What if you could have a more effective call center by the end of the week?
If you’re a call center manager, you have many different responsibilities. Having to deal with so many different things can make it hard to be the most effective manager.
Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to become a better leader that won’t take up too much of your time. Keep reading to discover how you can get started!
1. Talk Frequently to Your Call Center Team
In a call center, communication is always the most important thing, which is especially true for the supervisor!
Make sure you aren’t the type of boss who hides in the office all day. Instead, you should talk to your employees in both group settings and one-on-one. Discover what problems they are dealing with and ask what you can provide to improve their performance.
This shows workers you wish to have open and honest communication with them (even when it’s bad news). This helps build employee loyalty even as it paves the way for the team to bring awesome ideas directly to you!
2. Make Careful Hiring Decisions in Your Call Center
A great call center requires great employees. If you want to be a great manager, you need to play a direct role in most hiring decisions.
For best results, update the job descriptions to spell out the explicit skills and experience (including experience with soft skills) that workers will need. You may wish to screen applicants by having them complete a skills-based competency test.
Whenever possible, consider conducting interviews yourself. This helps you trust your gut when it comes to hiring the best employees who will bring the biggest benefit to your call center.
3. Increase Your Emotional Intelligence
Being a call center manager requires many specific skills. For example, you need to be more than a good salesperson or a good leader. You also need to work on improving your emotional intelligence.
Greater emotional intelligence means you’ll have greater empathy. This helps you relate to employees and also sense potential trouble in the office before it happens.
Most of all, though, better emotional intelligence helps you communicate with customers and team members alike. Each group will value the honesty and forthrightness an empathetic person brings to the table.
4. Be a Workplace Example
Earlier, we touched upon the importance of leaving your office and directly communicating with employees. While you are doing this, you should take every opportunity to lead by example.
For instance, after telling someone about an effective sales technique, don’t be afraid to hop on the phone and show them how it works. If someone is dealing with a very tricky customer service problem, you can volunteer to step in and help resolve the issue.
Leading by example helps employees learn important skills to help the call center thrive. It also builds employee loyalty when they see you aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty.
5. Provide Very Specific Employee Feedback
If you want your workers to improve, you need to offer them enough feedback. If you want major improvement, it’s important to provide specific and targeted feedback.
This should incorporate data you have collected regarding their performance versus your KPIs (more on analytics later). What you tell subordinates should provide specific ideas to help them improve, but make sure it also has plenty of specific information about the things they are doing right.
The trick is finding the right balancing act. Your staff should never feel like feedback or evaluations are a scary thing. By praising what the worker has done right and showing enthusiastic support for how they can improve, you can get an entire team working that much harder.
6. Offer Continuous Training in Your Call Center
Leading by example and providing direct feedback can only take you so far. To make sure that your staff is always growing, it’s important for you to offer continuous training activities.
Training should be based on the specific goals you have for your call center. For example, if sales have been sagging, you may provide training focusing primarily on sales techniques. If calls are running a bit long, you can provide training on lowering average call times.
Such training opportunities also help you to identify some of your most effective workers. Over time, they may prove to be ideal managers for your company.
7. Make Decisions Based on Analytics
These days, most call centers collect important analytic info. This includes info about the average handle time, customer satisfaction, first call resolution, and so on.
It’s important to be transparent with your team about the decisions you are making based on analytics. This shows your team you are not making decisions capriciously or based on your emotions. Instead, you are making data-driven decisions that align with the KPIs your call center relies on to succeed.
Transparently presenting analytics to your team can also foster teamwork. That’s because it helps everyone to focus their collective efforts on specific goals.
8. Increase Retention with Incentives and Celebrations
One “rookie mistake” of call center management is focusing only on things that improve workplace performance. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for employee morale and even retention is to focus on things like incentives and celebrations.
Incentive programs add exciting rewards for your team to strive for. These programs help to “gamify” the office into competing for the top spots.
Rewards also help you highlight your best workers for special praise. You can also do this throughout the year, handing out certificates and other awards. This shows the team you care about their performance and wish to lift them up when they succeed.
Come Manage the Best Call Center in Tijuana Today!
Now you know how to be a more effective call center manager. But do you know where to put your management skills to their best use?
Here at Seguros Confie, we are always looking for awesome managers like yourself. To see how we can help find the management gig you’ve been dreaming of, all you need to do is apply today!