What to look for when you hire a new Contact Center Manager

In this article I share what to look for when you hire a new Contact Center Manager.

The scenario – you need to hire a new Contact Center Manager

Let’s say you’re the new Business Leader and you need to hire a new Contact Center Manager for your existing 200 seat Centre.

You don’t come from the Contact Center industry yourself. But as a business professional you understand the value of the Contact Center.

Your overall business is in good financial shape though the Center has been somewhat neglected for the past few years.

You’ve learned from past experience that the number of years of experience held by the Contact Center Manager doesn’t correlate to mastery of the job role.

You need someone who knows the Contact Center – not just someone who has spent a lot of time in one.

So the essential question is this – what do you look for when you hire a new Contact Center Manager?

The key domains of know-how required for Contact Center Management

The Contact Center Manager job is a rich and full one.

I recommend the following key domains of know-how when looking to hire a new Contact Center Manager.

Or when you’re looking to upskill a current Manager or Management Team.

1. Operations & Technology

Includes Center design, forecasting the workload, calculating staff and resource requirements, selecting the right metrics and ways to measure those metrics, understanding the interrelationships between metrics, understanding the underlying dynamics of the Center, channel management and the ability to articulate the impact of business decisions on the operation.

In this domain I’d include essential & evolving technology knowledge. That’s because of the significant impact any technology choice has on the operation with cascading impact on Customers, Employees & the Organization itself.

When I’m asked which domain of know-how should come first I always recommend Operations. That’s because so much of what happens in a Center, from how people are managed through to how Customers experience the Center, flows from strong operations management practices.

How to use the True Calls per Hour Calculation in the Contact Centre

2. People Management

This domain includes organizational design, hiring & selection, retention & attrition management, training & development, performance management, compensation & incentive strategies, coaching and employee engagement, satisfaction & motivation, career & skills pathing and succession planning.

In this domain, I’d specifically include the design and implementation of the monitoring & coaching process.

For organizations that are evolving into Employee Experience – a big topic today – I’d add Employee lifecycle and journey management as well as research practices around Voice of Employee.

3. Leadership & Business Management

From a leadership perspective, this domain includes competencies around the vision, the mission, values and development & execution of strategy in the Center including alignment with organizational strategy.

It also includes how to build healthy cross-functional relationships and put the Center front and center on the organizational radar screen.

From a business management perspective, this domain includes the ability to make credible business cases, calculate Contact Center budgets, calculate ROI and understand change leadership practices.

In my experience, very few Center Managers have a strong grasp of how to correctly calculate a Contact Center budget.

If I were conducting a hiring exercise for a Contact Center Manager I’d ask the candidate to walk me through how they budget for a Center.

You’ll learn a lot about how much they know (or don’t know) about a Contact Center operation.

4. Service & Quality Management

Service & Quality Management is the art & science of delivering value to Customers through any channel or combination of channels.

Often times the Contact Center is at the heart of the Service & Quality Management function.

Service & Quality Management includes know-how around developing and implementing a Service Delivery Vision, the selection & definition of relevant Quality standards, Quality assurance practices, Customer research practices including service monitoring, Customer communication strategies and the nurturing of a service culture.

And it includes a strong & practical understanding of the specific service and relevant sales skills for each channel in use.

The skills for handling a Customer email are different than those for handling a Customer live chat for example. Omnichannel service requires a different approach than multi-channel service.

I think some folks confuse Service Management with Customer Experience Management.

Service Management very specifically relates to Customer interactions with the brand. It’s a subset of the overall Customer Experience.

Customer Experience includes product, pricing and every single aspect of the organization from the way the bill looks to how fresh the chicken is in the restaurant. It’s so much more than a call to the Contact Centre.

With that said, let’s look at the last domain of know-how – Customer Experience Management.

5. Customer Experience Management

There is a ‘real’ Customer Experience Manager job role out there.

And the Contact Centre Manager role is not that role.

The Contact Center Manager job role – by its very nature – only involves some subset of all Customers (never all Customers), at some point of time (not all points in time) in that specific Customer journey (not all Customer journeys).

So you honor the Contact Center profession when you keep the phrase Contact Center in your job title.

Not when you decide to jump on the rebranding of everything as Customer Experience.

Sure – the Contact Center has impact on those Customers who experience that touchpoint.

But it’s not the same thing as the perception the Customer has of the entirety of their experience with your brand.

Once you get that – and master your understanding of and contribution to the overall Customer Experience – you become a better Contact Center Manager.

So after that big build up, what does the Contact Center Manager need to know about CX?

The more the better. But we need to be careful here.

While having our Contact Center Manager understand Customer Experience as a business discipline is important and helpful to our CX efforts, let’s remember the Contact Center Manager already has a full-time job.

Just relook at domains of know-how we covered so far. It’s a lot.

So it’s likely that much of the actual ‘work’ of Customer Experience will be done by the CX Team.

That’s because the CX Team is in the best position to handle activities like VOC research, developing the CX strategy, cross-functional journey mapping. implementing organizational accountability, maintaining a healthy pipeline of projects to work on and the like.

The CX Team has a higher elevation across functions as well as a broader mandate.

I think that in real life, the Contact Center Manager has a lot to learn from the Customer Experience Manager with regard to CX.

And I think that the Customer Experience Manager has a lot to learn from the Contact Center Manager as well.

The Customer Experience Manager will benefit from the rich experience, know-how and Customer insight residing in the Contact Centre.

Ultimately, both roles will work closely together for the benefit of the Centre and the Organization.

CX lessons we can learn from the Contact Centre industry

You don’t have a CX Team? I see that all the time.

Then it’s likely that you have a ‘Service Quality Team’ or variation. As is implied in the name, a Service Quality Team tends to focus on service – including research and analytics, high level complaint management and targeted improvement efforts across the organization.

But again – avoid confusing a Service Quality Team with a Customer Experience Team. The mandate and activities are typically different – as well as the scope of authority.

10 CCXP Exam Practice Questions for Customer Experience Strategy

Of course there’s more to consider

Of course when you’re selecting your Contact Centre Manager you will also look at their past track record of success and their character and leadership style.

As well as how well you see them fitting into your culture.

But know-how is an obvious and critical component in the selection process.

And (unfortunately) it sometimes akes a backseat to how much ‘experience’ the candidate has. Don’t confuse years of experience with mastery of the domain. .

The key to success will always be KNOW-HOW + EXPERIENCE with DEMONSTRABLE SUCCESS.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/15-quiz-questions-on-contact-center-operations-management/