Role of supervisors
 |
Supervisors and team
leaders are the most critical employees in the call
center for achieving performance level success.
Yes, the agents are the ones on the phone (or email or
chat) communicating with customers, but most of the time
supervisors provide the motivation and leadership
necessary to boost those agents to do the best job
possible.
Depending on the size of your call center, supervisors
are also responsible for other important roles such as
workforce management or training. Supervisors are
expected to be the key communication link to front line
employees, serving as someone to look up to, a shoulder
to lean on, and most often, the person who has to "put
out fires" when conflicts arise. |
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Attributes of a great supervisor
When supervisors have so many different hats to wear,
hiring the right people for the job can be critical to the performance of
your call center. The How to be a Great Call Center Manager
section of the 2007 Call Center Best Practices Benchmarking Reports
details the top five characteristics to look for in call center
supervisors or team leads.
The top attributes in rank order were:
|
Top Supervisor
Attributes |
|
Leader |
Serve as a role model and be knowledgeable about
the call center and business needs of the
company. Relate to the team and inspire
confidence in agents. |
|
Coach |
Mentor agents to further their development.
Serve as a support figure to agents by
listening, having an open-door policy and
being compassionate about the difficulties of
their job. |
|
Communicator |
Possess superior communication skills, both
with agents and other departments and
managers within the organization. |
|
Motivator |
Aid in the success of agents by acting as a
motivator to keep performance and morale
high. |
|
Problem-solver |
Put out fires and keep the call center
focused. Manage customer complaints and
mediate disruptive team behavior by solving
problems as they arise. |
Evaluating supervisor performance
To ensure that your supervisors are
properly managing your frontline agents, it is important to
regularly check up on their development. The top three measures for evaluating
supervisor performance as reported by call center managers included:
|
Top Supervisor
Performance Measures |
|
Performance |
Productivity of their team as measured by
schedule adherence and key performance metrics. |
|
Quality of service |
Level of service provided and customer
satisfaction as related to agent performance. |
|
Management skills |
Leadership and communication abilities. |
Other top supervisor evaluation factors
included:
Important
note: A comparison of attributes and evaluation measures
shows that although the top attribute of a great supervisor is
to be a leader, supervisors are evaluated first on performance
factors, then by leadership skills.
Report
contents
The chart below shows a complete
table of contents for the How to be a Great Call Center Manager
Report, the product that provided the data for this tutorial.
Areas focused on in this tutorial are
highlighted in orange.
|
How to be a Great Call Center Manager |
|
Study overview
-
Study objective
-
Demographic
highlights
Call center operations model
Management practices:
Supervisors/team leaders
-
Attributes of a
great supervisor
-
Evaluating
supervisor
performance
-
Model of supervisor
roles
-
Ways for
supervisors to improve
-
Supervisor
development model
-
New supervisor
training
New supervisor
training methods
-
How supervisors
spend their time
-
Obstacles to
supervisor time
-
“Must-do” items for
supervisors
-
“Must-not-do” items
for supervisors
Management practices: CSRs/agents
-
Attributes of great
call center agents
-
Top three measures
for evaluating
agents
-
Building agent
competencies
-
Improving agent
productivity
-
Improving customer
service
quality
-
Managing poor
performers
-
“Must-do” items for
driving agent behavior
-
“Must-not-do” items
for driving agent behavior
-
Retention
strategies
Hiring and recruiting
-
Top qualities to
look for when hiring supervisors
-
Supervisor talent
pool
-
Top qualities to
look for when hiring agents
-
Most effective
recruitment screenings
-
Keys to a
successful hiring program
-
Challenges in
hiring and recruiting
CSR/Agent training
-
Training methods
for new agents
-
Agent training
areas
-
Agent classroom
training time
-
Agent on-the-phone
training time
-
Training time
changes
-
Drivers for change
in training time
-
Ongoing training
for existing agents
-
Ongoing training
time
-
Months to become
fully-functioning CSR
-
Training program
changes planned over the next 12 to 18 months
-
Developing
multi-media agents
|
Motivation and incentive
programs
-
Keys to success for
motivating agents
-
Biggest challenges
to motivation
-
CSR incentive
programs
-
Top incentive
programs
-
Incentive
effectiveness
-
Incentive funding
-
Other ways to
motivate agents
Communication
Home-based/remote agents
-
Home-based agents
-
Criteria for
home-based agents
-
Business reasons
for home-based agents
-
Specific function
handling
-
Future plans for
home-based agents
-
Keys to success for
home-based agents
-
Challenges with
home-based agents
Demographics
-
Number of sites
-
Number of employees
-
Hours of operation
-
Contact volume
-
Volume change
-
Single or multi-site
Order the
How to be a Great Call Center
Manager
Report - $399
|
Summary
This tutorial provided information from the newly released
2007 Call Center Best Practices
Reports by Centerserve. These reports contain data on all aspects of contact center
management and operations from 250 call center managers
worldwide. Find out what others are doing to ensure the
success of their call centers. All reports are in PDF
format and are downloadable from
www.call-center.net after purchase. Each section contains
demographic participant data. Visit our
Online Store for more information on our products.
Save 15% by ordering the Best
Practices Package containing all three reports!
Find out more about the reports by visiting the
webpage,
emailing
us
or by calling 970-669-6554
to speak with an analyst.
Coming up...
The 2007 Best Practices Preview Series will continue next week
with key findings from the 2007 study.
|
