Help your Contact Centre Team Leaders do better.
In this Part 2 of a 2-part article, I explore the final two barriers to Team Leader success — mastering meaningful conversations and building critical know-how.
Common barriers to Contact Centre Team Leader success
In Part 1, I listed five barriers to Team Leader success. Here they are again –
- Senior Leadership sets or pursues the wrong metrics
- Team Leaders are always busy but not sure how to rethink where their time goes
- Being a great Agent doesn’t mean they’ll be a great Team Leader
- Many important conversations between Team Leaders and their people don’t happen often enough or well enough
- Team Leaders lack critical industry know-how to power their decision making and develop their people
Though the mix and relative impact of these barriers varies from Centre to Centre these are the barriers I see most often in our global work with Team Leaders.
In my Part 1 article, I covered the first three barriers in detail. Here is that article if you’ve not read it yet –
https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/help-your-contact-centre-team-leaders-do-better-part-1/
In Part 2 article I’ll wrap up by covering the last two barriers (4 and 5).
Many important conversations between Team Leaders and their people don’t happen often enough or well enough
If the Agent job role is to have great conversations with Customers, then the Team Leader job role is about having great conversations with their Agents.
What kinds of conversations?
Here are the key conversations we talk about and practice when we teach People Management for Team Leaders –
- Praise
- Gratitude
- Something ‘good’
- Something ‘not so good’
- It’s not getting any better
- Transaction coaching
- Performance appraisal
- Team reviews
- One on one reviews
- Team huddles
- Boss as Leader
- Boss as Person
- Boss as Manager
- Things you don’t talk about (the un-conversation)
This toolbox of conversations is at the heart of building relationship, earning trust and growing the people that work for you.
There’s no ‘secret’ here and having conversations with people can be learned.
We find that a challenge for some Team Leaders is to accept this reality, make ‘sacred’ time for having conversations – which we covered in Part 1 – and then do these conversations well.
Each conversation is either triggered by an event or it’s pre-planned into a calendar
Have a look at the list of conversations again.
Team reviews, One on One reviews and Transaction coaching sessions are most often planned into the calendar.
We know they must happen and we set aside time to make sure they do happen.
Conversations like Praise, Something ‘good’ and Something ‘not so good’ only happen when the Team Leader observes it themselves or learn it about it later.
Such as finding out that a Customer left a nice comment in their transaction surey.
I call these ‘triggered’ conversations. Because they are triggered by some kind of event.
And here’s why this matters.
If Team Leaders aren’t observant, a big ‘chunk’ of their possible conversations with the people that work for them simply doesn’t happen.
I’ve meet Agents who told me their Team Leader rarely talks to them. Or that when they do they don’t really have anything useful or meaningful to say.
If we care about people – and we want them to do better – we talk with them.
Team Leaders have to know what they’re talking about and talk about it well
In Part 1 we shared that Team Leaders need to know what they’re talking about – the content of their conversation.
And they also have to know how to talk about the content they’ve chosen – the tone of the conversation.
Which is why we study and practice all the conversations that go into our conversational toolbox.
We expect our Frontline Agents to use proven patterns, techniques and specific language in their conversations with Customers.
So it’s reasonable to expect Team Leaders to also use proven patterns, techniques and specific language with their Frontline Agents.
Now on to the last of our five barriers.
Team Leaders lack critical industry know-how to power their decision making and develop their people
The Contact Centre environment is complex.
It’s an ecosystem that combines the needs and wants of Employees, Customers and Senior Leaders with the business disciplines of operations, leadership, business performance, technology, strategy, experience management and more.
It’s a lot to learrn and stay on top of.
But film actor Tom Hanks reminds us that it’s ‘the hard that makes it great’.
Help your Contact Centre Team Leaders do better by formalizing your approach to their development.
They shouldn’t be left to just picking it up on the job. And what they learn has to be both deep and right.
If your Management or Learning & Development Team doesn’t have the competency or background to teach this know-how get some help.
To succeed, Team Leaders need expertise across four key areas
To succeed, Team Leaders need expertise across four key areas – each with it’s own domains.
- Management Know-How: Contact Centre Operations, Leadership & Business Management
- Team Development: People Management
- Customer Orientation: Quality Management and Customer Experience
- Personal Growth: Self-Management
Here’s a summary overview of the individual domains –
- Contact Centre Operations is the backbone of a Team Leader’s success—without mastery here, it’s impossible to drive performance or quality improvements effectively
- Leadership & Business Management is the backbone of communicating and achieving Organizational and Centre results. It also builds awareness of the Centre’s role in the larger ecosystem and is foundational to inspiring people to achieve shared goals.
- People Management is brought to life through frequent and meaningful conversations with the people who work for you. And building an intentional culture where people can learn and grow
- Quality Management is the backbone of intentional Customer Service. Which directly impacts both Customer Satisfaction and Employee Engagement and includes the topics of quality design, delivery and coaching practices.
- Customer Experience – if your Centre promotes itself as fulfilling the ‘Customer Experience’ your Team Leaders deserve to know exactly what that means. Because it’s an advanced business discipline – and not just another name for Customer Service
- Self-Management – It’s not just what you do at work, it’s also who you are. Team Leaders who understand working through change, stress management, emotional regulation and intrinsic motivation are better at helping others do the same.
For more actionable insights, check out our article on How Team Leaders Can Talk Like a Leader.
Or to self-test your mastery of Contact Centre operations, check out our Quiz on Contact Centre Operations Management.
Help your Contact Centre Leaders do better
This 2-Part articles shared the five most common barriers to Team Leader success that we see in our work out in the real world.
Which of these barriers resonates most with your Centre? Start by addressing just one, and watch the positive impact it has on your Team Leaders and their Teams!
I help and inspire people around the world through transformative training in Contact Centers, Customer Service and Customer Experience.
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Daniel Ord
