Solving Your Call Center Managers’ Biggest Problems

Posted by Ahmed Macklai on March, 16 2020 8:29 pm

Your call center staff handles a lot, every day. From irritable consumers to stressful deadlines and goals, your agents may sometimes seem like superheroes, getting it all done. And who leads those teams of courageous agents? If you’re lucky, it’s an equally full-mettle team of call center managers.

What are the biggest problems facing your call center managers - and how can you help alleviate some of them? If you’re looking to streamline daily operations and make life easier for the team members pulling the most weight, check out this list of call center managers’ biggest problems and how to address them quickly and effectively.

Changes to Customer Expectations - The Biggest Challenge to Call Center Managers

With the advent of social media and the rise of websites like YouTube, consumers in the modern day expect instant gratification for the things they want and need. Whether it’s having a question answered or ordering a product, why would they tolerate long wait times and corporate confusion when they can find convenience from websites and applications that cater to their every whim on command?

While your center may not be able to rise those extremely high demands, your call center managers can outfit the operation with the tools your agents need solve problems faster and serve consumers better. This may entail social media customer service, or it may simply be improving your current approach. No matter what you’re adding or overhauling, the right tools make all the difference in providing today’s demanding consumers with what they’re expecting.

Bad Customer Experiences Can Ruin Everything

An old adage goes, “One bad apple spoils the barrel”. This is certainly true when it comes to customer experiences. Not only will a single bad customer experience keep that particular consumer from returning to your business, it will also prevent those who they speak to about your brand from patronizing your company, either.

To keep this from happening, your staff should be well-trained in how to handle all manner of situations involving consumer interaction. Likewise, every member of staff - from newly-hired agents to senior managers - should be given the tools and technology that they need to assist consumers and one another in pinpointing customer concerns and addressing them promptly. This is the winning formula for providing great customer service time after time.

In Reporting, Consistency is Key - and Hard

Business processing outsourcing companies and contact centers handle a tremendous amount of data every day. All of that data is meaningful, even if it isn’t used right away. So, how can you ensure that the data you receive and catalogue is put to proper use? By reporting it accurately.

Unfortunately, many of today’s call centers are saddled with numerous reporting systems that make consistency difficult to achieve. Making just a few small changes to make your center’s reporting easier for agents to handle and benefit from - and easier to understand - can dramatically change the way your business operates.

Consistent reporting doesn’t just include getting it right across the board. It also means making good use of the data - and in many instances, that means a deeper agent and manager understanding of how important data is to your center. That may mean doing more to reach metric goals, or abandoning certain metric goals altogether in favor of more person-centered service. It all depends on your company’s needs. Empowering your management staff to understand that and make meaningful decisions is all part of equipping them for success.

Fewer Physical Resources, Higher Demands

These days, most contact centers are working with tighter budgets and fewer physical resources than ever before - all while being asked to do more with less. Despite an increasing focus on person-centered service and tailoring customer service to the needs of individual consumers, call centers are often still viewed as “cost centers” by upper-level management and ownership. This means that keeping costs at their rock-bottom levels while keeping performance and productivity as high as possible is crucial.

What’s more, this means that many centers do not receive the kind of technology updates and overhauls they need regularly. Some companies are operating with the same technology they have used since the early 2000’s - nearly twenty years, now - while being expected to perform at today’s rigorous levels. To keep your center up to date in its performance and make it easier for your managers to lead their teams to success, ensure that your operation is given these updates as needed and that cloud technology is utilized when possible. This will keep costs down while improving performance.

Hiring and Keeping Great Agents is Tough

Agent hiring and retention is often cited as the biggest challenge for managers. Why? Because the job is seen as a great starting point for those with little experience - and a stepping stone to other, “better” jobs. This is very bad for the industry, since it means a high churn rate, a low level of quality in the work being performed, and an overall lack of enthusiasm and drive among employees.

Better hiring approaches and retention strategies are the start of improvements here. Giving managers the tools they need to perform better, more regular training and to gamify both training and work - and create better incentives for performance. Your agents will never look at their jobs the same way again!

Ready to give your call center managers the boost they need to be even better? Contact the industry leaders at ChaseData. We have the software solutions your managers need to be at their best every day - and to lead your agents to equally-stellar performance. Don’t make your leaders go it alone. When you’re ready to outfit your operation with the tools and technology your management team needs to succeed, give us a call to learn more!

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