Coaching on customer service other one-to-one communication

Coaching on customer service/ other one-to-one communication

Andrew Rea

Background and situation

In his work within the financial services industry, and subsequently as a freelance consultant, Andrew has been asked to coach a number of individuals around the issues of improving customer service and face-to-face communication skills. As a trainer Andrew had previously run training courses on coaching skills and was able to implement these skills himself when coaching others.

The process

Andrew describes a process called ˜the fly on the wall . This activity involves asking coachees to look at a situation from a number of perspectives:

• Their own “ what did they see/hear/feel?

• The other person s “ what did they think that the other person saw/ heard /felt?

• A third party observing “ if you were me, observing the situation, what advice would you give to improve it next time?

Positive aspects of this approach

Andrew found that the positive aspect of using this process was that asking the learner to see things from another point of view enables them to get a different perspective on the situation.

Challenges faced

The challenges in using the process come when the coachee says, ˜I don t know what someone else would feel . To deal with this Andrew uses the statement, ˜Imagine you do know and has found this to be effective in 90 per cent of cases.

Learning

From this experience, Andrew felt he had learnt that most people are willing to change if they can see a reason why they should.

Top tips

Use questions, make it natural.

Final words

Andrew made a final observation on an organization with which he had an association “ a large banking organization that introduced quarterly staff questionnaires as part of their ˜balanced scorecard measuring system. They regularly included questions such as ˜How often do you receive coaching from your line manager? or ˜How good is your team leader at coaching? .

The organization was surprised to find that the results did not seem to stack up, ie the staff in areas that were thought to have the best results and the best managers reported that they did not get ˜coached . On closer investigation the organization discovered that these managers were, in fact, so good at coaching that it had become a part of their everyday activity and therefore staff did not realize that they were being coached.

Subsequent surveys included questions such as ˜How helpful is your manager? or ˜How much interest does your team leader show in your development? . The scores improved considerably for the better areas within the organization.

Authors comments

This case study illustrates that coaching does not need to be a lengthy process and that using a simple, planned activity can have a profound impact upon the performance of an individual.

Andrew s final note gives an excellent example of managers who adopt a coaching style as their way of managing their teams . This style can evolve from using the more formal coaching process that we suggest here; alternatively the managers in this scenario may find that, in some situations, they use the process so that individuals can identify that they are being coached in a specific area of their work.