Training Call Center Supervisors

It makes sense. The majority of call center supervisors are promoted from within after proving themselves as front-line agents. They understand the job and know your company and your products.

While their promotion was typically based on their ability effectively manage customer calls, they often lack the additional management skills to be effective in their new role. Without both people and operations management skills, they are bound to struggle.

For people management, effective call center supervisors must be able to:

• Hire effectively for both technical and cultural fit
• Recommend and provide relevant development for staff
• Know how to reduce turnover of top performers
• Organize teams in a logical way to get the job done
• Manage high, expected and low performance
• Motivate staff to increase discretionary effort
• Improve productivity in a way that is aligned with the overall call center strategy

To be effective at operations management, supervisors need to know how to:

• Set ACD routing
• Forecast calls and staff accordingly
• Schedule work shifts to balance costs and service
• Set up clear, consistent, and transparent performance measures
• Deal with network malfunctions
• Use the call center’s technologies for staff management
• Interpret the numbers vis-à-vis targets and strategy
• Utilize staffing alternatives when needed

Do your Customer Service Training and Consulting plans cover all the bases so that your call center supervisors will be up to the new task?