In our last issue we talked about the importance of performance coaching to get training to stick. And one of the best ways of doing that is by using the G.R.O.W. coaching model.

G.R.O.W. stands for Goals, Reality, Options and Way Forward, and you would use G.R.O.W. as a tool to coach improvements to behaviors and performance that you’ve personally observed after training has taken place.

Let’s say you’ve trained your team in customer-service skills, and then you observe a customer interaction with one of your agents. This interaction could be a phone conversation that you’ve monitored, it could be a face-to-face desk-side support situation, or even an email correspondence or a chat session.

The point is, the agent has already been trained in the skills needed to make this interaction an exceptional customer-service experience, and your job is to reinforce those skills and develop them into a competency. To do that you’ll want to sit down with that agent after the interaction is over and take him or her through the G.R.O.W. coaching process.

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