When someone says feedback, we often think of “experts” giving contestants a hard time on “reality” TV. Feedback often involves telling people they aren’t doing their job properly. Many supervisors don’t like giving feedback. Giving feedback is an essential part of any supervisor’s job. How can agents improve unless they receive guidance?
There is no “right’ or “wrong” way to give feedback. The best way will be culturally specific. Here are a few pointers, however, that seem to work.
Using positive language is more or less essential. This doesn’t mean painting an unrealistically optimistic picture. It means making sure that you mention good points as well as bad points. The overall message should be something like “You did that well, now if you do this, it will make the overall result even better.”
The great debate when giving feedback is whether to “train” or “coach” the agent.
“Training” the agent is a one way street, the supervisor talks, the agent listens and then does as he is told. “Training” often works better with new agents, where they don’t have the experience to examine their own performance critically.
“Coaching” the agent is more of a conversation, where the supervisor asks questions and the agent works out what the issue is and how to solve it himself. “Coaching” works better with experienced agents.
Encouraging agents to respond is, however, encouraging them to disagree. Whatever happens during the conversation, the supervisor has to stay calm, retain his dignity and therefore the agent’s respect.
A final thought should be given to written feedback. Sending an e-mail is quick, easy and avoids confrontation. How many times have you seen members of staff get upset over an e-mail? How many people did they tell? How did it affect the employee and his colleagues?
In my opinion written feedback is the worst one, in this case you can’t monitor agent’s reaction and can’t see how he accept the critic.
It is also does not looks like a feedback but as a directive.
Hi Michael, many thanks for the comment. I must admit, I’m not a great fan of written feedback myself. It is, however, becoming more popular as many contact centers are using technology to enable team leaders to manage larger teams and therefore reduce “overhead”. In these cases, where a team leader has 20+ agents to manage, for routine evaluations where the change has not been significant from the previous evaluations and the trend is not going down, written feedback is one way to at least let the agent know that no dramas have been discovered.
Many thanks once again for your comment.
best wishes
Liam