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Collaborative Coaching: Scaling Quality in E-Commerce

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Quality isn’t just the responsibility of one team—it’s everyone’s job. But building a culture where quality is truly shared can feel out of reach, especially when clunky processes create barriers to engagement. That’s where collaborative coaching comes in, offering a streamlined way for employees at every level to contribute to quality and drive meaningful improvements.

Why does this matter? In many organizations, QA processes are siloed and participation is limited to specific teams. As a result, coaching opportunities are missed, valuable insights go untapped, and the disconnect between leadership and frontline employees grows wider. Collaborative coaching bridges these gaps by empowering team-wide participation, simplifying workflows, and connecting leadership with real, actionable insights from the ground level.

Interested in the bigger picture of making quality everyone’s job? Explore our guide on building a culture of shared quality.

In this guide, we’ll explore how collaborative coaching works, why it’s critical to scaling quality, and how one leading e-commerce company used this approach to achieve a 10x increase in flagged coaching opportunities—proving that quality can truly be everyone’s job.

The Challenges of Achieving Collaborative Coaching

Implementing collaborative coaching has the potential to transform quality assurance into a shared responsibility, but it isn’t without its challenges. Many e-commerce teams face barriers that hinder participation, transparency, and scalability. Addressing these obstacles is crucial for making collaborative coaching a sustainable and impactful practice.

Low Engagement Across Teams

In many organizations, QA is seen as the responsibility of a single team rather than a shared effort. This mindset limits participation, leaving valuable insights from agents, managers, and even executives untapped. Without broad engagement, coaching opportunities are missed, and quality improvements stall.

Manual, Cumbersome Processes

Legacy QA workflows are often time-consuming and overly complex, discouraging participation. When flagging a ticket for coaching requires filling out lengthy forms or navigating clunky tools, employees are far less likely to take part. This friction creates bottlenecks, reducing the scalability of QA initiatives.

Lack of Visibility into QA Trends

Siloed insights make it difficult to identify patterns or focus on the highest-priority areas for coaching. Without access to clear, actionable QA trends, organizations risk missing the chance to make meaningful improvements across teams.

Gaps Between Leadership and Frontline Teams

When executives rely solely on dashboards and metrics, they lose touch with the day-to-day realities of their teams. Collaborative coaching requires leadership to engage directly with flagged tickets and QA insights, bridging the gap between strategy and execution.

A Framework for Collaborative Coaching

Collaborative coaching transforms quality assurance into a shared effort by engaging teams across all levels of an organization. To make it work, e-commerce companies need a clear, actionable framework that empowers employees, streamlines workflows, and drives meaningful insights. Below, we outline the steps to successfully implement collaborative coaching.

Step 1: Empower Everyone to Identify Coaching Opportunities
  • Create simple tagging systems: Encourage employees to flag tickets for QA review using tags in the helpdesk.
  • Define clear categories: Establish categories like strategic insights, conversation quality, ticket hygiene, or miscellaneous to focus coaching efforts.
  • Set expectations across roles: Make it easy for agents, managers, and leaders to participate, ensuring everyone feels accountable for quality.
Step 2: Automate and Streamline Workflows
  • Leverage automation tools: Use Workflow Automations to route flagged tickets to the QA team for review.
  • Adopt lightweight rubrics: Develop quick, category-specific Rubrics to simplify grading and ensure consistency.
Step 3: Analyze and Share Insights
  • Focus on actionable data: Use Performance Dashboards  and the Report Builder to surface trends, identify coaching opportunities, and track high-impact areas.
  • Drill deeper with AI tools: Incorporate solutions like AskAI and Root Cause Analysis to analyze flagged tickets and uncover hidden insights.
  • Engage the organization: Share trends and findings broadly to foster transparency and collaboration.
Step 4: Involve Leadership in QA
  • Bridge the executive-employee gap: Encourage leaders to review flagged tickets and participate in QA discussions.
  • Drive alignment: Use QA insights to inform strategic decisions and connect leadership priorities to frontline realities.
Step 5: Iterate and Scale the Process
  • Start small: Pilot collaborative coaching with a single workflow or team to refine processes and gather feedback.
  • Scale incrementally: Expand the program across the organization, adjusting based on what works best.
  • Commit to continuous improvement: Use data to evaluate the impact of coaching efforts and iterate for long-term success.

The Benefits of Collaborative Coaching

Collaborative coaching is a transformative approach that empowers teams, aligns leadership, and drives tangible results. By making quality a shared responsibility, organizations can achieve meaningful improvements in engagement, performance, and scalability.

Increased engagement across teams: Collaborative coaching brings everyone into the QA process, fostering a sense of ownership and collaboration

Improved quality outcomes: Collaborative coaching ensures that every flagged ticket receives actionable feedback, leading to consistent and measurable performance improvements.

Stronger alignment with leadership: When leaders immerse themselves in QA processes, they bridge the gap between strategy and frontline realities, driving smarter, more informed decisions.

Scalable, low-friction processes: Intuitive tools and automated workflows eliminate barriers, making it easy to scale collaborative coaching across large teams.

Measurable business impact: A shared focus on quality drives better customer experiences, higher productivity, and stronger long-term growth.

Real World Example: OWL Escalations Bring Collaborative Coaching to Life

To see collaborative coaching in action, let’s look at how one leading e-commerce company transformed their QA process with a project known as ‘Community Coaching,’ also called OWL Escalations (Operations, Warehouse, Leaders). This initiative empowered employees across the organization—from frontline agents to leadership—to actively participate in quality assurance, closing the gap between executive insights and day-to-day operations.

The Challenge: A Clunky, Inefficient Process

Before adopting OWL Escalations, the organization’s QA efforts were hindered by manual workflows and limited participation:

  • Employees relied on Google Forms to flag tickets for coaching, creating friction and reducing engagement.
  • Few tickets were flagged, meaning missed opportunities to improve performance.
  • Leadership struggled to connect with ground-level realities due to a lack of visibility into coaching opportunities.

They needed a solution that simplified the process, encouraged organization-wide engagement, and provided actionable insights to leadership.

The Solution: Collaborative Coaching Powered by MaestroQA

Through MaestroQA, the company launched OWL Escalations, a streamlined framework that enabled collaborative coaching and fostered a culture of shared quality. Key steps in their transformation included:

Tagging Coaching Opportunities in Freshdesk: Employees—from agents to leadership—used a simple tagging system to flag tickets with coaching potential. Categories like strategy, conversation quality, and ticket hygiene ensured a focused approach.

Automating Workflows with MaestroQA: Automation eliminated the need for manual submissions. Tagged tickets were routed directly to the QA team, where they were reviewed using lightweight rubrics tailored to each category.

Using Data to Drive Improvement: The QA team analyzed flagged tickets using performance dashboards and tools like AskAI to identify trends, patterns, and high-impact areas for coaching. Insights were shared broadly, fostering transparency and alignment across teams.

How it worked

Let’s look at a step by step overview of the OWL Escalations workflow used by this team.

1

Anyone who sees a ticket with a coaching opportunity applies a tag in Freshdesk. When tickets sync over to MaestroQA, the tag is also automatically synced.

2

Automations created in MaestroQA automatically send out 100% of the tickets tagged with the OWL tag to be graded.

3

Graders grade the OWL tagged tickets in MaestroQA using a lightweight, custom rubric.

4

Agents are able to review the coaching feedback left on these graded tickets.

5

The QA team analyzes results of these deep dives using their Performance Dashboards setup in Maestro in a number of ways:

  • Cutting and analyzing data by different attributes using the charts and visuals in MaestroQA’s Report Builder
  • Using AskAI Analytics on Graded Ticket Feedback
  • Drilling into specific tickets to review them in depth

MaestroQA Features Used in the OWL Escalations Workflow

Performance Dashboards

In the OWL Escalations process, QA teams use Performance Dashboards to analyze trends in flagged tickets and identify high-impact areas for deeper analysis and coaching.

AI Analytics

AI Analytics are used to analyze trends in graded tickets. AI Analytics enables the identification of patterns, systemic issues, and actionable insights that help refine coaching strategies and improve overall team performance.

Custom Rubrics

The OWL workflow uses lightweight, custom rubrics tailored to business specific categories. These rubrics help graders provide clear, actionable feedback to agents.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

QA teams leverage RCA tools to perform deeper analysis of flagged tickets, uncovering trends and systemic issues that can inform coaching strategies and broader operational improvements.

Workflow Automations

Automations ensure 100% of OWL-tagged tickets are routed directly to graders for evaluation. This eliminates manual workflows, making it easier for the team to scale collaborative coaching while maintaining consistency.

Report Builder

The team uses the Report Builder to create custom charts and visuals that slice data by attributes like ticket category, tag source, and coaching trends. These insights support transparent communication and informed decision-making across the organization.

Coaching

Coaching feedback is shared directly with agents on graded tickets, creating a continuous feedback loop. This ensures that insights from OWL Escalations are actionable and lead to measurable improvements in agent performance.

Integrations

Integrations ensure tags are seamlessly synced into MaestroQA, forming the foundation of the OWL Escalations workflow. Integration ensures that flagged tickets are easily tracked and analyzed, driving consistent results across the QA process.

Results Achieved Through MaestroQA

By implementing OWL Escalations through MaestroQA, the e-Commerce company saw measurable improvements after implementing collaborative coaching:

10x Increase in Coaching Opportunities

Streamlined workflows and a simple tagging process made it easier for employees to participate, resulting in a dramatic increase in flagged tickets.

Enhanced Engagement Across Teams

Employees at all levels, including leadership, actively contributed to QA efforts, fostering a sense of ownership and collaboration.

Stronger Alignment Across Teams

Shared insights bridged the gap between executive decision-making and ground-level realities, ensuring leadership was connected to key trends and coaching opportunities.

By transforming their QA process with collaborative coaching, this e-commerce company not only improved their workflows but also built a culture where quality truly became everyone’s job.

Best Practices for Sustaining Collaborative Coaching

Creating a collaborative QA process is just the beginning—sustaining it requires ongoing commitment, alignment, and adaptability. These best practices will help your organization maintain momentum and continue driving meaningful results.

Prioritize ongoing engagement
  • Encourage different team members to take ownership of QA activities, fostering a sense of accountability across roles.
  • Regularly highlight individual and team efforts that improve quality, showing how their work impacts broader goals.
Adapt as your needs evolve
  • Periodically revisit workflows, rubrics, and tagging systems to ensure they align with changing business priorities.
  • Leverage advancements like MaestroQA’s AskAI or enhanced dashboards to continuously improve insights and efficiency.
Build feedback into your culture
  • Use QA insights to spark discussions between teams, bridging gaps and uncovering new opportunities for improvement.
  • Share actionable takeaways from QA efforts with employees, demonstrating how their input drives real change.
Involve leadership in the process
  • Encourage leaders to actively participate in QA, from reviewing flagged tickets to providing coaching feedback.
  • Use insights from collaborative coaching to inform broader organizational priorities and initiatives.
Foster transparency and trust
  • Use dashboards and reports to show how QA efforts contribute to measurable results like improved CSAT or operational efficiency.
  • Create forums for employees to share their experiences with QA processes, ensuring continuous improvement.

These practices not only sustain collaborative QA but also evolve it into a core pillar of your organization’s success.

Conclusion: Transforming QA into a Growth Driver

When quality becomes everyone’s responsibility, the entire organization benefits. Collaborative coaching is one way to bridge the gap between teams, align leadership with frontline realities, and create lasting improvements in performance and customer satisfaction.

With MaestroQA, organizations can implement collaborative QA processes that are simple to scale, easy to sustain, and impactful across all levels of the business.

Ready to take the next step in building a culture of quality? Contact us today to see how MaestroQA can help!