Coaching Software

Software Applications for Coaching

If you are a coach that is unable to keep your clients accountable and push them to take action on their goals, it's unlikely that you will be able to maintain your clientele base for long. But thankfully, with coaching software, you can check in and engage with your clients in between sessions to make sure that they are staying on track to reach their goals.

This guide will cover what coaching software is and other important factors to consider when looking for the right coaching software for your business.

Here’s what we'll cover:

• What is coaching software?
• Common features of coaching software
• What type of buyer are you?
• Benefits of coaching software
• Key considerations
• Market trends

What is coaching software?

Coaching software gives coaches the tools they need to schedule sessions, communicate with clients, track client progress, and handle payments. This type of system helps coaches to efficiently manage the success of their program while providing excellent service to their clients. Coaching software enhances communication with clients between sessions, tracks client interactions and progress, and manages all active coaching sessions from a centralized platform.

Common features of coaching software

While features vary from product to product, coaching software typically offers some or all of the following functionality:

Billing and invoicing	Create and manage monetary interactions, such as bills and invoices, between parties. Process payments within the system or through a third-party integration, such as PayPal or other payment processing applications.
Client management	Manage coaching interactions with clients to ensure they stay on track to reach their goals. Adjust client goals as necessary to aid client progress toward set goals.
Scheduling	Plan coaching availability and assign specific time slots for tasks. Assign available resources to clients as necessary.
Session notes	Record notes during private client sessions for coaching. Access previously recorded session notes to review coaching tactics and client experiences.

What type of buyer are you?

There are two main types of coaching software buyers:

• Life coaches: These buyers help their clients deal with daily life affairs and achieve their personal goals. Since these buyers work with clients on a personal level, it is essential that they have the tools to record private client sessions. Life coaches should look for a coaching software solution that not only features note keeping abilities, but also note flagging and note feedback capabilities. These features enable coaches to annotate and analyze client notes to influence coaching decisions.
• Business coaches: These buyers work with clients on a professional level to help them achieve their career goals. Business coaches often require more advanced coaching software features such as assessment tools to properly gauge their clientʻs skill progression over time. These buyers should look for coaching software that offers feedback surveys, skills assessments, and customizable ad-hoc reports to aid their business coaching efforts.

Benefits of coaching software

Here are a few benefits of coaching software for life or business coaches:

• Increases client satisfaction: The main reason that clients have coaches is because they want to achieve a predetermined goal, but are having trouble doing so without support. With coaching software, coaches can help motivate clients to achieve their goals before and after a coaching session to ensure clients follow through. When coaches successfully help clients reach their goals, they increase their customer satisfaction and retention rates.
• Aids client accountability efforts: Coaching software helps coaches keep their client accountable for their actions. Daily life can be distracting, and roadblocks may throw clients off the right track. Coaches can use coaching software to send reminders to clients, chat with clients, and adjust goals if necessary to keep clients accountable for their goal progression.
• Enhances visibility: Coaches often have a great number of clients that they must attend to throughout the day. Coaching software allows coaches to record, track, and organize client opinions, experiences, roadblocks, and other information to obtain a clear view of individual client progress. This helps coaches find new methods of helping clients achieve their goals and identify what habits could be changed in the future.

Key considerations for purchasing coaching software

Consider the following factors when looking for a coaching platform for your business:

• Future coaching plans: When purchasing coaching software for your business, be sure to consider what your business model may look like in the future. It's crucial to make sure that as your business scales up, your software can too. Do you want to scale your income by adding VIP packages and other additional services? Make sure to find a software solution that allows you to choose from various coaching packages.
• Integration capabilities: Most coaching software features payment processing and note-taking capabilities. However, if your coaching business already has software in place that works well, there is no need to abandon it. Ask your coaching software vendor if their solution seamlessly integrates with the software your business already has in place. This way, you can continue using the payment processing or customer relationship management software you already have in place, while enjoying the other benefits of coaching software.

Market trends to understand

Be sure to understand this coaching software trend before purchasing coaching software for your business:

The emergence of AI-enabled coaching software: Thanks to new developments in the artificial intelligence, or AI, market, coaching costs may decline in the near future. This is due to newly-developed AI coaches that cost a fraction of the amount that human coaches charge. AI coaches use machine learning to identify areas that a client needs to improve upon, whether in their personal life or in their professional career. AI coaches also look at a client's learning style and preferences to generate a personalized coach for each client. In the future, AI coaching software will integrate with the main features of coaching software to provide clients with a coaching experience that mimics real human coaching interactions all from a singular platform. For human coaches, this may present concern. However, human coaches should embrace this technical innovation to motivate their clientele in a more engaging way when they themselves may be unavailable to coach them in person.

Sources

1. What Is Artificial Intelligence?, Gartner

Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.