Call center management comes with its own unique set of challenges—high agent turnover, wildly fluctuating call volumes, and maintaining consistent service quality, just to name a few.
Although contact center managers schedule the agents' time and monitor the office to ensure everything is running correctly, there is much more to it. Leading a team, setting (and reaching) goals, hiring staff, and working with employees to solve problems are all essential aspects, too.
So, how can you be an amazing manager? In this blog post, we’ll explain what call center management really involves, explore the skills that make up a great management team, and give you seven tips for improving your workplace management.
Call center management involves overseeing and coordinating every aspect of a call center’s operations to ensure optimal performance and satisfied customers. This includes everything from:
Effective contact center management has a massive impact on your organization. It improves customer experience, streamlines processes, and boosts employee morale.
Well-managed contact centers also see:
The benefits of good call center management stretch beyond just the day-to-day, too. Maintaining a well-structured and efficient operation sets you up for long-term success. So how do you do it?
Call center managers play a vital role in ensuring smooth operation and wider business success. They oversee daily activities, support their team, and implement strategies to improve performance and customer satisfaction.
It’s a blend of leadership, analysis, and hands-on management to foster an efficient and productive workplace. Some of the key tasks and responsibilities that you’ll handle as a contact center manager include:
So, what characterizes an effective call center manager? We’ve covered what they do, but how can you make it happen in your workplace? Managers must manage the pressure and tension because effective workforce management expects them.
Let’s dive into some of the most essential skills that make up excellent contact center management.
A successful call center manager must have authority over customer relations. While you might not deal with clients regularly, you should be able to do so when necessary—and be comfortable doing it.
At the end of the day, you will be the one to step in and find the best solution when something goes wrong with a call or if a call escalates.
Additionally, you need to know how to teach your employees to provide exceptional customer service. You’re not just a manager, you’re a leader, and that means leading your staff to success. Showing them how to improve and help customers is key to their growth as agents
Although you do need technical skills, call center management is impossible if you lack the ability to understand your emotions and those of others. Technical proficiency is vital, but you will not succeed without the ability to control emotions and maintain composure under pressure.
Studies even show that employees with empathetic leaders are more innovative and engaged than those without.
Customer service managers need to promote a culture of positivity and be dependable role models who set the bar high. You must be able to "read the room" and deal with pressure and issues thoughtfully, reasonably, and calmly.
Good contact center managers demonstrate compassion, openness, and morality to their employees. This cultivates trust among team members and feeds into more positive customer interactions.
For instance, during seasonal peaks, you’ll likely need to assist dozens of reps in managing demanding consumers while minimizing wait times. This kind of scenario demands emotional intelligence, as you help agents provide consistent CX under huge pressure and stress.
Great leaders know how to communicate openly and clearly, and are able to demonstrate that to their employees. The key to running a smooth contact center is to communicate with agents openly and transparently while conveying information as effectively as possible.
Don’t remain a faceless figure—be in constant contact with your staff. Find out if they have issues or need anything to achieve their personal goals and improve in the workplace.
Even something as simple as an open-door policy can make a world of difference to your agents and how they feel in the workplace. In fact, studies show that over 40% of workers say that poor communication reduces trust in their leadership and their team.
It enables you to receive feedback and suggestions for improvement. Additionally, it allows your team to provide input on significant consumer issues that have come up during interactions. Above all, be sure that there is constant and open contact between you and your agents.
As a contact center manager, you must continuously find solutions to issues. You’re in charge of making things happen and removing roadblocks that hinder agent productivity. That includes improving workflows and processes on top of assisting agents when they need it.
Customers might not get the answers they need, or reps may not be equipped to handle specific tasks or problems. If so, it’s up to you to help break down those barriers and resolve issues so customers can get the help they need (and your agents get a chance to learn and improve).
Strong leadership is essential to your success as a call center manager. Effective leadership lets you motivate your team, create a positive work environment, and guide agents toward achieving their performance goals.
You foster a culture of accountability and collaboration by providing clear direction, offering support, and encouraging open communication. As a leader, you also play a critical role in conflict resolution, coaching, and empowering your team to continuously improve.
Strong leadership ensures:
Being a great leader ties into every other aspect of contact center management—without it, your agents won’t know who to go to when they need it most.
Here are seven call center management best practices that will make you a better leader:
Planning is essential to the success of your management strategy and the productivity of your employees. Call centers face challenges like large call volumes and complicated workflows every day. Having a solid plan in place makes these challenges easier for you and your team.
You should start by defining your goals—after all, how can you get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going? Setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) helps you create realistic objectives for you and your team to meet—whether it’s daily or long-term.
Setting clear, quantifiable goals will also enable you (and your agents) to monitor performance and growth. Everyone will have a clear idea of what they’re working towards, and how they can reach it.
Hiring the right people is key to running a successful call center. The right candidate not only excels in customer service but also contributes to a positive and productive team dynamic.
When you focus on hiring skilled call center agents, you set the foundation for better performance, higher customer satisfaction, and a smoother operation. But what are the skills that make up a good agent? Here are a few:
Once you’ve hired the best of the best, you need to make sure they’re equipped to do their jobs. And that doesn’t just mean software and hardware—it also means inspiring them and motivating them to do their best (even during peak times).
Satisfied consumers come from motivated staff, no matter what sector you work in. Engaged agents strengthen customer relationships and help guarantee a positive (and effective) customer experience from start to finish.
The turnover rate in contact centers is higher than ever before. According to a recent study, the average annual contact center turnover rate is at an all-time high of 60%—but if you value and appreciate your staff, they are more likely to stay.
Create a workplace where staff receive competitive benefits and pay and have a happy working environment with all the resources they require to thrive.
It can be easy to forget that emotions can be high within a call center environment for your customers and agents. It's critical that you show compassion and empathy for both if you want to succeed in contact center management.
The best way to foster empathy in customer service is from the outset. Set a positive example by prioritizing empathy in your interactions with your employees. That way, they can pass it along to the customers, improving the customer experience and delivering a great interaction.
An AI-powered speech and text analytics solution can assist agents in building rapport with customers by automatically identifying everyday situations, subjects, client intentions and attitudes to help them provide a frictionless customer experience.
A contact center job can be highly stressful and quickly result in overwhelming emotions. Giving customer service staff enough rest to unwind and refocus guarantees that customers get the attentive and welcoming service they demand.
The quality of your CX is closely related to how effectively your team performs, which will determine the success of your contact center operations. Understaffing leads to long wait times, frustrated customers, and overworked agents at risk of burning out.
And overstaffing can have the opposite effect: Employees will feel less engaged, there will be less meaningful work for them to accomplish, and it can waste precious company resources.
Balancing a schedule means planning for highs and lows—and being flexible when things don’t go as planned. But having a solid schedule in place helps you maximize your agents’ and your customers’ time.
Modern QA software is much more than simply letting you listen to and score customer interactions. It contains a wealth of knowledge about not just your agents but also your customers and their behavior.
Take advantage of your QA platform to help improve agent performance and your overall call center. QA tools capable of 100% interaction coverage give you a full picture of your support operations, so you can understand how reps behave in every interaction, not just a handful.
Then, you can use the data from these interactions to help create new training for your agents, which further improves your KPIs. Plus, it can be used alongside other AI tools to add personalization to customer interactions.
Prioritizing the customer experience is essential to running a successful call center—after all, they’re the reason contact centers exist. By creating a customer-focused culture, you can significantly improve CSAT scores and brand loyalty, which trickles down to boost other KPIs.
Personalizing interactions is an excellent start, as over 71% of customers expect personalization. It can start with something as simple as using their names and recalling past interactions, and nowadays you can use CRM tools and AI to easily pull up this information.
Additionally, collecting and analyzing customer feedback is essential. This helps you identify areas of improvement and address concerns promptly, creating a continuous improvement loop. For example, if customers frequently mention long wait times, you could adjust staffing levels.
Encourage your team to embody this customer-centric approach by setting clear expectations and providing regular training. This will not only enhance customer experiences but also boost morale and operational efficiency within your team.
Management is vital to any business, and it’s no different here. Effective call center management can have a significant impact on everything from customer satisfaction to agent engagement.
Prioritizing skills like customer service knowledge, emotional intelligence, open communication, and problem-solving will improve both individual and organizational performance. And by setting goals, empowering the best talent you can hire, and promoting a customer-first mindset, you can completely revolutionize the customer experience.
One of the best ways to enhance your leadership is through your QA software. Scorebuddy’s GenAI Auto Scoring gives you 100% coverage of your contact center operations, so you can access a wealth of valuable insights and help your agents reach their maximum potential.
Get a demo to see how Scorebuddy can level up your management—and your call center.
