Your performance as a contact centre supervisor or team leader makes a direct dent in the organisation’s bottom line. Across industries and verticals, 75% of turnover can be traced to a negative managerial influence. Also, McKinsey found that a number of factors contributing to agent retention in contact centres have to do with leadership – this includes the number of breaks that they are allowed (6%), stress levels (8%), sense of community in the workplace (9%), management (8%), and the performance of the direct supervisor (6%).
Simply put, a good supervisor/team leader can exponentially improve the agent experience, thereby driving engagement among the workforce as well as better CX quality.
Empower Agents in the Little Things
Understandably, agents are under a lot of pressure to meet preset KPI targets, promotion-related goals, compliance mandates, and customer demand. This can lead to employees feeling stripped of their agency. Supervisor/team leaders should try and introduce agent empowerment in whatever aspect possible. It could be as simple as letting agents choose their own break hours, adopting self-service scheduling, and offering a WFH option.
Handle Different Personalities with Empathy
A large contact centre will employ agents of various ages, cultural backgrounds, personality types, and professional ambitions. This could cause conflicts in the workplace – but it is your job as the team leader to minimise conflicts as much as possible and enable a comfortable resolution. To achieve this, you need empathy to be able to perceive the issue from the agent’s perspective and not just the organisations. Active listening will also help top reassure agents that they are valued so that conflict scenarios do not escalate.
Introduce fun in the workplace
Disengagement is probably your worst enemy when managing a team of agents, owing to the rigorous nature of the job and inherent challenges like shift timings or below-average pay. While a lot of these factors are beyond your control, it is possible to introduce an element of fun through a system of rewards, workplace games, regular recognition, and non-work-related team activities. Document the outcomes of these initiatives to get buy-in from senior management.