Performance Management

Phone skills are worth dedicating extra time – but you don’t need extra time with these tips!

If you’ve been reading our blogs, then you know how important we think it is to improve your call handlers’ phone skills. (Just check out all of these posts related to call handler performance!)

We also understand that sometimes you are scheduled to capacity and don’t think you can fit in any additional time to your staff’s already busy schedule to work on education.

Let me ask you this: Do you think it is worth it to invest in your employees’ skills? Besides giving them a better skillset and helping with their future career endeavors, what would it mean to your business if your employees’ increased skillset could help you gain even just three more appointments per month?

While you think about that, watch the quick video below and discover some easy tips to start implementing call coaching into your front office staff’s schedule.

With patients to focus on, dentists can use some help when it comes to improving front office staff’s phone skills.

Most dentists don’t choose their career path to be a manager or train office employees. They get into the practice to help patients. Although it may not be a dental professional’s primary focus, the performance of front office staff is important to ensure that the rest of the business runs smoothly.

Front office staff must have superior phone skills to be able to procure new patients, keep existing patients, and even to gain referrals.

We’ve already rounded up a few reasons how call tracking can help a dental practice, so now let’s focus on how a call coach can help with front office staff performance, and ultimately help a practice gain more patients. Below are three reasons that any dental practice can benefit from a call coach.

1. Free up time for the dentist to focus on their primary tasks

When a dentist is busy with patients, they don’t have the time to take out of their busy schedule to listen to recorded phone calls and sit down one-on-one with call handlers to review their phone skills.

Improving employee focus is necessary to have successful phone calls and acquire additional patients. What to do when there is no time to dedicate to working on employee performance yet it is vital to the practice? Use a third party call coach, of course!

2. Deliver learned skills to call handlers

Besides not having the free time to put aside to train and coach their staff, dentists most likely don’t even have the skillset to give viable feedback to call handlers, since they are trained as a dentist – not a call handler or a call handler coach.

Call coaches exist for a reason – it is a niche skill that needs to be learned, practiced, and perfected. There is much more to call handling than simply picking up the phone, talking and listening. Certain approaches and phrases must be used to stay in control of the conversation, build rapport, and ultimately have a successful phone call that ends with an appointment. Call coaches know the ins and outs of these skills – and help deliver their knowledge to each employee depending on what areas of the call they need to improve.

3. Give unbiased feedback and improvement suggestions

While some leaders may try to find time to coach their staff or to add this responsibility to a specific top-performing employee, it can cause internal tension.

With a third party call coach, no one can feel like they are being “called out” or reprimanded for an area that they need to improve upon in their phone handling. This is especially important in a small office environment where everyone works and interacts in close quarters.

By giving this responsibility to an unbiased party, employees should be more receptive and accepting of advice and feedback given to them to help improve their skills and book more patient appointments.

Curious to learn more about how call coaching can help your dental practice? Contact a CallSource representative today and find out how it may be just the solution you’ve been looking for.

Last week, we began talking about some issues that managers who want to coach their own employees may face. For a recap of that, check out last week’s article.

Now, let’s finish up what may be challenging for managers when trying to successfully coach their own call handlers.

What is the top reason that it is difficult for managers to coach employees internally?

1. The follow-through process

Assuming a coaching responsibility internally may result in poorly defined goals, poor execution plan; lack of accountability, rewards, and consequences.

Coming up with a plan for management to coach and actually following through with that long-term are two very different things. A proper and well-crafted call coaching program requires a written plan with goals, a follow-through plan, KPIs, and check-ins on results that the coach and person being coach both understand and agree upon.

Follow-through details are difficult whether the business has an internal manager functioning as a call coach or hire a 3rd party. The energy required to stay on top of the program adds even more responsibilities to the manager as they are responsible for the coaching program’s success.

Required Call Management Processes and Skills

Your business and your managers must stay alert to the challenges described above and proactively tackle them to ensure coaching is successful. There must be systems in place to:

• Hold people accountable – call handlers and managers – for their goals.
• Help call handlers practice new skills until they master them.
• Allow call handlers to discuss their performance and goals with their manager/coach.
• Give team members the support needed to make progress, understanding that skill acquisition is not linear and often does not happen overnight.
• Create a culture that supports individual and peer-to-peer learning and positive reinforcement.

Coaching requires managerial support, but research shows that many frontline managers lack the skills required to develop their direct reports. With all of a manager’s responsibilities and demands on his/her time career and skill development often falls to the wayside. A better approach is to ensure that managers create the right environment for successful coaching–setting the scene for call handlers and experienced coaches to work together for enhanced call handling performance.

Are you ready for your call handlers to begin call coaching but don’t have the time and energy required in-house? Contact a CallSource representative and learn more about our call coaching program.

In your business, anyone who answers the phone is a key part of your sales team. A phone handler gives your customers their first impression of your company. Part of your call handler’s goal is “selling” themselves and your business to book an appointment that contributes to the business’ bottom line.

Telephone performance and results should be top priorities for anyone answering the phone. If your team is not yet giving you the results you expect, or if you want your team members to improve proficiency and performance, you should consider coaching your staff.

Budget for employee training and coaching is a consideration. Hiring a 3rd party means making an investment. Often, business owners or managers cut corners appoint and internal management to take on the role of “call coach.”

Consider why you value your manager. Is he or she doing a good job? Will adding an additional heavy lift (when done correctly) like call management and coaching add value to his or her job or will it cause other functions to suffer? Outside, experienced call coaches exist to help businesses who do not have the expertise or time to manage their call handlers’ progress over time. Before you take on call coaching in-house, consider some of the following reasons.

Overcoming Challenges for Effective Coaching

Improvement means change; change takes effort. There are three main challenges to be overcome for effective coaching. Each challenge requires an investment of time and effort from the coach and coached.

A trained coach can address phone handling skill gaps through experience in listening to specific cues during a phone call and engaging the call handler to improve skills during each session. When a manager who is unskilled in call coaching must listen and re-listen to phone calls to identify skill gaps. Listening to phone calls requires time, developing a curriculum for skill development also requires a lot of time. True coaching is an ongoing process and requires a commitment and consistency on the part of coach and the phone handler. Call coaching session should take place weekly and last 15-30 minutes.

Let’s go over three hurdles that must be overcome to engage true improvement in employees’ call handling skills. Stay tuned for next week’s article for the number one hurdle, and what the required management processes and skills to be a successful call coach is.

3. The environment

Employees and their call coach may have conflicting priorities, time constraints, and a lack of support.

Adding another responsibility to management’s schedule and employees’ can create tension for all involved. Managers committed to coaching employees need to prepare for each coaching session. This means a manager must review phone calls, identifying skill gaps, create an action plan as well as a review of last week’s goals every week. This is on top of an already full schedule. Managers can find the commitment daunting as priorities may shift, triggering scheduling issues. This is counterproductive for keeping a consistent coaching schedule, which is imperative for effective coaching.

Athletes don’t miss regularly scheduled practices and still expect to improve. The same is true for call coaching.

2. The human factor

Another hurdle that managers who try to coach their employees will face is the human factor. This includes a lack of commitment, understanding, skills, initiative, and resistance to change.

Commitment must be followed through with on both the manager and employee’s part. As already mentioned, managers have a copious amount of duties on their plate –it is vital that management must be able to take on an additional responsibility of call coach for it to work. This means they will have to be trained to understand how to properly coach call handlers, develop the skills needed and keep up with their initiative. Some of the managers’ duties may need to shift to someone else or reprioritized.

Employees may be resistant to call coaching as an additional responsibility. Adding a new program requires human change management. Your call coaching program must be well crafted before you attempt to implement it. Poor implementation can create a hostile work environment where call handler does not feel trusted to fulfill his/her responsibilities.

But it doesn’t end there…subscribe to our blog and find out next week what the number one obstacle for managers trying to coach their own employees. We promise it’ll help you in your endeavors.