How Do Your Call Center Supervisors Measure Up?

How Do Your Call Center Supervisors Measure Up?
In surveys we've done over the past several years, The Call Center School has found that over 80 percent of supervisors and team managers in call centers today were moved into these positions after working as frontline agents. While most new supervisors receive training on general supervisory skills through the HR department, only about 20 percent of these supervisors receive additional advanced call center operational training.
Below is a "Top Ten" checklist of the knowledge and skills needed by supervisors in today's contact center, in addition to general supervisory and leadership skills. How do your supervisors measure up?
Recruiting And Hiring. Even with a specialized team of human resources staff to do recruiting and initial screening, the supervisor will, at some point, get involved in at least the interview process. It's important for him or her to have the necessary interviewing skills to ask the right questions and interpret responses to find the best match for the job.
Motivational Techniques. There are seven main types of strategies for keeping staff motivated and happy on the job, and every supervisor should understand basic motivational theory and how to select the motivational techniques that are best suited for their unique staff.
Understanding which techniques work best in the unique world of call centers is critical to performance success.
Retention Strategies. Turnover is rampant in many centers today. While compensation and job fit are the reasons in some centers, in many others, turnover can be directly attributed to supervisor/employee relationships. Each supervisor must understand what the key drivers are to team and individual satisfaction and strive to meet them.
Defining Performance Standards. Defining realistic goals and expectations and measuring their attainment are critical to every call center's success. These goals should be defined with corporate and business unit objectives in mind and then be defined down to the individual behaviors you would like to see demonstrated by the frontline staff.
Diagnosing Performance Problems, Once goals and standards of performance have been defined, supervisors must be well-versed in comparing actual performance to the goals to identify performance gaps and diagnose the root cause of performance issues unique to the call center environment.
Coaching And Counseling. One of the most fundamental skills needed by frontline supervisors is the ability to coach and motivate employees. There are many things about working in a call center that make it unique and coaching skills that work in another environment may need to be fine-tuned to be successfully applied to call center issues.
Human Resources Issues. While some of the human resources issues will be the same from one department to another, there are some elements of call center operations that generate additional personnel issues and potential legal problems. It's imperative that each frontline supervisor be aware of these from an interviewing, monitoring, coaching and discipline perspective.
Staffing and Scheduling. Given that call center staff are at the mercy of incoming customer calls, every supervisor will likely have to address staffing and scheduling issues at some point. While each supervisor doesn't have to be able to forecast workload and create staff schedules, every supervisory or management person should understand the basic concepts of call center staffing and the tradeoffs with cost, service and productivity.
Call Center Math. Managing in today's call center means managing by the numbers. There is a vast array of numbers available from today's call center systems and the savvy manager will understand how to assimilate the statistics to isolate performance trends and exceptions.
Call Center Technology. While most supervisors don't need to be able to trouble-shoot problems or program the ACD, it is important for this group to have a basic understanding of the technologies at work in their contact center. Each should understand the basic concepts of call routing and delivery and how each technology is used to support the customer interaction.