Execs In The Know recently held its Fall 2021 Customer Response Summit (CRS) event (October 18–22, 2021) featuring nearly two dozen online, virtual sessions including engaging panels, a featured case study, highly informative Shop Talks, and five powerful keynote presentations from these top brands: Williams-Sonoma, Inc., Malwarebytes, DISH Network, Angi, and UnitedHealth Group.
If you have yet to tune in to the Fall 2021 CRS virtual event, you can watch many sessions on-demand.
Registration is simple, free, and it takes only a minute to get immediate online access to this insightful content.
To help highlight some of the amazing ideas that came out of these sessions, we’ve created a five-part blog series — each focusing on a particular keynote session. In Part 3, we share Randy Bassett’s and DISH Network’s unique approach to agent coaching, and how it has led to award-winning customer experience.
Why DISH Network Keeps Winning JD Power Awards
Randy Bassett
General Manager, Vendor Relationship
DISH Network
Click to sign in or register to watch Randy’s Fall 2021 CRS presentation.
Randy shares why the “DISH Way” is the secret ingredient in DISH Network’s ability to wrangle so many customer service awards from JD Power in the Paid TV space. Specifically, DISH Network’s innovative “Shared Coaching” approach positions both agents and coaches for achieving their true potential through a carefully designed process of ongoing improvement, ultimately delivering an unrivalled experience. Combined with “Development Plans” that truly develop, and an unmatched set of agent tools, DISH Network has implemented an approach both unique and effective in its development of its people.
1. Shared Coaching Plays to Strengths
Using a shared coaching approaching helps maximize strengths and more effectively address weaknesses, both for agents and coaches. Pairing agents with rotating coaches means agents can focus on specific areas of concern. Furthermore, they can benefit by being paired with a coach who specializes in coaching in those same areas.
2. A Development Plan Should Actually Develop
If done right, a development plan isn’t reactive, it’s proactive. At DISH Network, every agent has a development plan, as does every coach. For agents, the plan is often built around skills. And for coaches, often career. The objective is not just to get better in real time, but to also prepare for that next promotion or other growth opportunity.
3. Empower Agents to Provide Feedback
It can be a change of pace for some organizations (and change can be hard), but empowering agents to provide honest and constructive feedback on coaches, process, activities, etc., can be a valuable resource for pinpointing opportunities for improvement. The same goes for coaches providing feedback on managers. This can also be done with varying degrees of anonymity to help elicit greater participation.
4. Tools Are Critical
Agents can work effectively only if their tools are working. It’s that simple. If done right, agent tools hold answers, and agents are simply expert users. But like people, tools can also be improved so it’s important to tap agent intelligence on this front. Using agent feedback is a great way to identify gaps, pain points, or ideas for improvement. Afterall, no one knows agent tools better than agents.
5. Team Strategy Must Align with Overall Goals
From broad company initiatives to quarterly priorities, teams are most effective when they align the day-to-day strategy with the wider mission of the organization. Of course, communication is a key enabler, as is the presence of an accommodating company culture. But when priorities converge and all ships are pointed in the same direction, small wins are almost always amplified.
Bold innovations take bold leadership and unyielding vision. As more and more companies look to standout out among the competition, the right leadership pieces have to be in place. One of those pieces is the Chief Customer Officer (CCO). If this is a role you’d like to know more about, you should know the Fall 2021 CRS event featured a special panel discussion devoted to the topic.
Be sure to check it out:
The Rise of the CCO
Blog post, written by: Execs In The Know
