This guide covers everything you need to embed OI into your team - from introducing the platform to your agents, to measuring impact and avoiding common mistakes. Use this alongside the OI University team leader modules as a practical reference you can return to at any time.
Driving OI adoption in your team
The most important step when introducing OI isn't training your agents on the platform - it's shifting their mindset about what it's for. Many agents will initially assume a new performance tool is designed to catch them out. Address this directly before they log in for the first time.
Three mindset shifts to establish
- Objectivity: OI analyzes every interaction the same way, every time. It doesn't have a bad day, a personal opinion, or a favourite agent. This makes it fairer than any manual QA process.
- Coverage: OI reviews every interaction, not a sample. One difficult call doesn't skew the picture; the data reflects the full pattern of an agent's performance.
- Purpose: OI is a customer insights and coaching tool, not a monitoring tool. The coaching plans, dashboard insights, and OI-Q conversations are all designed to help agents improve.
How to introduce OI to your team
- Walk your team through the agent dashboard before they log in for the first time. Show them the three metrics and answer questions before they form assumptions.
- Be transparent about what you can see as a team leader - their agent dashboard, coaching plans, and performance relative to the team. Frame this as: "OI helps me support you better, not monitor you more."
- Celebrate early wins loudly. When an agent completes their first coaching plan or improves their score, make it visible. Peer recognition changes culture faster than any training session.
Operating rhythm playbook
The team leaders who get the most from OI are the ones who build it into their existing routines, not the ones who treat it as a separate task.
| Frequency | Action | OI Feature |
| Daily | Log in and check your My Team dashboard. Review any new coaching plans and review team performance generally. |
|
| Weekly | Bring one OI insight to your team huddle. Acknowledge agents making progress on coaching plans. |
|
| Monthly | Prompt team to review and reset coaching plans. Run 1:1s anchored to each agent's OI data. Review team-wide performance trends. |
|
| Quarterly | Take stock of team progress. Recognise milestones. Pull a report for upward reporting. Identify team-wide coaching themes. |
|
Coaching Plan best practice
One plan per agent per month
The standard for most agents is one coaching plan per month, placed on a high-volume inquiry. High volume matters because OI needs enough interactions over the life of the plan to show genuine progress.
When reviewing a new coaching plan in your Needs Review queue, check two things:
- Is the inquiry high enough volume?
- Is the improvement target realistic? A 10–20% improvement over a month is achievable for most agents. Anything above that warrants a conversation before the plan goes live.
Encourage data-driven high performers to set additional goals
Your data-driven high performers are the agents who are consistently engaging with OI, showing improvement across their metrics, and actively seeking development.
To help them improve even further, you can support them to run two or three concurrent coaching plans per month.
These agents have demonstrated they can manage the additional focus, and limiting them to one plan at a time may hold them back.
The ownership principle
OI coaching plans are designed around the GROW model. So the goal sits with the agent and they take ownership and accountability.
Your role is to review their coaching plans, guide the goal if it needs adjusting, and support the actions.
Agents who set their own goals are far more likely to follow through than agents who feel a plan has been imposed on them.
If you find yourself wanting to set the plan on an agent's behalf, that's a signal to have a conversation about their engagement with OI first.
Measuring impacts
At the agent level
Track the 'now' value on each agent's coaching plan over time. Consistent performance at or beyond the goal (not just hitting it once) is the indicator that coaching has genuinely changed behaviour.
At the team level
Monitor your Metrics by Inquiry chart. Inquiry types that were consistently red should, over time, move to amber and green as agents build and complete coaching plans. This movement quarter on quarter is one of the most compelling ways to demonstrate OI's impact.
For upward reporting
Use My Reports to pull a quarterly coaching plan summary for your team.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
| Common mistake | How to avoid it |
| Treating OI metrics like internal KPIs | OI metrics measure customer outcomes, not compliance with internal targets. Always clarify which metric you're discussing. Improving Predicted Resolution will typically lift FCR; improving Predicted Satisfaction will correlate with CSAT - but they won't be identical numbers. |
| Not reviewing coaching plans promptly | OI starts measuring a plan the moment the agent finalises it. Check your Needs Review tab daily - catching an unrealistic goal before it goes live protects your agents from a month of working toward something unachievable. |
| Using OI as a monitoring tool | Avoid punitive framing ("I can see you had a bad week"). Use developmental framing ("I noticed handle time on this inquiry has been trending up — let's look at what might be driving that"). The data is the same. The framing is everything. |
| Setting coaching plans on behalf of agents | Ownership sits with the agent by design. If an agent is resistant to setting a plan, have a conversation about their engagement. Imposed plans rarely generate genuine effort. |
| Ignoring top performers | Your strongest agents are often the most motivated to push further. Keep their 1:1 conversations as data-driven as your conversations with agents who need support. OI will show you where even your best agents have room to grow. |
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.