Expert Tips To Successfully Manage Your Call Center Team

manage your call center team

Customer care is an important part of a company’s reputation. People formulate their opinions around the way support agents interact with them. Most of this communication is through call centers, so it is important that they are well managed. Staff needs to be properly trained in how to handle a variety of different situations.

Let’s take a closer look at a few expert tips that will help you manage a successful call center team.

1. Teach Your Team Call Center Etiquette

What might be obvious to you as a manager isn’t always obvious to your staff. This is especially true when it comes to things like phone etiquette. This is a skill that has to be taught and, for the best results, monitored. This is why so many call centers have implemented agent screen recording as well as record calls. This is for quality control purposes.

It is important to consistently monitor, review and improve their skills by educating them on how to treat customers with respect and in a professional, yet friendly way. Teach your team about communicating wait times, pausing recordings when taking personal details like credit card information, and informed consent (letting customers know that their call is being recorded).

Equipping your team with the right tools can make a customer feel valued and respected, which is important.

2. Provide Technical Training

Your team members need to know what they are using and how to make it work for them. If your team members are not 100% comfortable and confident with the software and technology at their disposal, it could lead to unnecessary hold times, which is very poor etiquette.

Your team should know how to answer calls with the call center software you use, be able to transfer calls between departments, and add and remove additional people to a call when necessary.

3. Implement A Shadowing Program

People learn by example. When you implement a shadowing program, you team new hires up with experienced agents who know how to handle all sorts of customer-call situations. This is a great way to help agents train and develop the necessary skills needed to address any issues they may encounter.

There are a few ways to implement this sort of training. One of the more popular methods used is to invite trainees to sit in and listen to real customer calls. This way, trainees can see exactly how to use the tools they have at their disposal to solve a customer’s issue effectively and efficiently. Another method is to let new trainees listen to old recordings and specific examples of you to handle specific issues.

4. Set Clear Objectives

People need structure in the workplace. Without clear goals and objectives, there is no real direction or motivation to do anything. Having clear objectives in place can boost performance and lead to happy customers as well as happy team members. Set attainable objectives for your team and adjust them based on their experience as well as capabilities.

Successful management of a call center team comes down to more than being the boss. You need to motivate your team and grow them through example and treat them fairly. You need to constantly help them better themselves by offering training when and where necessary, and setting clear, attainable goals.

Nicole Middleton
Nicole calls herself a typical millennial girl and thrives on her share of social media, celebrity gossip, and all things viral content. She’s a big fan of pop music and plays the guitar as a hobby.