I’m passionate when it comes to coaching and developing a Tech Support team. Because when you make a sincere effort to coach and develop Tech Support agents, it results in a more engaged agent who delivers world class support. One who will go above and beyond not because they feel they have to, but because their efforts are validated by those that they report to and by the customers they assist. This is important because a Tech Support team talks to customers more often than any other part of an organization such as WinMagic which makes what they do very crucial to the success of that organization. I use a number of tools to make sure my coaching is effective as possible.

Tools of the trade

• Call Quality Screening: Most Technical Support environments record their calls. The reason why calls are recorded is to listen to calls to look at how our agents treat customers from a soft skill perspective, and to see if their technical skills are up to our standards. Once a week, each agent meets with me so that I can deliver meaningful feedback.
• Case Reviews: We must ensure that our agents are documenting cases so that every customer interaction can add value to the customer experience. Besides that, the information that is collected in these cases is often used by Product Management and Development groups to enhance and refine the products that they are responsible for creating and maintaining. So we review cases to make sure that they meet the standards that we have set out. We then meet with each agent monthly to provide feedback on areas where they need to improve.

However, the best sort of feedback for our agents comes from customers as they directly interact with our agents and have a unique perspective on their performance. Our customer satisfaction survey that triggers when a case a customer has opened is closed covers five questions that directly relate to the customer experience. The reason why it is five questions is that I want to encourage as much feedback from our customers as possible. So, asking five questions that are very focused make customers more likely to provide that feedback. The results that I get back from those surveys gives me an idea of how well we are doing, or not doing. But that’s not the only way for customers to provide feedback. We’ve recently set up an e-mail feedback process that allows customers to send us more detailed feedback. Be it a situation that was outstanding as it validates that our customers see that we’re trying to make a difference for them, or those times where we could have done better as that’s an opportunity to learn and improve what we do. Simply send an email to feedback@winmagic.com we will read your feedback and respond to it within one business day.

All of this at the end of the day helps me to refine my coaching so that at the end I get more engaged agents, and customers get a better customer experience. A win-win for both parties.