Call Center Coaching

Why is call center coaching important?

As per a popular saying, “Great call center agents are not born, they are made!”

For that, you need a robust call center training program. Such coaching modules empower agents with the requisite technical tools and knowledge to best assist customers.

Not only customers but call center coaching also leads to confident employees, as agents can see growth in their skill set. This enhances their productivity and promotes an overall positive work environment. 

Contact center coaching models

There are three popular contact center coaching models. We discuss them below- 

1. GROW Model

GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, Will. This model involves formulating questions around these four categories and evaluating your call center performance. The GROW model is best for face-to-face and side-by-side coaching. However, it is not preferred for call center online coaching.

2. THINK Model

The Think Model is a standard criterion considered before offering feedback to an agent. Feedback is a crucial aspect of call center coaching and can make or break your efforts. The Think model helps you formulate your feedback in such a way that it is positive and inspiring rather than negative. You can use this model in the following way- 

‘Ask Yourself, is your feedback True, Honest, Inspiring, Necessary and Kind?’ (THINK)

3. A WISH AND TWO STARS Model

This model takes a pragmatic approach to giving feedback to customer service reps. You award them two stars for every task the agent successfully achieves. At the same time, you ask them which particular aspect they wish to see improved. 

What is the Goal of a Call Center Coaching Manager?

A call center coaching manager understands that their employees are as important as customers to their business success. Hence, they avoid micro-managing their agents and focus on aligning the organization's growth with the personal growth of agents.

Call agents look up to center coaching managers, and their feedback guides agents' improvement journeys. Hence, the primary goal for management should be to identify the ‘Why’ of their coaching style. Team leaders can inspire agents and enable them to reach the pinnacle of their skill set. They should thus set a goal to create a positive work environment that will support and motivate each agent. 

Call center coaching areas that managers should focus on

1. Thorough information about the product or service

The agents should know the product/service your client offers so they can confidently address customer grievances. Empower your agents by establishing a knowledge base that can be accessed during live calls. 

2. Mannerisms 

How your reps greet and talk to customers throughout the call can become a hallmark of your brand. Often, customers will form a lasting impression of your brand based on how agents behaved with them on the call. 

An agent’s tone and choice of words also hold a lot of power. If everything is top-notch, they can easily convert potential leads. But if the tone was off or inappropriate comments were used, even the most loyal customers would jump ship and go to your competitors. 

3. Software understanding 

You don’t want your agents wasting time figuring out the solutions while they are live. Hence, you should train them to use the call center software. This significantly reduces the Average Hold Time (AHT) for each customer and enhances agents' productivity. 

Best Practices for Effective Call Center Coaching

As a call center manager, you must remember that coaching is not an isolated concept.It is intrinsically linked to the work atmosphere. You must consider your agent’s well-being while helping them achieve professional achievements. This can be done in several easy steps-

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1. Always give feedback in private. Agents might not like it if their shortcomings are discussed publicly. 
2. Don’t focus too much on the negative. Always build upon the positive aspects, even if you have to give critical feedback. 
3. Use modern technology, such as AI-powered call recording platforms, to obtain deep insights into agents’ performance. 
4. Try to arrange micro-coaching sessions that improve the agents' specific skill sets. Don’t try to crunch a lot of learning in a few sessions. 
5. Keep the mood light and fun in the coaching sessions. While learning is not to be compromised, it also shouldn’t become a drag. Fun sessions keep agents engaged, thus bettering their learning outcomes. 

Challenges with Call Center Coaching

1. Lack of supervision

You might have put up agents for coaching, but it won’t yield much if you don't monitor their progress regularly and observe whether coaching is changing their performance. 

2. No space for agents to record their feedback

Feedback is a two-way road, with both manager and agent feedback holding a significant place. However, agent feedback isn’t of the same importance. You have to trust that your agents want to improve genuinely. They might offer valuable suggestions that can enhance the effectiveness of your training program. 

3. Ambiguous Coaching Models 

There can be no end to improvement; every tiny thing about your call center might show promise of upgrading. Often, coaching sessions become the ground for covering every possible skill under the sun. Agents might not grasp your expectations without focused sessions or even become disengaged.

Why is Traditional Coaching Not Suitable for Today’s Agents and Managers?

Every experienced manager or agent( having spent six months or more) understands the importance of metrics such as average handling time (AHT), first-contact resolution (FCR), or customer satisfaction (CSAT). They’d also know that an upward trend in FCR and CSAT, accompanied by a reducing trend in AHT, is a good indicator, suggesting the effectiveness of the agent coaching program. 

Instead of chasing the metrics, contact center coaching has become frustrating for call center coaches and agents alike. And the turn of events can be attributed to several reasons:

1. Quality coaching needs time.
2. Coaches are unprepared and perform poorly in sessions. 
3. Classroom coaching isn’t a scalable option.
4. Poor tracking of agents' performance
5. Vague feedback and insufficient evidence of poor performance.
6. The wrong mindset was adopted for coaching agents.
7. Coaching is often poorly targeted.

Hence, the discussion boils down to a modern and straightforward conclusion: Creating more innovative call center coaching techniques will upskill contact center agents with personalized, targeted, and timely coaching that eliminates human dependency. 

Embracing the new coaching model presents the best opportunity for scaling organizations with high call volumes and expanding contact center teams.

Call center coaching solutions: The pillars of successful session

The first pillar of a successful coaching session is engagement. Coaching can last a long time, and agents may lose interest. You must ensure that you help them maintain the same level of enthusiasm and engagement. 

Another fundamental pillar of successful call center coaching is simulation. This step is particularly essential for new joiners. Through role-play or mock interactions, you can make them comfortable with the various call center solutions you use and give them an on-call experience handling all types of customers. 

How do you create a smarter call center coaching environment?

1. Automating repetitive tasks 

Automating repetitive tasks leaves agents more time for coaching sessions. 

2. Make data work for you.

Contact centers should use software that offers actionable insights into agents’ performance. This way, they can successfully judge an agent’s capability on multiple indicators. 

3. Move beyond face-to-face coaching.

Digitizing coaching modules can work wonders for your business. You’d have several tools at your disposal—on-demand coaching videos, call recordings of top performers, gamification, etc. Digital coaching is beneficial for coaching remote agents. 

What resources do you need for successful call center coaching?

1. Contact center automated agent coaching software 
2. Appropriate coaching material
3. Experienced agents and managers
4. Evaluative tests and surveys 
5. Portals for online training of agents 
6. Insightful reports to analyze an agent’s performance.

How does Convin’s Automated Agent Coaching improve CSAT by 27% and closure rate by 21%?

Convin’s automated agent coaching is built for contemporary contact centers. Our solution streamlines coaching and helps agents deliver top-notch performance within 45 days. 

1. Automated agent performance and tracking 

Ability to evaluate agent call performance with AI. Call auditing is conducted on 100% of agent calls instead of manual, random, and smaller samples. 

As an option, managers can manually score agents even after receiving the AI call score. 

2. Coaching is automated and removes human dependency.

Managers are relieved of the responsibility of assigning coaching sessions and bringing training material to the table. Agents can automatically receive coaching recommendations.

3. Personalized and targeted coaching at scale

Agents receive only relatable coaching moments. Practically, agent performance issues are categorized under “skill” and “will” components. Agents can access will or skill coaching sessions based on the call scores.

The coaching recommendations are reflected in the emails and platform for agents’ convenience.

4. Use peer-to-peer coaching

Convin believes in replicating top performance. As a best practice, the coaching sessions will be snippets auto-generated from top-performing agents' recorded calls. Newcomers can leverage the coaching program to ramp up faster.  

5. Analytics and reporting 

With the backing of AI, analytics, and reporting are performed on all agent calls. The coaching progress is also reported and displayed to managers and agents. Access to a comparative team dashboard excites agents to perform better and outperform their peers. 

What Are Convin's Other Product Capabilities?

Convin monitors and analyzes 100% of calls automatically based on custom parameters set by your organization. The conversation analysis offers winning behavior identification and last-mile automated agent coaching.

Automated Quality Management

Most contact centers audit just 5–10% of calls, missing critical insights. Convin solves this by evaluating 100% of conversations using custom QA forms. Managers and QA teams get accurate call scores, helping them spot performance gaps, unhappy customers, and coaching needs instantly—no manual sampling required.

Winning Pattern Identification

With AI-driven call analytics, Convin highlights what drives success—or failure—across every conversation. It detects winning behaviors, violations, sentiment shifts, and potential threats so teams can act early. These insights directly fuel smarter, data-led call center coaching.

Automated Agent Coaching

Forget manual reviews. Convin auto-generates coaching moments from every agent call using AI scores and peer benchmarks. Agents receive personalized training modules, which help them improve their performance quickly. The result? Real-time learning, fewer escalations, and better CX—at scale.

Conversation Intelligence

Convin captures and analyzes every conversation to automate transcripts, notes, CRM updates, and more. Backed by our Call Analytics Engine and CRM Auto-Assist, the platform delivers performance KPIs and coaching reports—available on Convin or via email—to guide consistent improvement.

Convin’s Call Monitoring System is Entirely Safe.

At Convin, we understand the importance of customer and call data security; that’s why we ensure your data is entirely secure and safe with our in-house transcription and NLP engine. We ensure call data security in the following ways:

• In-house transcription and NLP
• Secure login and monitoring
• Hosted on AWS
• SSL data encryption
• Role-based access control
• Enterprise-grade application monitoring
• GDPR compliant meeting recording

Convin currently supports English, Hindi, and Hinglish. You'll be onboarded in less than a week, so don’t wait—schedule a demo right away!