The secret to quality leadership for contact centre leaders
Team Leaders are the people who inspire and motivate their people, they monitor productivity and project efficiency every day.
Training your leaders to deliver quality leadership is arguably the most important component of running a successful contact centre.
When we say successful, we mean happy customers, happy agents and soaring results.
We know that every Leader has their own individual style; whether it’s extroverted or more passive.
This diversity is perfectly healthy and is, in fact, an asset to contact centres.
What can lead to disharmony, however, is underdeveloped skills.
Maintaining a consistent leadership process from each team leader individually across the team is important to establish a level playing field in the organisation.
Imagine a contact centre where one team leader is active and engaged, regularly sits with underperforming staff, building relationships.
If you also have a leader who tends to run things more from behind the scenes, what do you think will happen?
This disjointed environment grows the gap between the agents who deliver and those who struggle.
So what is the secret to quality leadership from your Leaders?
Outsourcing.
We aren’t denying the advantages of hosting regular, in-house training.
There are certainly benefits to having an internal coach who understands the practical elements of leaders role-specific to the organisation.
Although, the opportunity to bring in a specialised external trainer to assesses performance and create a customised Frontline Management Program is unparalleled.
These trainers can provide an objective view of where improvements can be made, and design an entire program; from the intensive training itself to tailor-made timesheets and daily tasks.
They can hone in on key soft skills such as time management, planning, conflict resolution, managing difficult agents; and structure management tasks in a prioritised manner, ultimately improving efficiency.
In times of business technology transformation, outsourcing your leadership program is also recommended to ensure maximum benefit of the process.
Time needs to be taken to bring all Leaders onto the same page and working with their agents to build new and relevant skills. It’s important that everyone understands the changes quickly and efficiently, in order to start passing on the benefit to customers from the get-go.
What can be a large initial outlay, delivers a huge payoff in additional training later, or it will be to the detriment of customer experience.
Change is often feared by employees. Facilitating the transformation with coaching provides both agents and team leaders with an added feeling of support and guidance that is crucial to a smooth transition.
Ultimately, we’re talking about time and money.
If Leaders are not armed with the appropriate skills that are proven to deliver, you can’t expect them to pass on the necessary training and support to their agents.
If agents feel neglected, or unmotivated, they have two options; to quit, which will only generate higher employee turnover, or decrease productivity.
Behavioural change through embedding consistent leadership routines to achieve optimum operating rhythm is the key to successful leadership coaching.
Recommended further reading: How to teach Team Leaders to sound like Leaders
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