Call center management is no easy task. It takes communication, organization, leadership, analysis, and problem-solving skills.
Now let’s jump in!
What is Call Center Management?
When most people think of call center management, they immediately think of operations. Hiring, training, metrics and goals, call quality, and customer satisfaction to name a few. That’s right for the most part, but we want to take it a step further.
Managing a call center takes motivation, perseverance, and creativity.
Not all days are good, especially when it comes to turnover and hiring. It seems like a never-ending cycle.
That’s what we want to focus on today.
How to not only effectively manage a call center, but how to make it a place that people want to work for.
Plus we’ll dive into call guidance software and other AI-driven tools that could boost your team’s performance.
How Do You Effectively Manage a Call Center?
Every industry can be different, but there are five categories that we believe make or break a call center. And our customers agree with us.
1) Communication with Employees
If you aren’t going to prioritize communication then say goodbye to a place people want to be. Agent turnover will remain high and employee satisfaction will remain low. Which in turn affects your customers.
Communication includes listening. You should be listening just as much as you are speaking.
“There’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth. It’s important to listen more than we speak.”
Epictetus
2) Utilizing Call Guidance Software & Call Coaching Tools
This is a no-brainer. If you’re going to spend your budget on tools, do it on ones that help both your agents and customers/prospects.
Plus this doubles down as training/onboarding, giving managers a way to have a repository of all of their scripts, battlecards, playbooks, and question handling.
Your agents will always know the right thing to say, which will bring them closer to hitting all of their goals.
3) Ensure Proper Scheduling
While most people may shake their heads and say “We already got this”, we highly recommend everyone take a deeper look into their scheduling process.
On one hand, it’s essential not to be overstaffed when call volume is low. By properly managing your agent scheduling at slower times, you’ll reduce the number of agents working so that you’re not overpaying for labor.
4) Provide Comprehensive Training
We don’t mean just in the beginning when your agents are onboarding. We mean consistently helping them get better.
We also don’t mean managers leading every training session. Give your top performing agents the ownership in leading training around topics they are crushing it on.
Have other teams come in and educate your agents. Sales teams train customer service and vice versa.
5) Motivation & Engagement with Agents
While this should be number one, we moved it to the bottom to be a good reminder for you.
Time and money. That’s what motivates most people. Either give them time or money incentives. Gold stars mean nothing when it comes to providing for a family, paying rent, etc.
Plus competition is healthy!
Call Center Metrics
All of these metrics are pretty common, but the one that is missing the most is revenue.
Most of our clients who are using call guidance software have changed their perspective on this subject.
Any team should know how their metrics affect the revenue of the company. Show them how they are making an impact.
Showing your team how a 5% increase or decrease could make a huge impact on revenue generated.
Essentially any team on the phone should measure these metrics:
- Average Handle Time (AHT)
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- First Call Resolution (FCR)
- QA Performance Scores
Setting up a plan of action
We’ve put together a few steps that can help you get started with your call center management today. If you’ve already got the first few down, then great! Keep making your way through the list.
1. Create a cohesive plan
If you haven’t highlighted your strengths and weaknesses as well as your teams, then this is a great place to start.
It gives you an idea of where you need to start before you go changing things blindly.
2. Evaluate your current tech stack
List out everything that is currently in your budget and rate each tool based on how often it’s used. Then you can even get into the details of ROI to determine if you should cancel or renew.
Maybe there is a feature missing from a tool which is why your agents won’t adopt it in their daily use. Ask the company what their roadmap is and if that feature is included. If they say no, then it’s time to move on.
3. Look into AI-type tools for automation
Whether it be virtual agents, chatbots, real-time call guidance software, or another call center management tool, there are a ton of great options on the market right now.
If ChatGPT taught us anything, it’s that AI is the future and it can be used in a lot of different ways.
4. Evaluate your coaching plan
How often are your agents being coached? Are you repeating the same issues in your coaching sessions?
Most importantly, your coaching sessions should be separate from your employee 1-on-1s, those are focused on career development.
Call guidance software can give your agents live coaching on every call. Which helps you plan your team coaching sessions better. Plus with software, you can easily see what is being missed and/or what is working to roll out to the rest of your team.
5. Setting up Call Outcomes/Dispositions
At the end of the day, you need to find a CRM or Dialer that allows you to include call outcomes. Otherwise, how do you truly know if a call is successful or not?
Until AI gets better with sentiment analysis, there are too many unknowns when it comes to automating this.
6. Build a repeatable process
No matter what your team’s operational process looks like, the most important thing is that it’s repeatable.
Too complicated? It won’t stick long-term.
Not enough data? You won’t have the answers you’re looking for.
Repeat and refine your process to ensure it’s one that can stick with your team.
How tools like Abstrakt can improve Call Center Management
If you’ve made it this far, we hope you at least have some interest in learning more about AI-driven tools that can boost your agent’s performance and productivity.
Read more about AI call guidance software is helping teams level up.
Plus, here are just a few of the ways Abstrakt has helped our customers…
