Lori Miller- President of Tooty Inc.

When it comes to training and coaching difficult people, I find the same personalities, the same defenses, push back and questions.   Managers and supervisors have similar frustrations as they try to balance providing personal attention to one person while maintaining standards for a team or department. A key goal with training and coaching is to help individuals overcome self-imposed roadblocks in order to move forward.  The Tooty Training® program is an effective way to develop individuals into industry and customer service experts.

Common training roadblocks you may hear:

• The script is just ‘not me’- I love this comment! It opens the door to finding out what the individual would like to do differently and to ask how that suggestion would help the customer or the district.  Sometimes the suggested change is about wording choice. There are plenty of opportunities for any person to add to the script in order to make the conversation more natural.   When it comes to asking for an email, assessing a need, or asking for a Google review- the door is opened to discuss what the fallout could be by not asking for that detail and the benefit is for a company to have that information.
• If I were the customer, I wouldn’t like it –In a recent coaching session with a representative, I was told that customers were annoyed with all the questions.   I probed further and asked if this happened every day or with certain types of conversations. The CSR concluded that it was an occasional issue- not every call and not every day.  The probing questions you ask as a coach will reveal the training opportunity.  In this case, she needed to hear an explanation of the importance of the questions and to understand what happens if they are overlooked. She was able to make a connection to some of the phrases on the Current Customer Script that could be used to respond to impatient customers.
• I don’t want to hear my audio- I hate my voice– For 30 years I have asked people in training if they have had any kind of voice training and my experience is that only 1-30 will say they have had either a speaking class or they sing and learned how to use their voice through that training.  Because of the lack of this type of training many representatives come to the wrong conclusion about their own voice and how to use it.  I recently worked with a veteran CSR who struggled with being monotone.  We had fun as I had her imitate me as I said the company greeting and I recorded our practices so she could hear the subtle changes she could make to give a customer the impression that she really is happy to help.  This is a fun exercise that you can do with your team.

• I don’t care if I score a 100- Believe it or not, some employees have a different measuring stick than you do!  They may have decided that staying right around 89 is perfect for them because it will keep them out of trouble!  Others are just not aware of their own blind spots.  A great way to help move coaching forward is to take the last several Tooty evaluations and have him/her tally the skills that have deductions.  This shows the blind spots, and those skills can be highlighted on the scripts to provide something specific that can be done to improve.

3 Common roadblocks that may keep you from being an effective coach

• Not open to questions– I like to start 1-on-1 coaching sessions by saying,
  “You can ask me anything. You won’t hurt my feelings!” Giving permission for your employee to speak sets the stage for a more open conversation. Be sure to ask if there are specific questions that need to be answered so that you can address them in your time together. 
• Not sure of the answers- There are some questions that require you to investigate or speak to someone higher up to get the right answer.  That’s okay- we are always learning. But you lose credibility and effectiveness when you don’t have (or find) answers for your team. You will push your employees into finding another ‘go to’ person for answers.  That will diminish your influence and create performance inconsistencies from person to person.
• There is not an ongoing training plan– It takes about 6 months for any person to feel comfortable in their job and that is even more true in our industry where there are so many regulations and details.  Onboarding training is like being trained by firehose.  Learning how to use scripts is just one part of the training and a key to providing excellent customer service!  Tooty performance scores help point you in the right direction for training so that you can complement what you do internally with Tooty Training® webinars or one-on-one coaching sessions.  A good rule of thumb is to schedule each person (including veterans) for some type of training every 6 weeks.