How To Be A Contact Center Team Leader: Everything You Need To Know

Customers depend on well-trained, well-informed service agents for a quality experience — and this only happens through effective management.

Working in a team leadership role in a call center environment can be daunting, especially if you have a large group of agents who look to you for guidance and encouragement.

A good team leader has the power to improve both agent and customer satisfaction if you make the most of the opportunity. According to a 2012 Gallup Survey, organizations that engage agents see a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes. Who better to lead that agent engagement than call center managers.

In this blog post, we’ll cover all the details you need to know to take on a team leadership role, what problems you must overcome, and ways to make a positive impact.

Effective Leadership In A Call Center: Primary Responsibilities

Every job has its own duties and responsibilities. In the team leader role, you’re tasked with overseeing a specific group of agents, varying in size.

Larger companies tend to rely more on team leaders than those with just a few employees, and it’s vital that your group is on a manageable scale. You may have already worked at the call center (or another) as a team leader, or be a service agent promoted into the position.

Regardless of how you got the team lead job, there are multiple key factors in call center responsibilities to consider:

• Undertake training to improve employees’ performance.
• Monitor work to identify issues and track progress. 
• Serve as a conduit between the call center management and agents.
• Take agents’ views and feedback on board, with an aim to set team goals.
• Make sure agents keep company values, best practices and more in mind.

It may not always be an easy job, but it’s a natural progression for service agents with extensive experience handling customers and colleagues. Call center leadership has to be transparent and hands-on, so any employee who understands this could be suited to a team leader role.

Strong interpersonal skills, a drive to succeed, a desire to learn and staying organized are key traits of good team leaders too.

Related Article: What is Candor and How to Implement It in Your Organization

Management will expect you to be a motivational figure for service agents within your team, driving them on to achieve their best, deliver customer experiences of the highest standard and ultimately prevent problematic mistakes.

Team leaders should stay in close contact with call center management to understand they know exactly what’s expected of both themselves and their agents. 

What Problems Will A Team Leader Face?

Similar to service agents and managers, team leaders have their own challenges to overcome. Three of those biggest challenges are learning from mistakes, resolving difficulties, and working with resistant team members.

Learning From Mistakes

Bill Gates once said something about customer satisfaction that everyone responsible for leadership in a call center should take notice of: “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

It’s simple, honest, and straightforward, just as your customer service should be. What Gates said touches on learning from mistakes and using that failure (however major or minor) to deliver a better quality of CX in the future.

As a good call center team lead, you must promote customer satisfaction and prevent agents from making mistakes. But when errors or bad attitudes cause unhappiness in your customers, you must educate agents on how to put this right and how to avoid doing so in the future. 

Resolving Difficulties

Customers can get frustrated, upset, and even hostile. That makes agents work even more difficult and they may find they’re unable to keep a level head or provide the caller with the result they’re looking for.

This is where team leaders might be required to step in and talk to the customer to resolve the issue. Ill-judged service could cause negative publicity and poor online reviews, impacting the company’s overall reputation.

Handling an aggressive person by phone or live chat is a lot easier than doing so face-to-face, but can still be a challenge. Call center leadership demands the ability to stay focused and provide great service in all cases.

Resistant Team Members

Working in a team leader role means you may face resistance from certain agents. Perhaps they feel you’re being too strict or are untrustworthy. Perhaps they believe themselves to be more capable of the job than yourself.

Whatever the cause, resistance from team members can cause problems for team leaders. Fostering a strong bond between yourself and the agents under you is a big help, but this may be difficult if resistance is already in place.

Discussing any issues directly with the person(s) involved is the most practical way to handle their dissatisfaction. This can be hard if they have promoted you into a call center leadership position and are overseeing people who were on the same level as you weeks earlier but must be done, regardless.

Tips For Effective Team Leadership In A Call Center

Some key points for team leaders to remember:

Be Flexible

Anyone taking on call center leadership responsibilities should be flexible. Just because you’re in a senior role doesn’t mean you’re managing the entire call center, you might not have all the answers.

That’s why a willingness to recognize your faults and make changes is so important. Management could make you aware of the mistakes you’ve made through ongoing quality assurance, potentially surprising you.

It’s easy to forget you’re not the top of the food chain, but you have to take criticism, identify how to adapt and incorporate this into your way of working.

Provide Regular Coaching And Training

When QA analysts perform quality assurance in your call center, they’ll identify flaws in working processes at all levels. Agents, team leaders and managers can all contribute to poor customer service before a QA program flags mistakes.

Team leaders need to provide coaching and training to service agents based on data gathered during the quality assurance process. Strong communication skills are critical here, to help you relate to team members and ensure they understand how to improve.

According to a Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey, 60% of respondents reported that they would like feedback on a daily or weekly basis. When you recognize good agent work, it creates a positive reinforcement in their mind to strive even higher. You must track development and provide ongoing encouragement as agents continue to grow.

Boost Morale

Research shows that happy workers are between 12-20% more productive than less-enthused employees.

As a team lead, you cannot underestimate the power of good morale. Listening to service agents’ complaints, addressing their needs and providing their feedback to management can all make your team feel more valued.

Take steps to improve their work experience however you can. Liaise with managers to suggest positive changes in working methods, such as flexible hours, casual clothing, contests and more. Reward schemes are a fantastic way to reward staff and boost engagement with their work.

Conclusion

Good call center leadership is everything. As we’ve discussed above, team leaders serve a vital purpose in customer service environments, serving as a key link between the agents and management.

Team leaders have many responsibilities and duties when overseeing their staff, and the job definitely presents its fair share of challenges. However, building tight bonds with your agents, being an ally to them, and following the tips covered in this post will all help to make a call center team leader role easier.

Are you a call center team leader? If so, what are the biggest problems and rewards you’ve found in the job? What advice would you give to anyone taking a call center team leader position?