The Best Ways of Providing Corrective and Nurturing Feedback

Marc Carriere explores how call centre managers and team leaders can provide corrective and nurturing feedback to their team members to improve advisor performance.

One of the most important activities call centre managers and team leaders need to do is provide constructive and corrective feedback to their team members.

Done correctly, team members will really listen and take feedback on board and act on it. If it’s done poorly, then you can end up creating resentment and closed minds.

Unfortunately, most call centre managers and team leaders haven’t been trained in how to provide feedback in a way that is positive and nurturing and leaves team members wanting more.

One of the most important activities call centre managers and team leaders need to do is provide constructive and corrective feedback to their team members.

In this article we’ll cover a simple process for giving corrective feedback that is positive, helpful and nurturing so that your team members will be eager to follow your advice and come back for more feedback from you.

As an example for providing effective feedback, I’ll walk you through the steps of the feedback process for a call you’ve monitored that I coach call centre managers and team leaders on.

Listen to Recorded Calls

The most effective way to provide feedback is by listening and scoring a recorded call so you can go back over the recording to pick up on points of the call that you want to talk about with your team member.

If you don’t have any calls recorded, you can still follow this process by silent monitoring the call from your desk and scoring it there.

However, if you are silent monitoring and scoring a call, don’t sit next to your team member, because if you do they’ll probably be nervous and you won’t get to listen to how they typically handle their calls.

And you should always use a scoring form to score calls to make sure you capture all the areas of the call that need to be corrected, but even more importantly, that you can praise on, to encourage that particular behaviour!

Plan Your Feedback Session

Once you’ve completed scoring the call, take a few minutes to plan your feedback session.

Think about what you want to achieve with your feedback and the outcomes you’ll be looking for from your team member after they’ve received your feedback, and any coaching or training sessions you need to provide.

What Is Their Communication Style?

You also need to think about the person you’ll be providing feedback to and how to communicate with them in a way that fits their communication style.

Not everyone communicates and processes information the same way, so you want to stay away from a one-size-fits-all mindset and really think about who they are and how they best respond to feedback to pattern your message in a way that best suits their style.

You should also think about providing feedback on only one or maybe two things about the call that you want them to improve on, because if you give them too much feedback they’ll likely get a little confused and not concentrate on what you want them to focus and improve on.

So, it’s best to focus on the first few elements of the call initially and pick up the other elements at another coaching session.

Read our article 10 Good Feedback Examples to Improve Contact Centre Performance for useful tips and advice on how to deliver effective feedback

What Did They Do Right?

You don’t want your feedback session to just be about grinding them on all the bad things they did…

It’s also really important to identify a couple of things about the call that they did right or really well. As important as it is to identify the things they did wrong, you also want to catch them doing something right that you can praise them with when you give them feedback.

This is important because you don’t want your feedback session to just be about grinding them on all the bad things they did on the call.

You want to find good points to praise them on, to encourage them to repeat those behaviours, and so they come to look at getting feedback from you as a positive experience.

Allow Them to Score the Call Themselves

Once you’ve got your plan together, bring them in and explain that you’ve scored a call that you’d like them to listen to as well. Give them a blank scoring sheet for them to score the call themselves as you both listen to it.

After the call has ended, give them your thoughts on the call overall and specifically mention the things you felt they did really well. Then go through each section of the scoring form and compare scores and discuss them.

This will give you both an opportunity to see where their perception of how well they did on each aspect of the call differs from yours, and why.

And don’t be surprised if you find that some of their scores are a lot lower than what you gave them. A lot of people can be harder on themselves than they need to be, and it’s good to let them know that you felt they did better than they thought they had.

For more information on how to improve your call monitoring, read our article: 30 Tips to Improve Your Call Quality Monitoring

What Do You Want to Coach Them On?

After you’ve compared your scores and discussed them, come back to the one or two things that you want to coach them on, and cover them then and there, if time permits. Otherwise set a time for a coaching session to cover them.

You want to make sure you leave them feeling good about themselves and looking forward to the coaching session.

And always finish the feedback session by mentioning the things they did really well and let them know you have confidence in them and that you think they’ll make really good improvements after the coaching session.

You want to make sure you leave them feeling good about themselves and looking forward to the coaching session.

Now, a great book you should check out that can help you be more effective in how you deal with your team members is called the One Minute Manager by Dr. Kenneth Blanchard and Dr. Spencer Johnson.

I recommend this book to all the call centre managers and team leaders I work with as they explain three secrets for effectively managing people through One Minute Goals, One Minute Praising and One Minute Reprimands.

Marc runs a workshop for developing team leaders. To find out more, check out Marc’s free online workshop.

For more tips and advice from Marc Carriere, read our articles:

• 10 Red Flags to Watch Out for With New Hires
• 7 Pillars for Creating Amazing Team Leaders
• How to Conduct a Skills Audit and Coaching Plan