Diagnosis

The agent makes customer-facing calls without first investigating gaps in their own knowledge, relying only on what they already know or have been told by the TL.

Session objective

The objective of the session is to help the agent recognise when a customer query signals a significant gap in their product or process knowledge and to build the habit of researching that gap before making a call. Help the agent connect the absence of preparation to a weaker customer experience. Get the coachee to leave with both a specific, usable answer for the query that surfaced on the call and an open question they carry forward about how to prompt themselves to investigate before they call.

Session tactics

Play the recorded call and ask the agent how they were thinking about the bank's role in the process when they prepared for it. When the agent's answer reveals they were working only from existing knowledge, ask where the risk-management function of the bank sits in this process. If the agent cannot answer, suggest going to look it up together in the session. Work through what you find together and ask the agent what they make of it. Ask the agent directly why they did not investigate before the call; if they say they do not know, leave them holding that question rather than resolving it for them. At the close of the session, help the agent construct a specific, accurate response they can use the next time a customer raises this query, and ask them to write it down and bring it to their TL and team as new information.

Behaviour observations

• The agent does not research unfamiliar process or product areas before making a customer call.
• The agent relies on information already held or received from the TL rather than identifying and filling knowledge gaps independently.
• When challenged on why they did not prepare, the agent cannot identify what would prompt them to investigate before a call.

Experiments

• The agent will write down the specific explanation of how direct debit collection permission works — including the sponsorship process and the code applied to incorrect presentations — and bring it to the TL and team as new information.
• The agent will carry forward the open question of how to notice, before making a call, when there is a significant gap in their knowledge that needs researching.