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Voice coaching plans: author, track, and close with measured impact

A coaching plan is a multi-week improvement program for one agent: a goal, a target date, coaching sessions linked to it, a close-out judgement, and a measured before/after read on the agent’s metrics. The workspace lives at Voice → Coaching Plans. Individual coaching notes on a call’s detail page continue to capture the moment — the plan rolls those sessions into one tracked cycle with a verdict on whether the agent’s numbers moved.

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1. The plan lifecycle

Every plan moves through the same arc:
  1. Author — a supervisor (or an auto-coaching trigger) opens the plan against an agent with a goal statement and an optional target date. The plan starts as active.
  2. Mid-period — the plan is editable while active. Link per-call coaching notes to it, revise the goal or target date, and check in-flight progress on the metrics at any time.
  3. Close with outcome — the plan ends with a terminal status (completed or cancelled) and your outcome judgement (met, partial, or missed). The close is permanent: a closed plan cannot be edited or re-closed to a different status.
Plans appear in your workspace two ways — supervisor-authored, or auto-assigned when a QA score, detractor CSAT response, or sustained adherence breach crosses its threshold. Auto-assigned plans carry a source tag on the goal (for example, qa_score or csat) and a system owner, and they behave exactly like supervisor-authored plans once open. See the auto-coaching thresholds in Build a contact-center QA program.

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2. Author a plan

Open Voice → Coaching Plans and click New plan, or post to the API:
Three fields define the plan:
  • agent_user_id — the agent the plan addresses (required).
  • goal — the improvement statement, up to 2,000 characters. Write it against the metric the effectiveness report measures (AHT, first-contact resolution, or CSAT where available) so the close-out is decidable on data, not impressions.
  • due_at — optional target date (ISO 8601). A short dated window keeps the cadence of coaching sessions bounded; omit it for an open-ended plan you close manually once the goal lands.
The response returns the plan (201) as active with you as the owner. During the mid-period you can revise the goal, target date, or addressed agent — PUT /voice/coaching-plans/{id} accepts any subset of those fields. Editing a closed plan returns 409 PLAN_CLOSED.
Screenshot placeholder — the New plan composer at Voice → Coaching Plans, showing the agent selector, goal field, and target-date input. Capture against a tenant with at least one active plan so the list below the composer is visible.

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3. Track the mid-period

The workspace lists active plans first, then closed ones, ordered by target date. Filter by agent, owner, or status from the dashboard, or over the API:
Link the coaching sessions that move the goal: the coaching-note composer on a call’s detail page attaches the note to an open plan, so every session accrues to the same cycle. GET /voice/coaching-plans/{id} reads one plan with its current status and outcome fields.

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4. Close with an outcome

When the cycle ends, close the plan from the Close dialog in the workspace, or post:
  • status — completed (default) or cancelled.
  • outcome — met, partial, or missed. Required at close; it records your judgement, and it stays a judgement by design.
  • outcome_notes — optional narrative, up to 2,000 characters.
Closing the same plan twice in the same terminal state returns 200 instead of an error, so an accidental double-click is safe. Trying to re-close it differently returns 409 PLAN_ALREADY_CLOSED.

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5. Read the before/after KPI report

Your outcome call is subjective. The effectiveness report is the objective complement — it compares the agent’s real metrics from a window before the plan against a window after it:
Each KPI returns the before value, the after value, the delta, the percent change, and a direction (improved, regressed, flat, or insufficient_data):
  • Average handle time (aht_seconds) — talk-only duration per completed call. Lower is better.
  • First-contact resolution (fcr_pct) — share of completed calls where the same caller did not call back within the follow-up window (default 24 hours). Higher is better.
  • CSAT (avg_csat) — mean 1–5 score from post-call surveys. Higher is better.
The two windows are symmetric — window_days long each (default 14, up to 90):
  • The before window is the span immediately preceding the plan’s creation, so coaching-in-progress calls never pollute the baseline.
  • The after window anchors on the close date for a closed plan. For a still-active plan it anchors on creation and reports in-flight progress, flagged as in_progress in the response.
When a KPI has no data in either window, the report says insufficient_data rather than a misleading zero delta. Check the report before you close: a plan you are tempted to extend may already show the improvement, and a plan you marked met that still shows regressed handle time deserves a second look.
Screenshot placeholder — the Coaching effectiveness panel on a plan in Voice → Coaching Plans, showing the before/after values and direction for AHT, FCR, and CSAT. Use a closed plan so the report reads as a post-completion measurement.
The same report powers the Coaching effectiveness panel in the dashboard, so supervisors who never touch the API read the same numbers.

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Templates, or an ad-hoc plan?

Every plan has the same shape — an agent, a goal, a target date — but the phrasing of the goal varies. The curated template library at Voice → Coaching Templates holds vetted coaching phrases that supervisors reuse across shifts, so floor coaching stays on-brand. Reach for it when the gap recurs (“de-escalate angry caller”, “ask a discovery question”); write an ad-hoc goal statement when the plan targets a specific metric move. Templates standardize the wording; they never substitute for the plan itself.

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Pair plans with QA and coaching notes

The close-out works best when the cycle runs on evidence:
  • QA scorecards — a low evaluation score can auto-assign the plan in the first place, and re-scoring the agent during the cycle tells you whether the behaviors changed.
  • Coaching notes — link every session note to the plan so the cycle reads as one program, not scattered comments.
  • Effectiveness report — let AHT / FCR / CSAT arbitrate the outcome at close instead of impressions.

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Who sees and edits plans

Owners, admins, and supervisors can create, edit, close, and read any plan. An agent sees only the plans addressed to them — and their own effectiveness report. Attempting to read another agent’s plan returns 403.

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See also