction, and get ideas from each other on how to improve.

We become part of the team