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Are you looking to improve the contact center? Here’s a selection of top tips for contact center managers.

1. Define what a “good job looks like
If you want to coach and manage your call center team leaders to deliver ever increasing performance, then take time out to define what ‘good’ looks like to you!
Does ‘good’ look like every call answered in X seconds, or does ‘good’ look like no more than X complaints per call handler? If you don’t tell your staff, they won’t know what they should be working towards.

2. Model the right behaviors
There is nothing worse than being told in an roundabout way “Do as I say and not as I do.” This is the cardinal sin of many managers! If you want your staff to behave in a certain way, then the senior management team need to model the behaviors and the performance characteristics that they are asking of their people. There is no greater turn-off for staff than being told to deliver something by a manager who they do not see delivering themselves.

3. End-of-day sessions
Another great way of communicating (especially when special campaigns/incentives are running) is to hold a 15-minute end-of-day discussion that all managers join in person or via teleconference to discuss the successes and failures of the day and use the combined weight of experience to help those who are delivering results below the norm.

4. Entice your market’s top talent
If you hope to be the employer of choice in your particular sector then you must be serious about wanting to make talent a key influencer in your company. Try and involve large numbers of stakeholders in recruitment. This does not mean horrific interview panels of 15 or more staff each asking two questions. It means informal consultation; sitting a potential recruit in the work area of the team where they will join for an informal Q&A session for 15 minutes.

5. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
When you deal with lots of the same query it’s easy to forget that, for your customer, this may be the first time it’s happened to them! Think how you would like to be spoken to and treat the query like it is important!
We hope you will find the above useful and applicable to your operations.