About Yell
Yell Group plc is a leading, international directories business operating in the classified advertising markets in the UK, US, Spain and Latin America. In the UK, Yellow Pages and Business Pages directories, Yell.com and their award-winning directories enquiries service Yellow Pages 118 24 7, ensures buyers get in touch with sellers regardless of channel, time or location. Yell’s users and advertisers are supported by Yell’s Customer Service and Operations (CS&O) teams in contact centres across the UK. In 2005 Yell were awarded ‘Champion’ Status from Investors in People UK – one of only 33 organisations to currently hold the title.
Coaching at Yell
Yell is strongly committed to providing continuous professional development for its people. Over the last 3 years the company has introduced a formal and systematic approach to coaching, pioneered by the organisations Customer Service Learning, Training and Development Team (LT&D). This dedicated team of 15 trainers are responsible for developing the coaching strategy and managing coaching activities for Yell’s Customer Service and Operations teams in the UK.
Background
A coaching culture is increasingly evident at Yell. All people managers within Customer Service are trained in coaching techniques and offered the opportunity to undertake formal qualifications in recognition of their skills. Approximately 15% of managers within CS have undertaken this opportunity. Since its introduction into CS over five years ago, coaching has evolved away from its original purpose to improve the quality of call handling, to a broader, continuous improvement philosophy which focuses on quality, productivity and behaviour.
Recruitment of coaches
In 2002 Yell took the decision to invest in developing people to support business change and build best-in-class customer service skills. At that time it became clear that many line managers did not have the necessary time to provide a high level of technical coaching support to their teams, particularly with the introduction of a new IT system. The decision was therefore made to develop a small group of managers into full-time coaching roles, thereby utilising existing knowledge and skills whilst maximising the return on investment of the scheme.
The LT&D team worked with an external coaching company to design and deploy a tailored coaching programme, accredited by the external company. The course now takes place over three days with two, one day follow up sessions. In the first follow up session, trainee coaches are required to demonstrate their learning in a role play coaching session which, if run successfully, leads to the formal coaching accreditation.
Method: structured coaching sessions
Coaching sessions are highly structured within CS&O at Yell. Coaches run a one hour session with each of their allocated people at least once a month. The coaching session is based on a joint analysis between coach and ‘coachee’ of three, randomly selected customer telephone calls. Together, they decide on which call or section of a call they should focus on during the coaching session. More confident, high performing individuals will often opt to look at a difficult call to see how they could have handled it differently or reached a better outcome. The format of the session usually includes:
- review of performance in reference to the outcome of the previous coaching session
- identifying opportunities for development
- setting and agreeing expectations and targets
- open discussion and open question techniques to help the individual work out their own action plan and get buy-in to the final action plan
- agree performance rankings
- agree an action plan for further performance improvements
When Yell first introduced the CS&O Coaching programme in 2002, the aim was to raise the standard of call handling to a common high level in all departments and deliver a consistent customer service experience. Coaches originally used a PAM document (Performance, Analysis, Monitor); a competency based assessment document, to structure the coaching session, rank performance against a pre-defined and agreed set of indicators and behaviours; and keep a record of improvement. PAM consisted of a list of competencies people should display whilst on the telephone with customers. Now that a consistent service level has been achieved, the PAM has been largely replaced by the Customer Experience Measure (CEM), a competency based document which takes a much wider look at the customer experience and includes more behaviour-based measures. CEM specifies both positive and negative indicators during the telephone call, such as listening skills, rapport, tone and pace.
Coaches are encouraged to use open ended questioning techniques to help the individual look at their own performance and consider how they could have handled a call differently, or reached a better outcome. The coach then agrees a series of ratings for each competency with the individual; and identifies any apparent training needs for inclusion on the personal development plan.
Performance ratings for all people are shared with their line manager and incorporated into annual performance objectives and performance reviews. Coaches and line managers may meet to discuss the performance of individuals, whilst respecting the confidentiality of the coaching relationship. Yell prides itself on it’s ethical responsibilities and duty of care to it’s people and where issues arise in a coaching session that a coach is not qualified to deal with, a coach is able to refer people to a dedicated counselling service, provided free to all Yell people called the Employee Advisory Resource. In this way Yell clearly differentiates ‘coaching’ from ‘counselling’. In addition, coaches are regularly rotated to different teams to ensure that coaching relationships do not become too comfortable and to add value to all parties concerned by giving coaches new challenges and providing a fresh perspective to ‘coachees’. The team of coaches works closely together to ensure a seamless changeover.
Coaches meet regularly with line managers to develop and improve the programme, discuss any issues and ensure that the evolving scheme continues to reflect business priorities. The introduction of the Customer Service Professional scheme within Customer Service is an example of a key improvement brought about as a result of manager / coach discussions.
Whilst the methodology described above is widely encouraged as the ‘correct’ method at Yell, coaching methods and schemes are tailored for each regional site in order to respond fully to the learning and development needs of each team; for example, in some regions a particular focus is placed on management coaching, provided by senior line managers to their people, or ‘technical coaching’ which focuses on helping people develop specific skills and knowledge. An example of a tailored approach is with Yell’s centre in Reading. The team of 60 people looks after customers with complex inquiries and a small team of dedicated coaches, recruited from within the department, focus on technical coaching and systems training to help telephone based people deliver a consistently high standard of customer service.
Coaching in context at Yell
At Yell performance management and learning and development are supported by a performance management competency framework. Improvements are measured and rewarded through annual performance reviews.
- performance management: enabling continuous improvement. Part of Yell’s culture is to encourage and reward continuous improvement. Following a coaching discussion, coaches rank the performance of their people against a pre-defined framework and rankings are shared with an individual’s manager and incorporated into their annual performance review.
‘We believe that this clear link with performance makes coaching even more powerful. Through appraisal, 360 degree feedback and coaching, everyone knows what is expected of them’ says Sharon Hitch, LT&D Team Manager
- learning and development. Through the coaching process, coaches are clearly able to identify individual development needs to take advantage of Yell’s extensive suite of internal learning opportunities and training courses. Coaches also use coaching sessions to support people through a highly popular Customer Service Professional (CSP) scheme, a 3 to 5 year internal accreditation programme for non-management level people.
Telephony people and line managers are encouraged to apply to become coaches. Coaching experience is not essential, according to CS’s customer services manager, Tammy Thomas. ‘We look for individuals who are good listeners, good questioners, effective communicators and also capable of adopting a negotiating style when necessary.’ She adds: ‘We also want individuals with a drive for providing excellent customer services. They need to be self motivated, able to work independently yet operate in a team. They need to have a vision for coaching and to see where it can potentially take us’.
Sharon Hitch explains: ‘Coaching is now an important part of our companies overall learning and development strategy. Coaching forms a major part of career progression as it is used by line managers and technical coaches to support people as they move through various levels of competency to reach outstanding performance. Whatever is measured is coached, and whatever is coached is audited twice a year.’
Coaching audits & internal best practice sharing
Once every 6 months coaches are audited and reviewed by two full time coaching auditors. Coaches are observed during a coaching session and ranked on a number
of specific behaviours and coaching techniques such as the number of open ended and closed questions used during the coaching session. These two auditors are qualified coach trainers and managers. ‘Auditing is important for any coaching activity and I truly believe it has kept coaching alive in Yell. Auditing also helps refresh the coaches and bring good practice back to mind’, says Sharon Hitch.
Support tools
The coaching team has developed on on-line learning resource for all people to use including the coaching team. The site is based on coaching topics such as the use of ‘bridging statements’ in a telephone call. This topic is then populated with various learning resources, such as recorded telephone calls that highlight good practice, internal training courses and training manuals. Coaches can use the resource to help plan a coaching session and ‘coachees’ can use the resources to ‘self coach’ or work through an exercise with their line manager or coach.
Coaches also have the opportunity to come together from different parts of CS&O through two hour ‘coaching forums’ held every three months. These meetings enable coaching teams to share learning and experiences. Benchmarking visits are also arranged to help coaches develop further and look for continuous improvement opportunities in the coaching process. The coaching team has recently designed a feedback form for people to comment about the coaching experience and perceived benefits. The team is keen to receive further training and is working on developing an internal coaching training programme.
Moving beyond structure
CS&O as a whole is beginning to move away from such a structured coaching approach as the programme evolved. Part of the reason is that internal coaches are more confident and less reliant on structured approaches. They are also aware of the need to use a variety of approaches to help people understand the behavioural components of delivering excellent customer service.
CS coaches have begun to experiment with less structured coaching sessions, for example, higher performing people are sometimes offered a coaching session without using the ranking system, to enable them to hold a wider discussion about how to deliver the best possible customer experience. The department is also exploring the possibility of Action Learning Groups whereby high performing, confident telephony people listen to calls, critique each other and pool experiences and expertise.
Results
Sharon Hitch, LT&D Team Leader believes that the coaching framework used at Yell has yielded important evidence about the impact of coaching. ‘The performance rankings taken during coaching have enabled us to measure tangible performance improvements. We know that coaching works for us.’
CS managers have also reported that they believe coaching helps employee engagement, an essential factor in delivering high standards of customer service. CS in Yell has a low turnover of people and regular coaching sessions appear to help people stay fresh, keep standards high and continuously look for opportunities to improve. With the encouragement and support of their coach, telephony people review their own performance and set themselves challenging targets on specific competency areas. Employees report that coaching helps them to feel they are constantly learning, making their jobs more demanding and rewarding.
CS&O recognises that the organisation’s increasing coaching capacity can also help the organisation deliver ‘higher order’ business benefits. Sharon Hitch explains: ‘we are gradually weaning people off structured approaches so that they can see the larger benefits of coaching. We have realised that scoring can detract from the important message, which is about the customer experience’.
Learning and good practice
The LT&D team believe that the success of their coaching approach in CS stems from the following:
- continuously improving professional training resources for internal coaches
- regular auditing to help keep coaches motivated and focussed on their coaching skills
- a combination of 360 degree feedback, training and coaching that ensures employees acquire new knowledge and training, have opportunities to embed these skills and receive regular feedback so they can continuously improve
- on-going senior management support so that coaching is seen as valid and strongly connected to business performance
- transparency – people appreciate honesty. They want to know how the organisation views them, how those judgements were formed and what they can do to keep improving their performance
Sharon Hitch sums up that ‘we are passionate about coaching at Yell and we know it is the only way to achieve tangible performance improvement’, she says. ‘We have the confidence now to explore different coaching approaches because we know it works.’