FirstLineCoach
Making suitable offers
D2 — Coaching1. Diagnosis
Agent is not making suitable offers during a service call (offers trivial or self-serving).
2. Behaviour Observations
What you might see or hear that points to this pattern.
- Agent is making offers that would resolve the company's issue but do not help the customer from the customer's perspective.
- Agent is offering to do something that the customer could easily do themselves.
- Agent is focussing on actions that tidy up the interaction from a company perspective but are not seen by the customer as helpful.
3. Session Objective
It can be difficult for an agent sometimes to really see the customer's perspective. They can get so caught in the internal complexities of execution that they cannot see that something the customer sees as simple is in fact reasonable to be interpreted as simple. The objective is to help the agent get this perspective and then be able to better choose which parts of the execution process are useful to bring into the customer conversation.
4. Session Tactics
How to prepare for and structure the 45-minute call review.
Choose a call where the customer is asking for something they see as simple and they believe the agent is deliberately not helping. Play the call and ask the agent to explain what the customer wants. The agent will likely go into detail around execution. Bring the coaching back to the request — perhaps reframe as a similar request the agent made to another organisation. Then discuss how to declare to the customer that their request is reasonable, but that because of OUR shortcomings delivery is compromised. Finish with making an offer directed to the customer's need.
5. GROW Experiments
Experiments the coachee might choose to try. These are offers, not prescriptions — the coachee selects what feels right for them.
Agent agrees to reflect what the customer wants without reference to deliverability or execution details BEFORE they do any execution.
Agent uses framing before making their offer: 'Since you are looking to do X, I want to suggest 3 things we would do — First..., Second..., Lastly...'
The agent should only ask questions related to understanding the customer's perspective until they are ready to reflect. They should explicitly NOT ask any questions to test whether the customer's account is accurate — even if they have doubts.