Contact Center Leadership: 3 Mistakes you should Avoid

Clients expect great and personalized customer experience from your agents and supervisors who are well-trained and informed on your products and services. But that can only happen with good management from your supervisors, excellent follow-up from your agents and effective leadership from you as an owner.

While It might be challenging, to be a leader in the contact center industry. Especially if you have a big number of employees to handle. As your are in charge of giving directions, strategies and encouragement for them. Effective leadership has the ability to increase both your contact center performances and customer satisfaction. And while you might think you are an effective leader, it doesn’t shield you from mistakes.

In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about taking on a leadership role, the issues you should overcome in your organization, what kind of mistakes you should avoid and what it truly means to be an effective leader.

When a leader or manager tries to make everyone on the team into their mini me, this problem occurs. As they are borderline arrogant, therefore they give advice, counseling and feedback based on their own personality type instead of facts and metrics or observed actions and objective criteria. And they may even take disciplinary action.

Your contact center agents must be evaluated on a frequent basis if they are to provide consistent and good customer experience throughout their careers. Some leaders make the mistake of emphasizing only the flaws of their agents rather than highlighting their positive attributes as well.

What are your options for reversing the situation? Concentrate on the facts. Gather the evidence to back up your concerns before speaking with a company representative. It’s time to think about whether you’re evaluating this person based on objective criteria, because your data doesn’t back up your pending helpful criticism.

This is a difficult transition and easily one of the mistakes many new leaders make. As a new contact center owner, you may think that you simply “lead” and do not contribute. But in reality you are now accountable for everyone’s performance and if anything goes wrong whithin your organization. Although it may seem unfair but it is the reality of management. Yet, as a leader, you are expected to accept responsibility for your team’s performance, especially when it is poor. You must identify what isn’t functioning and work to fix it, whether its managing your supervisor, lack of technology options in your contact center solution or a bad work environment in your company. And even when things are going well, you must keep procedures going and ensure that everyone remains engaged and acknowledged.

Turn things around by taking full responsibility for your actions, no matter how successful or unsuccessful they are. The same advice applies here as it did for the #3 blunders. This is a notion that you must grasp. Unfortunately, this is the way things work in management. You’ve probably heard of dispute resolution tactics, listening techniques, and other “soft” skills needed to create a stable working environment.

Failing to put your best actions, regardless of your circumstances or attitude, encourages your supervisors and agents to do the same. Especially supervisors fail to notice the connection between their example and the team’s behavior. When agents for example arrive late or start snapping at coworkers, this boss frequently accuses them of being unprofessional. This eventually leads to a lack of trust and performance that is only good enough to avoid being dismissed.

As a leader you should illustrate your concept of greatness. This is another way of saying “set a good example.” The distinction is that you are showing your idea of excellence. This implies that instead of imitating or reading about leadership in a book, you determine what a leader does or says and then model that behavior in your interactions with others on your team. Plan for mistakes and strategies as much as you plan for the need to fix them. This also demonstrates greatness in how you are willing to correct the problem but greatness also starts from knowledge. In other words, knowing what you will face as a leader, what actions you should take and how to be an effective leader.

Team leaders have their own set of obstacles. These are comparable to the challenges that contact centers agents and supervisors face on daily basis:

Bill Gates once remarked regarding customer satisfaction that all contact center executives should remember: “Your most disgruntled customers are your best teachers.”

It’s straightforward and honest, exactly like your customer service should be. Gates emphasizes the significance of learning from failures and applying that failure whether large or little, in order to provide better customer service in the future.

As a team leader, you must encourage the end goal which is client happiness while also preventing agents from making mistakes in the first place. However, if errors or bad attitudes lead your clients to be dissatisfied, you’ll need to train your agents on how to rectify the problem.

Customers might get irritated, angry, and even aggressive. This makes agents work harder. They may discover that they are unable to maintain their cool or give the anticipated conclusion to the caller.

To fix the issue, your supervisors must intervene and speak with the client. Poorly assessed service might result in negative publicity and unfavorable reviews online. This would have an influence on the company’s overall reputation. Dealing with an angry individual over the phone or over the webchat is considerably easier than dealing with them in person, but it may still be difficult. Team leadership at a contact center necessitates the capacity to remain focused and offer good customer experience in all situations.

Supervisors may face opposition from certain agents. Perhaps they believe you are overbearing or untrustworthy. Perhaps they believe they are better suited to the job than you are.

Team members’ opposition, for whatever reason, might generate issues for team leaders. Fostering a close relationship between you and the agents reporting to you is beneficial, but it might be challenging if opposition is already there.

Directly discussing any issues with the person affected is the most practical method to address their discontent. This can be tough if you have been promoted to management and are overseeing individuals who were at the same level as you only a few weeks ago, but it still needs to be done.

Anyone in a position of team leadership must be adaptable. You don’t have to oversee the entire call center just because you’re a director or owner. As a result, you may not have all of the answers. That is why it is critical to be willing to admit your flaws and make improvements. Management may, via continuing quality assurance, make you aware of the errors you’ve made, which may surprise you.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you’re not at the top of the food chain, but you must take criticism, figure out how to adjust, and incorporate it into your work style.

When QA analysts do quality checks in your call center, they detect faults at all levels of the work process. Before a QA software identifies mistakes, agents, team leaders, and supervisors can all contribute to bad customer service.

Based on the data gathered throughout the quality assurance process, team leaders must teach and train service agents. Strong communication skills are required to develop relationships with team members and ensure that they understand how to grow. As agents mature, you will need to evaluate their progress and give constant support.

As an effective leader, you must never overlook the importance of strong morale. Listening to service agents’ concerns, resolving their needs, and offering feedback to management may all contribute to making your staff feel more appreciated.

Take whatever efforts you can to improve their job experience. Communicate with management to suggest constructive improvements to work procedures. Make adjustments such as flexible scheduling, informal attire, contests, and so forth. Reward programs are an excellent method to motivate employees and increase their involvement in their job.

In a contact center, effective leadership is vital and no matter what kind of experience you have, errors are always possible. As previously said, leaders play an important role in delivering that promise of excellent customer experience and you should always act as a vital link between agents and management. And all of this ecompesses the value of your promise to your clients, delivering excellent customer experience.

When it comes to overseeing their employees, leaders have a lot of obligations and the daily work of contact centers has its fair share of difficulties. However, developing close connections with the agents and supervisors under your command, acting as an ally, and following the advice in our article will make the position of team leader simpler for you.

The value of the promise. That is the principle that was built upon NobelBiz. For 20 years we have delivered complete and high-quality solutions for all contact centers. That is why we are known as the promise keepers of the industry whether for delivering a powerful telephony solution with our purpose built voice carrier or taking organization to the next level with our Cloud Contact center solutions.