Contact Center coaching should help people improve. The problem begins when coaching becomes just another measurement exercise.
This article is part of our Contact Center Management Series — a collection of articles that bring together practical guidance and insights to help Contact Centers run better and deliver stronger results.
We Measure Everything
From operational performance to customer perception, Contact Centers generate an enormous amount of data.
Occupancy. Service Level. Average Handle Time. Quality. Customer Satisfaction. Net Promoter Score.
Measuring the right things is essential. But measurement alone isn’t enough. There’s an important question we don’t ask often enough:
Are we just measuring performance, or are we helping people improve it?
Monitoring and Coaching
One of the primary ways Contact Centers help people improve is through monitoring and coaching.
We listen to customer interactions, evaluate what happened, and use those observations to coach frontline professionals.
A well-designed monitoring and coaching process improves service quality, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.
It’s a bit like taking a multivitamin: one process delivering benefits in many different areas.
But like any process, it only works when it’s well designed and executed.
You’re Either Helping or You’re Keeping Score
When we talk with frontline professionals about a customer interaction, we’re either helping them improve future performance — or we’re simply keeping score.
The “or” is intentional. They’re not the same thing.
Scores tell people where they stand. Coaching helps them understand how to move forward.
Confusing the two is one reason many coaching conversations fail — and why so many frontline professionals struggle to improve.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that giving someone a score is the same as coaching. It isn’t.
Giving someone a score on a call — let’s say 78% — isn’t the same as helping them understand how to perform better in the future.
When quality discussions with frontline professionals revolve around a score, they learn to ask:
What was my score? Did I pass?
Instead of asking a more important question.
What could I do differently to perform better next time?
These are fundamentally different questions.
Scoring
Scorecards are valuable tools for gathering and analyzing quantitative data. They allow us to track frontline performance over time.
Trending reports are a powerful developmental tool, and scores have their place.
But when we focus only on scoring — or fixate on scores — we can inhibit development and growth.
The role of a coach in this context is to help people have better customer conversations.
Since when did helping someone improve require the use of a score?
Scores and coaching conversations serve two very different purposes.
A scorecard is a judging tool — it tells you how someone did, but it doesn’t teach them how to do better.
Think of the scores awarded by Olympic judges after a skater’s routine or a diver’s performance.
The number reflects what just happened, but it doesn’t help the athlete improve.
It’s the same in Contact Centers.
If all you do is issue scorecards and hope quality improves, you’re leaving out the most important part — coaching.
Day-to-day improvement comes from timely, constructive feedback — not from a number on a page. Scores should support coaching, not replace it.
The more you help someone improve, the better they’ll score when the time comes. Helping pays off in better scores.
Rethinking the Question
When people ask me how many interactions they should monitor, I ask them to rephrase the question:
When deciding how many interactions to monitor, ask yourself two questions:
– How many interactions will you score for tracking and trending?
– How many interactions will you review purely to help someone get better?
Add them together. That’s your number.
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this article resonated with you, I’d be pleased to stay connected.
Feel free to get in touch anytime, or explore more of our work below.
Daniel Ord
[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com
