Beyond the Annual Review

Part 1: The Weekly Performance Loop: Turning QA Data into Agent Growth

The annual review is a part of just about every company.  But how useful are they really?

Ultimately, the annual review is a post-mortem, not a roadmap.  

When you don’t frequently communicate with your employees, burnout and turnover increase.  Feedback should be frequent, and every employee should have a clear idea of their role and how they are performing at all times.  

If anything in the annual review is a surprise, you’re doing it wrong!

The best way to keep your team engaged is to move away from performance management as a one-time documentation event to continuous coaching and communication built on three key elements: Structured Coaching, Transparent Communication, and Clear Growth Plans.

The best way to combat turnover and drive performance is by shifting to Structured Coaching. This post details how to implement a consistent coaching framework to transform your team’s quality and engagement.

Structured Coaching as the Engine of Quality

Moving From QA to Coaching

If you’re not already doing Quality Assurance (QA) for your support team, you should be.  So step 1 would be to implement QA.

Once that’s implemented (or if you already have the process in place), your next step is to move from QA to coaching.

While QA is vital, it only provides data and identifies gaps; it does not address the root cause of the issue.  For your QA to be effective, you need to use the information in your agent check-ins to close the gaps that QA has highlighted.

Let’s say that the QA for one of your agents, let’s call him Brian, shows that when Brian is working on customer tickets related to SSL Certificates, he has to go back and forth with the customer more often than your other agents do.  You’ll take that information into your next check-in with Brian.

Weekly Coaching Framework

Now that you have the QA data, you need to establish the structure for the check-in.

1. The Right Coach

First things first, when getting started with coaching, you need to determine who gathers the information and who conducts the one-on-ones.

Ideally, it is the agent’s direct supervisor or team lead who gathers the information and does the check-in.  This person usually has the best rapport with the agent anyway.  Plus, having to meet with your boss’s boss can be intimidating, and you want the agent to be comfortable enough in the check-in to have an actual discussion.

2. Frequency & Focus

The frequency of these check-ins depends on the size and the workload of your team.  If Lauren is supervising 20 agents, for example, it may not be feasible for her to meet with each of them on a weekly basis.  However, if she only has 5-10 agents, meeting weekly is much more manageable.

When Lauren is preparing for the one-on-one, she needs to consider how to allocate their time.  The meeting needs to be focused, short, and forward-looking.  However, this is also a great time to build a bond with her team members and keep them engaged.

Ideally, Lauren will want to focus 20% of the meeting on chatting with the agent (e.g., “How was your daughter’s soccer game?”, “What kind of dog do you have?”, and so on), 20% on her findings from the QA data (example:  Brian’s struggle with SSL certs), and 60% on solutions and skills.

So, Lauren’s one-on-one with Brian might look like this for a 30-minute check-in:

• Building Connection – 6 minutes – Check-in, morale, personal updates, building trust.
• QA Review – 6 minutes – Reviewing QA scores, specific ticket examples (e.g., the SSL issue), and discussing the root cause of the gap.
• Action & Skills – 18 minutes – Role-playing, creating action items, practicing new skills, setting goals for the next week/quarter.

Going into the check-in prepared with this data and plan will ensure that any issues Brian is dealing with are addressed.  The goal of targeted coaching like this is to directly lead to achieving a “one-and-done” resolution, positively impacting your response to resolution KPI.  If Lauren spends the time coaching Brian on how to address SSL Certificate issues, he will be able to respond more quickly and accurately to customers with questions on that topic.

3. Improvement Focus

Arriving at the check-in with actionable data and a thoughtful plan sets the stage for real growth. Lauren’s role is to champion Brian’s success, using coaching to fuel strengths, address gaps collaboratively, and celebrate progress. This isn’t about blame—it’s about building confidence, ownership, and results. Growth conversations are a privilege, not a punishment, and they’re essential to the high-performance culture that defines your brand.

Structured coaching is the most direct investment you can make in your team’s quality and engagement. When you make coaching a regular, intentional habit, you turn performance management into a powerful engine of growth, ensuring your team is consistently prepared for the next challenge.

Tune in Wednesday when we’ll dive into the second essential element of high-engagement teams: Stop Guesswork, Start Alignment