How to Coach At-Home Agents Effectively:
Six Best Practices to Help You Personalize and Measure the ROI of Coaching

By Lauren Maschio, NICE Systems

A radical workforce shift happened in 2020, with organizations making wholesale operational changes in order to more effectively coach and manage an at-home workforce. This shift created unique challenges that were significant enough to mandate rapid changes in the contact center. When agents are working in the physical location, supervisors gain a lot of complementary information through casual observation and informal “hallway” conversations. When agents are working from home, supervisors need access to data to assess the same (or greater) levels of insight – but the processed data many organizations have may not be sufficient.

Contact center leaders have had to find new ways to adjust to a new normal. To ensure that agents stay productive and deliver the service customers demand, contact centers have had to alter how they deliver and measure the value of their coaching program. Coaching is the single largest contributor to agent performance, which means that not adjusting coaching now to take into account the needs of the increasingly remote workforce will have tremendous short and long-term impacts.

To state the seemingly obvious, working remotely just isn’t the same as being physically in the same space, regardless of how much organizations try to replicate in-person interactions through video calls, real-time chat and other tools. An instant message can’t replace a handshake, and a Zoom happy hour falls far short of the camaraderie of a face-to-face get-together. Despite the increase in digital interactions, working from home can still feel isolating: Fully remote employees report significantly higher levels of loneliness (25%) than those who work exclusively on site (16%), according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report.¹ Other top challenges for the remote workforce – communication and collaboration – are always essential for teams but increase in importance when working remotely - not only in terms of documenting meetings and decision-making but also simply reaching out and connecting with team members. Managers play a significant role in facilitating (or undermining) a culture of connection and helping employees build relationships, regardless of where they work, according to the Harvard Business Review.²

When done correctly, remote work can actually increase employee productivity, creativity and morale, researchers have found. Research indicates that 77% of workers feel more productive when working from home compared to a traditional office setting.³ Overall, 91 percent of respondents report having a positive experience with remote work.⁴ Creating a team environment, where employees are engaged, continue to take part in training, and are rewarded and incentivized will be key to the success of your contact center. Coaching will play a critical role in making this a reality.

Best Practices to More Effectively Coach a Remote Workforce

Research shows that coaching matters—in fact, 51% of companies with a strong coaching culture report higher revenue than their industry peer group. With personalized guidance, coaching helps employees navigate challenges more effectively, resulting in higher productivity. It also fosters a supportive environment, boosting employee engagement and motivation.⁵

To achieve these outcomes, successful organizations often:
Establish clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure agent productivity.
Analyze every interaction between customers and employees.
Utilize visual dashboards to transparently display agents’ successes and areas for improvement.

Higher-performing contact centers (as measured by customer feedback and financial results) are more likely to proactively supply agents with learning materials to make their idle time more useful. They automatically initiate or recommend personalized steps agents can take when they don’t meet objectives.

Best-in-class organizations do not forget the importance of formal supervisor training programs to enable continuous development of coaching skills. These are the contact centers who train their coaches, not just agents, because great agents don’t automatically become great people managers; you have to train them to make them exceptional. Research shows that while effective coaching is a priority for leaders, nearly 40% report inadequate coaching from their managers.⁶ The good news is that supervisors can learn how to be a successful coaches.

To be effective, coaching needs to be personalized to specifically what the employee needs to change the behaviors that are impacting the contact center’s KPIs. When coaching is an ongoing two-way conversation between the employee and the manager – one that includes frequent meetings and recognition for what the employee is doing right – engagement soars. In fact, fact, employees who have regular meetings with their managers are significantly more likely to be engaged than workers who don’t, Gallup has found.⁷

Employee engagement is a critical enabler of contact center success. Ultimately, engaged employees feel empowered and confident that they can do the right thing for the organization and their customers. Engaged and satisfied employees are:

8.5 times more likely to stay than leave within the next year.
4 times more likely to stay than disengaged colleagues.
16 times as likely to refer friends to their company.
3.3 times more likely to feel extremely empowered to solve customer issues.⁸

While job security and pay are important, intrinsic motivations have a significant impact on contact center operations, including:

Opportunities for personal growth within the operation, and that can be as simple as badges or rewards or seniority level.
Clarity of the organization’s mission–knowing that you are helping people or making their lives better.
Having a sense of community and being part of a team.
Management–agents need coaching in order to be successful if an agent is meeting objectives that have been set for him or her, job satisfaction levels increase.

The order of importance of these factors, however, is shifting in the current work-from-home environment. The sense of community has decreased, while stress levels have increased exponentially for many workers. It’s the perfect time to enhance your operations, and there are six key ways you can improve coaching and performance for your at-home workforce.

Create a One-Stop Shop

All-important data, goals and progress toward goals should be stored in a single location. This becomes increasingly important when your workforce is not in the office in person – desk drop-ins are no longer an option. Supervisors have less time to compile data, so they need technology that does this for them. Technology should bring areas of improvement to the forefront and make those highly visible to everyone whose actions impact the result.

Spend Time Wisely

Make sure that coaches have everything they need to be successful. Preparation is key. And just like coaches can prepare for sessions, agents should too. Have sessions prescheduled and get creative in how you are connecting with agents. It may make sense to split coaching sessions into shorter, more frequent sessions – three ten-minute sessions instead of one 30-minute session, for example. More frequent touchpoints can help ensure that agents feel connected and part of something bigger.

Record It

Documentation is essential to help you understand what worked – and what did not – for which agents, and a single repository is critical to understanding the impact. Which agents thrived or struggled? Which coaches excelled or needed assistance? This is one area that’s actually easier with remote agents; rather than popping by an agent’s desk to share advice, the supervisor is reaching out online, which makes it easier to document the coaching interaction. Some organizations have also opted to record the coaching sessions to help supervisors self-analyze and improve their coaching skills.

Share Best Practices

Both agents and coaches can benefit from knowing and understanding what great performance looks like. Reference material is important; the more you have real examples for agents of how to do things, the more consistency you’ll have. Consider recording your role-playing sessions and connecting back to the materials that have been assigned so you know which materials are driving the most significant improvements, and for whom. Some materials work better for new hires, while other modules are more effective with tenured agents.

Remember that best practices are important for coaches, too. Collaboration between coaches has always been a challenge, but it becomes progressively important in the work-from-home environment. Give coaches vehicles for sharing their own best practices and struggles, perhaps a best practice library of coaching techniques. Triad coaching – a method that uses a coach, the person being coached and an observer – can also be really effective in helping coaches develop their skills, particularly in a remote environment.

Recognize Employees and Leverage Gamification

When agents are at home, there are no whiteboards touting successes, no balloons, no cupcakes, no team lunches. Instead, keep agents motivated by sharing successes and creating contests and trivia – it all comes back to engagement and feeling connected. Make sure that the reward is meaningful – ask agents what they find valuable and motivating – and connect it back to your gamification ‘Quests.” And If, for example, you use gamification to increase sales of a particular product or service, be certain to note the start and end date for the program so you can monitor the impact your program has on the promotion.

Measure the Value of Coaching

Many organizations have defined coaching programs but lack the ability to connect them to overall improvement and engagement. Take steps to try to understand what you are getting in return for your investment. To do this, make sure that you:

- Take time to connect the dots on your data by understanding how much time is being spent on which topics.
- Draw correlations between frequency, content, best practices, contests and improvement in a metric.
- Try to determine through analysis the difference between your employees in the second and third quartile of performance. Statistically, this is where organizations have the biggest opportunity for progress in terms of your investment in coaching and driving results
- Translate improvements to dollars saved or dollars earned to articulate the value of the program. When situations arise requiring “all-hands-on-deck”, contact center leadership needs to understand what “cancelling coaching” can mean financially.

Although many organizations may have been forced into this work-from-home state due to a global crisis, it is expected to have lasting implications for the future of our contact centers. Many companies plan to continue to give at least some of their staff the option to work from home moving forward. Whether you will continue with full-time remote agents, or a combination of remote and on-premise staff, these six tips for success can be applied to your coaching and performance management programs to achieve measurable results.

NICE (Nasdaq: NICE), it’s never been easier for organizations of all sizes around the globe to create extraordinary customer experiences while meeting key business metrics. Featuring the world’s #1 cloud-native customer experience platform, CXone Mpower, NICE is a worldwide leader in AI-powered contact center software. Over 25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies, partner with NICE to transform — and elevate —every customer interaction. www.nice.com