The ongoing challenge: QA and coaching are still disconnected

For decades, contact centres have relied on QA and coaching to improve performance. But despite heavy investment in these areas, most centres still struggle with bridging the gap between the two.

The industry has treated QA and coaching as separate functions, which means frontline teams receive performance scores without structured development, and coaching sessions happen without clear insight into the real behavioural gaps that need addressing.

YakTrak+GRIST Managing Director, Peter Grist notes, “The industry has spent years scoring interactions, but scoring alone doesn’t develop people. Coaching needs to be the bridge between QA and real performance improvement.” This highlights how QA has traditionally been treated as a compliance function rather than a development enabler.

YakTrak+GRIST are changing that.

Why QA hasn’t solved the coaching problem

Even with robust QA programs, major gaps remain:

• Low sample sizes
  Less than 2% of interactions are typically assessed, meaning feedback is often based on an incomplete picture.
• Inconsistent scoring
  Assessor variability results in mixed feedback that confuses agents and managers.
• Limited follow-through
  QA highlights issues but lacks a structured way to ensure coaching closes performance gaps.
• Focus on metrics, not behaviours
  Coaching conversations are often driven by KPIs rather than the actual skills that improve performance.

“The biggest challenge QA teams face is the lack of visibility into whether coaching actually addresses the issues identified in QA. There’s often no closed-loop feedback to confirm that issues are resolved.”   Seb Cox, Head of Customer Experience at YakTrak.

This underscores the importance of ensuring coaching workflows are tightly integrated with QA data to drive real performance improvement.

The shift: using QA to drive smarter, more targeted coaching

Leading contact centres are no longer treating QA as a standalone function. Instead, they’re embedding QA insights into structured coaching programs.

YakTrak + GRIST are leading this shift by:

• Ensuring QA data flows directly into coaching workflows, so coaching is informed by real performance trends, not just isolated observations.
• Providing visibility into coaching quality and frequency, ensuring coaching isn’t just happening, but that it’s effective.
• Helping leaders coach to behaviours, not just scores, reinforcing the right skills that improve performance long-term.

Now: Contact centres can integrate QA insights into coaching with structured, trackable coaching workflows.

Future: AI-powered insights will not only track coaching frequency—it will assess coaching conversations for quality, providing real-time recommendations to help leaders refine their coaching approach.

The impact: when QA feeds coaching, performance soars

When QA is connected to coaching and structured leadership practices, performance outcomes improve. GRIST and YakTrak worked with an Australian energy provider to align QA with structured coaching, and the outcomes prove the impact:

• QA with a structured approach to coaching, one major energy provider saw QA results turn into actionable coaching plans, leading to a 15% improvement in first-call resolution
• QA scoring inconsistencies dropped by 35% after aligning QA with structured coaching, leading to more accurate feedback
• Coaching frequency increased by 60% within the first two months, ensuring agents received timely development
• Agents who focused on micro-behaviours like summarising and checking understanding saw their NPS scores improve significantly from 15.79 to over 35

For leaders, this isn’t about more QA or more coaching—it’s about ensuring coaching is directly informed by performance insights and leads to measurable improvement.

The future: AI-enhanced coaching & QA alignment

Contact centres that thrive in the future will stop treating QA and coaching as separate tasks. Instead, they’ll use AI and structured coaching methodologies to ensure:

✅ QA insights drive high-impact coaching conversations

✅ Leaders track coaching effectiveness, not just frequency

✅ AI helps pinpoint skill gaps and refine coaching quality in real-time

YakTrak + GRIST are making this a reality, ensuring that coaching doesn’t just happen—but that it actually works.

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