Call Center Management Featured Article
Common Traits of the Successful Call Center Manager
Management can be a high-pressure and demanding job in any industry, requiring skill and finesse as well as good leadership qualities. The call center space presents even greater challenges for managers, who are tasked with ensuring agents are performing efficiently and offering the best levels of customer service. Beyond that, call center managers must keep overall operations running smoothly and cost effectively, which is no simple task.
There are a number of traits shared by successful call center managers, and they center around agent engagement and dialogue, two of the most important practices for effective call center management. Engaging with agents means managers can stay on top of a variety of factors, including how happy agents are, customer satisfaction levels and areas that require improvement. Best of all, agents can have an active role in defining core goals and practices within the call center.
By engaging with agents, call center managers can simultaneously focus on retention, an important part of running any call center. Agent turnover is a major issue in the call center business, and too often agents are treated as disposable assets that may easily be replaced. Retaining and rewarding agents for a job well done can go a long way toward improving overall call center operations. Along the same lines, providing targeted coaching is an important part of operations, and should be performed regularly with agents being involved in continuous dialogue with their managers.
Successful call center managers will do everything in their power to ensure operations are running efficiently and that agents put their down time to good use by performing administrative tasks, mentoring and other functions designed to boost productivity. Managers should also ensure they are taking advantage of the latest technology and software to automate routine and mundane tasks as well as perform workforce management tasks like forecasting, scheduling and reporting.
Call center management can be rewarding for agents and managers alike as long as everyone is engaged and part of an ongoing dialogue. By nurturing agent relationships and properly investing in coaching and training, call center managers can ensure their operations are running as efficiently and productively as possible.