Supervisor Training: Where's The Beef?

Supervisor Training: Where's The Beef?
A report finds that there's pitifully little attention being paid to call center supervisory training.

The state of supervisor training in contact centers, while showing promise, still leaves much to be desired, according to a report by the Incoming Calls Management Institute (ICMI). Although companies are starting to allocate more funds for supervisor training, the scope and effectiveness of that training needs to improve, the organization asserts.
ICMI's survey indicates that contact center supervisors are not receiving the training necessary to be successful in their overall responsibilities, such as motivating/retaining and recruiting/hiring agents. The report found that 30% of contact centers have no supervisory training program in place.
"Just as the call center agent is the face of the company to our customers, the supervisor is the face of management for our agents - their perspectives, their viewpoints, their skills level, their motivation, all affect agents in key areas. Whether or not supervisors are equipped - through training and feedback - to handle this demanding challenge is one of the primary drivers of agent success," according to ICMI's Rebecca Gibson, who developed the survey.
Other key findings of the survey:
• Although 93% of respondents noted that a supervisor's ability to motivate and retain agents is critical, only 62.2% offer training in that area. Similarly, 70% of contact center managers said that recruiting and hiring is a necessary component of the supervisor's job, but only 58.3% offer training on how to find and select high-quality performers.
• Only 40% of contact centers that offer supervisor training follow up with coaching to support and reinforce training objectives.
• Only 42% of respondents feel that their frontline agent training and development efforts support the preparation and promotion of supervisor candidates.
• On the positive side, well over half of respondents (58.8%) expect their supervisory training to increase over the next year. Nearly 90% said they plan to increase their supervisor training in leadership skills, and 87% plan to increase training in coaching and performance management skills.
"New supervisors are literally caught in the cross-hairs of senior managers seeking better productivity, stakeholders demanding improved results, employees asserting their needs, and customers always demanding more," says Anne Nickerson, president of Call Center Coach, and author of the report. "Their new position mandates a series of skillful maneuvers that few supervisors come equipped to handle."